THE PAST

By Asghar Farhadi (2013 - 130 min)

Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian director, rose to fame with his now-famous A Separation (2011), an Oscar-winning film for Best Foreign Language Film.

Two years later, he filmed "The Past."

Farhadi's cinema is one of realism, of everyday life. A multi-ethnic cinema with, unsurprisingly, a special focus on his own culture, Iranian, which is unfamiliar to us Westerners.

The Past tells the story of Ahmad's return to Paris after 4 years, to sign the divorce papers with Marie, a French woman.

Marie is trying to rebuild her romantic life with Samir, a Maghrebi man.

Marie has two daughters, aged 10 and 16, from her marriage before her relationship with Ahmad.

Samir also has an 8-year-old son. Samir is also married, but his wife is ill, very ill: she is in a coma…

Ahmad returns, and the unresolved past slowly resurfaces and intertwines with the lives of Marie and Samir.

The film, although slow, with mostly fixed shots, is indeed very beautiful.

As it progresses, the story becomes richer in details, rather tragic ones, which generate an absolutely remarkable pathos.

I could find similarities with the filmic tragedies of an Almodovar, but the approach is completely different.

Farhadi unfolds his story with a grace, a restraint, a realism that are truly uncommon.

His cinema is soft, refined, elegant yet subdued, understated.

The same story, which has huge tragic overtones, could have been told (as we are used to seeing in similar films) by turning up the emotional agony, the dramatic scenes of shouting – crying – tears – pain in a Wagnerian crescendo, for the film builds and grows in tragedy in a constant and inevitable way. Farhadi, however, remains composed and proceeds with the help of his actors and dialogues (it's a film especially about dialogue and acting) without faltering, never looking back, and inexorably revealing the cards, by which I mean the focus on TRUTH.

By truth, I mean that TELLING EVERYTHING that also involves reckoning with the past and thus trying to reconstruct the PRESENT because only then will it be possible to have a FUTURE. Yes, but… at what cost?

You’ll only find out by watching the film.

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