How to evaluate the film A Parting?

In the Iranian film A Farewell, director asghar farhadi started by putting the two protagonists in front of the camera and complaining about the reasons for their divorce. At this time, the audience was forced to occupy the judge's perspective. In other words, the director prepared to involve the audience in a "civil dispute" from the beginning, and asked the audience to make their own thinking and judgment on the "dispute" like a judge.

The dispute began when Ximin decided to take her daughter Temei to immigrate, but her husband Nader refused because he insisted on staying to take care of his insane father. Another dispute arose from this: Nader had to hire a nanny, Liz, to take care of his father, but they were pushed and shoved because of dereliction of duty and suspicion. Ritz miscarried, and Nader, who was already exhausted, had to defend himself in court again, facing all kinds of difficulties and tests.

As a result, a dispute began to spread from the inside of the family to the outside of the family, between different classes and cultural differences, and at the same time changed the original relationship within the family. An accident, like a sudden whirlpool, makes people with different personalities and different life concepts suddenly collide violently in the originally calm daily life.

To some extent, A Farewell is almost a perfect sample of realistic movies: the camera is aimed at ordinary people around us, real-life shooting, natural lighting effects, recording events from a simple bystander perspective (a large number of shoulder-mounted cameras), and at the same time understanding the real dilemma of each character and the complex and subtle relationship between people, and sublimating a large number of elements and situations in daily life into "thrilling" stories.

Different from the non-dramatic narration of most Iranian films, director asghar farhadi created characters and weaved stories in the background of daily life, which showed his extraordinary narrative ability. Every character in this movie is unique.

Nader, the leading actor, insists on his own views and principles. He never hesitated about the choice of emigrating and taking care of his father. He will ask his daughter to get back the tip he shouldn't have given. However, in a series of subsequent events, Nader struggled many times: in order to take care of his family, he wanted to win the lawsuit and avoid jail, but he also wanted to maintain a sincere personality image for his daughter; He doesn't want to use money to finally solve the problem, but he doesn't want to lose his daughter because of his stubbornness. Thus, we see a middle-class male image that is hard to be loyal to family responsibilities, hard to compromise, and a little cold and rude to others under the heavy pressure of life, which is true and complicated.

In contrast, the heroine Ximin is flexible, approachable, easy to communicate, and good at solving problems with money (such as moving the piano). The basic dilemma she faces is to yearn for a better life and hope that her daughter will have a better growth environment. However, due to the stubbornness of her husband Nader, she had to pay the price of divorce. Before the visa expires, she must fight for her husband and daughter to immigrate with her alone, or give up immigration herself, and the sudden "abortion dispute" is providing her with the last chance to fight for it.

For her daughter Temei, whether to emigrate with her mother or stay in Iran with her father, or other choices, she must make a difficult decision by herself. After a series of disputes, in Temei's eyes, both parents actually did something wrong: the father hurt Ritz and her family with violence, suspicion and lies, and the mother hurt Ritz's faith and family with money.

Temei's final choice is not only between her parents, but also between two lifestyles (foreign and local), and gives her own moral judgment on the whole incident. In the last long shot of the film, Nader and Simin are waiting for Teme's verdict in the corridor of the court. The film ends meaningfully here, as if to say: children, not judges, are the ultimate and most important judges.

Even the pictures of supporting the nanny Ritz and her husband are impressive. Liz is a devout Muslim, and her behavior is dominated by her beliefs. Because she was at the bottom of society and her husband was heavily in debt, she had to work as a temporary worker to make money and didn't tell her husband that she was pregnant. Liz's dilemma is that under the test of the money she needs most, she must stick to her integrity. "It is guilty to have doubts about taking money."

Her husband, Hojad, is an unemployed shoemaker, suffering from poverty and depression at the bottom of society, with a bad temper and a natural distrust of the judicial system and the upper class. Suffering from the loss of a child, on the one hand, we long for justice and dignity (spiritual thirst), on the other hand, we need money to alleviate the pressure of survival.

The success of these characterization lies in that the director Fahati fully respects every character in the story (instead of symbols and props) and sets a unique situation (pressure and dilemma) for them, so that everyone can make a choice with their own unique values and personality. As robert mckee, a master screenwriter, said, "No matter what he says or how they behave, the only way for us to understand the deep people is to look at the choices they make under pressure."

Good characterization and good story conception are often two sides of the same coin. Fahati's greatness lies in that he easily puts so many (seemingly) distinctive characters into a daily story and completes the story construction without any extraordinary factors or grand ideas. In other words, the director has created a full and tortuous story, and everyone's situation deserves deep thought and sympathy. Moreover, these conflicts are not grand contests between good and evil, good and evil, right and wrong, but confrontations between trivial good or humble struggling people (ordinary people and self-protectors) in daily life.

"Designing stories can test a writer's maturity and insight, and test his understanding of society, nature and people's hearts. Stories need vivid imagination and powerful analytical thinking. " McKee said in the story.

There is no doubt that this film shows Fahati's unique insight into his life world. He saw all kinds of contradictions and tensions that could not be eliminated in life, as well as the depression and depression hidden in daily life, including the conflict between tradition and modernity, the different influences of different classes and different groups of people's religious beliefs, the distrust between classes, the tension between the lies that sustain life and the desire for sincerity? Moreover, he created the most sincere story form to express these opinions.

Fahati said that the son took care of his insane father alone (it is said that the director had a similar experience) and was in the bathroom.

Giving him a bath and rubbing his back, suddenly falling on his father's shoulder and crying, is the core image of this film, in which loneliness and frustration deeply touched him and pushed him to make up a touching story for this image.

We can imagine that Fahati has been asking himself around this image: Why should he take care of his father alone? Why is he so sad? What about his family? What choice does he face? How will he solve this difficulty? What special actions or impulses will he make in this special life situation? Will his life get worse? Will his insistence change? How will he influence or be influenced by people around him? Who are these people directly affected by him? ?

It is in these sincere questions that the story slowly surfaced. These problems often contain a director's unique life experience and way of thinking, and also make the experience gradually sublimate, and let the bits and pieces of daily life condense into a brand-new story form, which will shine brilliantly. "Story genius-creatively transforming life itself into a stronger, clearer and more meaningful experience. It looks for the inherent characteristics of our daily life and reconstructs it into a story that enriches our lives. " McKee said.

In the era of fast food images, most of our eyeballs have become accustomed to false stories full of loopholes. They replaced essence with mystery, reality with man-made, and spiritual dialogue with visual stimulation. The excessive involvement of capital makes the image more and more luxurious and pretentious, more and more obscene and violent, and movies become an infectious tool for short-term profit-seeking of capital.

When Oscar awarded the best foreign language film award to a parting, we seemed to see that even in this era, a good story can still "stand out", just like McKee's "story alchemy" can still cause widespread condemnation, but these can't change the basic game of capital and movies. This crazy machine still needs to be instilled with a lot of inferior stories to shape our culture.

In this sense, Farewell deeply touched audiences of different countries and cultures with its "bright and pure light". Fahati used "honest and powerful stories" to make a fictional conflict have a lamp that touches people's hearts and illuminates daily reality.