When I watched A Separation for the first time I was elated. He really made us pick sides and experience the turbulence of the couple’s marriage as vividly as ours. Beautiful narration. 

Beautiful, yes, but a male narration, nonetheless. 

I know I’m not the first person to point this out about the film. But I will use the film to make my point. 

As beautiful as Farhadi’s narration may have been, it was an appeal to the wrong audience. This is something that is getting underlined by the current political climate in Iran in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s brutal chapter. It underlines, above everything else that we not only live in a patriarchal world, but also in one where experiences are broadly seen through the prism of patriarchy.

If you belong to the top tier of the human populace i.e. male and wealthy, you might just skid past the fate that befalls on the majority in Iran. You might get lucky. But if you are a woman, notwithstanding your social standing, the need to flee spells survival. 

Anyone shaming women for wanting to escape conservative societies are most likely a part of the problem. Because as sad as it is, after spending many years living within diasporas around the world, I am yet to meet a woman who left their home, out of fancy, or merely looking for an adventure, if not entirely out of existential desperation. 

So, the scene from the film where the husband is shown arguing his reason for separation, out of a need to look after his ailing father, consequently painting his wife in poor light – as selfish and uncaring, for wanting to leave the country with their daughter, may have stirred an emotional response earlier from many outside of Iran, it certainly deserves another glance and retrospection today. 

The film did an outstanding job in presenting the class conflicts in Iran from multiple POVs that’s signature Farhadi now. What it steals in the process, however, is the female voice of reason. In the midst of matrimonial discord, it doesn’t inform the audience fully of the reality facing the female protagonist. It doesn’t show how despite living in the same time, in the same house and family, she is experiencing a loss of agency, drastically different to that of the male protagonist. 

When I first watched this film many moons ago, I remember feeling puzzled around why she was so desperate to leave the country. I thought they had that piece missing in the plot. Unexplained.

Guess we all know better than that now.