It’s rare to get the whole crux of a movie in a
opening scene but that’s exactly what happens here when we see Nader & Simin
facing a judge on their own in an otherwise empty room arguing about getting a
divorce. They are a successful
middle-aged professional couple living in present day Iran who had agreed in
principle to move abroad for a better life, but now the time has come to
depart, Nader wants to stay to look after his elderly father who has
Alzheimer’s.
So Simin moves to her mother’s house and sues Nader
for divorce even though they both want to remain married. Consequently he needs to employ a caregiver
to tend to his father during the day, and so he hires Razieh who takes the job as her family is heavily in debt but she keeps it a
secret from her unemployed husband who. as a strict
Moslem, would never allow her to work in a household where there is no other
woman present.
One day Nader returns home early to find that Razieh
has disappeared and left his father alone and tied to the bed and he is lying there unconscious. He also discovers some money is missing, so
when Razieh returns he accuses her of both theft and almost killing his
father. He fires her and there is a heated
argument and he pushes her out of the front door. Somehow she falls down the stairs and as
result she accuses Nader of causing a miscarriage.
They end up in court and as the case unfolds there is
real turmoil as Razieh comes to terms how this all fits with her devout religious
beliefs, and Nader an essentially open-minded man must deal with the consequences of
being economical with the truth. It’s
essentially all about these decent people trying to do the right thing even though the
odds may be stacked against them.
It would spoil it to say more about what happens, but
the clue is in the opening scene. What I
can happily reveal is that it is made that much more mesmerizing from the exquisitely
matchless performances by Peyman Modai and Lila Hatami in the lead roles. Superb.
This rather stunning move is a riveting compelling
story so powerfully told about these two families in contemporary Iran is even more
remarkable for the mere fact that it shows a regular almost commonplace life in
a society that is usually stigmatized by the maligned regard we have of it in
the West. There is no extremists here, no terrorists or war, or the usual anti-American rhetoric that one has come to expect with anything remotely Iranian, but a tale of the
simple perils of the price of honesty.
Simply and beautifully told. Totally unmissable.
I’ve not seen all the nominated movies for Best
Foreign Language but it would take a hell of a lot to deny this one the Oscar.
★★★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★★★
