Marriage under the lens of Asghar Farhadi has never had anything to do with happiness.
Same for men and women. Same thing about marriage. It's hard not to compare The Past to The Farewell, which made Asghar Farhadi a festival darling.
Asghar Farhadi's images, like all Iranian films, are "extremely realistic and pay attention to the details of life. Close to nature and consciously avoid tortuous plots". Compared with "Parting", "The Past" has changed in the image style. is the most obvious. In "The Farewell," the cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari, who has worked with several famous Iranian directors including Abbas Kiarostami, has not had the camera on a tripod since the first second of the film. Honestly stayed. In the composition of the horizontal view of two people, three people and over-the-shoulder shots, the hand-held camera becomes the perfect choice. This divorce-induced dispute seems to be happening right in front of our eyes, close at hand, within reach.
In "The Past", although the photographer is still Mahmoud Kalari, the angle of the lens is still kept at the horizontal line of sight, but the camera is no longer cruising with the characters, whether in the car or indoors, whether on the outside. Still interior. There are more ways to move the camera, and the changes of the camera position are more abundant. Compared with the ongoing entanglements in "Parting", "The Past" is full of too many stories about the past. The editing of the film is still natural and smooth, the director rarely hints or reminds, and achieves the greatest harmony.
In the use of sound, Asghar Farhadi has always been cautious and pursued minimalism. In "Farewell" and "The Past," the efficacy of music is almost completely abandoned, and the sad piano music is not played until the closing credits appear.
Asghar Farhadi has always attached great importance to the performance of actors. The characters under his camera are all stripped down and extremely lifelike. When filming "Farewell", he made actress Sari Bayat pray at five o'clock every day on time, and take part in women's bible study class every week to rest "The Koran", in order to show a very devout Islamic woman .
Berenice Bejo earned her a trophy at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance in "The Past". And the two male protagonists, Ali Mosha and Taha Rahim, performed equally well. In addition, in Asghar's films, children are always indispensable, and the natural and unadorned performance is one of his favorite elements.
Asghar Farhadi, like other Iranian directors, has learned to say a thousand words with no words under the pressure of years of harsh and overbearing film censorship.
In "Parting", the story takes place in Iran, and it seems to be about a dispute over divorce and life, as if the director has no objection to people seeing Nader and Simin as "two political views in one country" people", they are like the men and women of this country. And this ageing nation is like an old, dementia-stricken father.
While the location of "The Past" was moved to France, it was much less politically sensitive. Asghar Farhadi pays more attention to the discussion of marriage, family affection, religion, belief and loyalty. This is also a proposition about all of humanity. Under the pressure of years of harsh and overbearing film censorship, Asghar Farhadi, like other Iranian directors, has learned to say a thousand words without words.
On top of that, he almost always features one or more liars in his films (Seideh in "About Ellie", Nader and Reitz in "The Parting", and Lucy in "The Past") although He (she) is all out of kindness, but has caused harm to many characters. But Asghar Farhadi was never critical, those who caused hurt and pain to others because of their lies seemed to fill people with sympathy and pity as well.
It can be said that Asghar Farhadi's films focus on the most essential life, how people treat and escape when they encounter changes in life. Of course, like all other directors with humanistic concern, he raised more than one question, but kept the answer in the hearts of every moviegoer.
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