A Separation at the New York Film Festival

After sweeping the Berlin Film Festival and generating ear-splitting buzz around the world, Asghar Farhadi's A Separation finally made its American debut last night at the New York Film Festival. And the hype is all true: A Separation is one of the best movies we've ever seen at the festival and easily the best movie we've seen all year. To describe it as an Iranian Rashomon, as many have done, hints at the central issue --- we won't spoil it here --- but doesn't do the film justice, as Farhadi's sensitivity to his characters and the complexity of their motivations outdoes Kurosawa's. Farhadi, in the discussion afterward, emphasized the universality of the story, and it is indeed a movie for thinking people, rather than "Iranians" or "Europeans" or "Americans," but he also acknowledged its larger ramifications, noting that "the most political movie is the one you don't realize is political." Little wonder what an anonymous Iranian wrote in the New York Review of Books last week: "I saw it in Tehran this summer, and so movingly did it reflect what I was witnessing around me, I was surprised that the authorities allowed it to be screened."

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