Reference XXIII...

In a middle-class Tehran that Western audiences might be surprised to recognize from their own lives, writer-director Asghar Farhadi boils up to a domestic drama with the suspense of a Hitchcock thriller. Simin (Leila Hatami) is refused a divorce by Nader (Peyman Moadi) because she intends to leave Iran with their daughter (Sarina Farhadi, the director's daughter), and so they separate and Simin moves out. Nader hires a pregnant woman to care for his sick father while he is at work, and, after a dispute, the woman falls and loses her child, holding Nader responsible. Events quickly spiral out of control, with accusations turning to threats and leading to impossible decisions from which nobody comes away a winner.

Eschewing the realist aesthetic of the Iranian cinema that found Western audiences in the 1990s, Farhadi constructs a tightly woven narrative and masterfully handles escalating deceptions that lead to his characters being dragged through Iran's Byzantine legal system, all the time encouraging empathy with each of them (even the judge's position is not without sympathy). Without explicitly articulating any criticism of Iranian government or culture, the portrayal of the daily tensions of living in a theocracy slowly builds a powerful subtext. The human condition is such that, without a villain, decent people can be compelled to lie, hindering the search for justice even as they stand up for their own principles.

The cast is uniformly brilliant, and Asghar Farhadi's intelligent script dissects the divisions that emerge not only between husband and wife but also between parent and child, lower and middle class, and state and citizen. The narrative is explored from all perspectives, and the Oscar-winning film's brilliance lies in asking the audience ultimately to examine it through their own anxieties.