The Past (2013)
"Le passé" (original title)
An Iranian man deserts his French wife and her two children to return to his homeland. Meanwhile, his wife starts up a new relationship, a reality her husband confronts upon his wife's request for a divorce.
Director:
Asghar Farhadi
This film was highly expected among the cinephiles and film critics who had watched the Oscar-winning film "A Separation". The main theme ,like his previous movies, is family relations and here we can see a detailed observation of the effects of the past in our life. We can't get rid of our pasts, but only carry it along...
The film starts off with a woman at an airport, eagerly waiting for a man to arrive. They meet, they embrace and they run through the rain to their car. The woman takes the wheel and backs out of the parking space. But the rear window is wet and damp, she doesn't have a clear view of what happens behind the car and she almost hits another vehicle. This small scene, that precedes the opening credits, is symbolic for the film: looking back at events in the past, and not getting a clear view of their meaning.
The first is the screenplay. It's extremely clever and well-structured. From beginning to end, the audience gets dripfeeded with little bits of information, so that the viewer can construct the story for himself. Every new bit of information creates new questions, that are answered with new elements, which create new questions, etc.. In the second half of the film, the revelations get more and more dramatic, and so does the story. The dramatic power of the film increases gradually, which is a great accomplishment, screenplay-wise. Another very strong point of the screenplay is that it tells exactly what you need to know, not more and not less, in a very economical and offhanded way.
The second outstanding feature of the film is the acting. There is not a tiny trace of unnatural or artificial behaviour in the film. The actors are completely believable. In fact it's hard to believe they are actors at all. Iranian actor Ali Mossafa is great as the sensible outsider who tries to stay reasonable among high-running emotions, but the best performance in my opinion is given by Elyes Aguis, who plays a young boy, upset by the near-death of his mother and the new love interest of his father. The scene with his father in the underground railway station is truly heart-wrenching.
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