Anniversary of A Separation
Earlier it was noted that "The changes in the Golden Thousand were reflected... on the lists of the best films by country." In particular, these changes affected the list of films produced by Iranian cinematographers. As noted earlier, according to the Golden Thousand in the 2019-2021 version, Majid Majidi's film "Children of Heaven" was recognized as the best film of Iranian cinema. The film "A Separation" directed by Asghar Farhadi was recognized as the best film of Iranian cinema according to FilmGourmand in 2022. The budget of the picture was 800 thousand dollars. It should be noted that the financing of the production of the painting did without state support from Iran. However, a relatively small amount of $ 25,000 was invested in the production of the film by the American Association of Film Companies.
The premiere of the film "A Separation" took place on February 1, 2011 within the framework of the International Film Festival "Fajr", held annually in the capital of Iran - Tehran. At the home film festival, the film "A Separation" was awarded seven awards, including the prize for Best Director. True, Asghar Farhadi's picture did not get the prize as the Best Film.
Two weeks after the premiere, the film was presented to guests and participants of the Berlin International Film Festival, where it became a real triumph. The jury of the film festival, chaired by the famous Italian actress Isabella Rossellini, daughter of Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, awarded the film a whole bunch of awards, including the Golden Bear as Best Film and Silver Bears to nine actors who played in the film. In fairness, it should be noted that Asghar Farhadi's film had no serious rivals at this festival. In addition, one cannot ignore political motives in such a generous award of awards to Farhadi's work. The fact is that long before the start of the festival, the Iranian film director Jafar Panahi, a colleague and like-minded person of Farhadi, was included in its jury, but 2 months before the festival, by the decision of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison.
In 2012, Asghar Farhadi's film "A Separation" was a real rain of film awards. The film was first awarded the American Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, overtaking Zhang Yimou's Chinese film Jinling Shisan Chai 金陵十三釵 (The Flowers of War)". The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences then awarded the Iranian film its Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
The film academies of European countries did not lag behind the American film academy. The French Film Academy awarded Farhadi's film with its César Award for Best Foreign Film, preferring it over films such as Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan", Denis Villeneuve's "Incendies", Lars von Trier's "Melancholia", and Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech". Also, the Italian Film Academy awarded the David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Film, and the Danish Film Academy awarded the Bodil Award for Best Non-American Film to "A Separation". The British Academy of Film was a little out of order. She nominated Farhadi's film for her BAFTA Award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film, but awarded the award to the Almodóvar Brothers' "La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In)". In total, Asghar Farhadi's film received 89 film awards.
The reviews of the vast majority of professional film critics were exclusively laudatory. American film critic guru Roger Ebert gave the film a maximum of 4 stars and wrote in his review: ""A Separation" is a film in which every important character tries to live a good life within the boundaries of the same religion. That this leads them into disharmony and brings them up before a judge is because no list of rules can account for human feelings. The film involves its audience in an unusually direct way, because although we can see the logic of everyone's position, our emotions often disagree."A Separation" provides a useful portrait of Iran today. Some inflamed American political rhetoric has portrayed it as a rogue nation eager to start nuclear war. All too many Americans, I fear, picture Iranians as camel-riding harem-keepers. Certainly some of Iran's punishments for adultery that we read about seem medieval. But this film portrays a more nuanced nation, and its decent characters are trying to do the right thing. To untangle right and wrong in this fascinating story is a moral challenge."
Another authoritative American film critic, James Berardinelli, turned out to be a little more restrained in his ratings and gave the film only 3.5 stars out of 4 possible. But he wrote in his review: "A Separation, Asghar Farhadi's universally acclaimed 2011 feature, is many things, none of them trivial. It's an indictment of a culture in which religion and tradition poison a legal system. It is an exploration of the power of a lie. It is a mystery and a courtroom drama. Above all, however, it is a tale of love and sacrifice....A Separation also illustrates the inequities of the Iranian legal system, which is rigid in its codes, unsympathetic in its execution, and circumscribed by religious doctrine. The concept of "swearing on the Quran" is taken very seriously. Few in this movie will consider telling a lie while touching the Muslim holy book. To do so, they fear, will be to invite disaster to be visited upon their children. Farhadi does not openly criticize this, but he illustrates the power of religion in the everyday life of Iranian citizens - something as foreign as the language to most Americans."
The well-known Russian film critic Andrey Plakhov noted in a review: “A Separation”, which looks like a Hitchcockian detective story, attracts the Western world also because it reflects familiar, that is, universal, features in an exotic Iranian mirror. There, just like in Europe, married couples get divorced, in old age people suffer from Alzheimer's disease, and children distrust their parents. Only all these problems are exacerbated by religious intolerance and double morality - a typical feature of authoritarian societies."
To complete the picture, it is necessary to give an opinion that differs from the overwhelming majority of reviews about the movie. This opinion was expressed by the Russian film critic Fyodor Obzorkin in his review entitled "Banality in Iranian": "Iran itself is interesting today, because it is the center of the "axis of evil", a kind of heir to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bad luck is that there is not a hint of politics in the film, on the contrary, the calm, measured life of ordinary people is shown. They have the same problems, the same worries. According to the degree of revelations for Western society, this film can be compared to "Moscow does not believe in tears", which at one time snatched a similar Oscar. In that film, too, somehow there was no politics, there were no harsh bears dancing in the streets to the balalaika, as there were no "A Separation" of all those demonstrations of dissenters about which the political elite of the United States does not get tired of broadcasting. There is only a simple film that, in the context of existing works in cinema, is not unique or at least somewhat worthy of even the part of attention that was paid to it at international festivals."
But for FilmGourmand, more important than the opinion of film critics is the evaluation of the film by ordinary moviegoers. And it is characterized by the following figures. The box office of the picture amounted to $ 24.4 million, which is more than 30 times higher than the cost of its production. 77% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. And 28% of users rated Asghar Farhadi's film "A Separation" with the highest score - "ten". Taking into account the listed success indicators of Asghar Farhadi's film "A Separation", its rating according to FilmGourmand was 11,225, thanks to which it took the high 5th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
