The consequences of separation

When I made my list of the best films of 2011 (see my Jan. 20 blog), I hadn't seen A Separation, which recently won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Now that I have, I would place it in the top three. It is outstanding.

It opens with a married couple arguing in front of the camera. Simin wants to live abroad to provide better opportunities for their only daughter, Termeh, who is 11. Nader, on the other hand, wants to stay in Iran and take care of his father, who suffers from Alzheimers. Simin, however, is determined to get a divorce and leave the country with her daughter.
Termeh chooses to live with her father. Her strategy, we learn later, is that as long as she is with her father, her mother will not leave the country, because she doesn't want to leave her daughter. So while they are living separately, they are not divorced.
 Asghar Farhadi, who wrote and directed the film, introduces us to an array of characters that capture our interest. Nader hires Razieh to clean his apartment and care for his father while he is at work and Termeh is at school. He doesn't know that Razieh is pregnant and working without her husband's permission or that her husband is out of work, in debt and unstable.
Events soon unfold, and a major confrontation takes Nader, Rezieh and her husband before a local magistrate (or whatever the Iranian equivalent is). Nader lies to avoid going to prison, and Termeh confronts him on this.
Mix in devotion to the Quaran and some cultural practices regarding debt, and the various actions of these characters lead to a mess that might have been avoided with truthtelling from the beginning by all concerned. Or, and perhaps this is one of the film's lessons, the mess might have been avoided if there had been no separation between Simin and Nader.
The film wisely refuses to take sides or present simple solutions. In fact, at the end we're left in limbo, uncertain what will happen. Instead it presents the messes we make in our fumbling of relationships. And it shows how our pride and inability to compromise or put ourselves in others' shoes can lead to destructive consequences. 
Another possible lesson from this film concerns the universality of art. When he accepted his Oscar for this film, Farhadi made the point that this film is not about the politics of Iran and the West but about human relationships. This is true and worth paying attention to. Films are one medium for helping us learn about other cultures and recognizing our common humanity in their stories and how they intersect with our own.
A Separation is a film worth seeing and pondering and discussing.