The Past

Iran’s Asghar Farha­di reveals him­self (once again) as both a great human­ist and a dab hand at build­ing char­ac­ters whose com­plex psy­cho­log­i­cal moti­va­tions are always brac­ing­ly, har­row­ing­ly cred­i­ble. This fol­low-up to awards dar­ling, A Sep­a­ra­tion, again mines the dra­mat­ic moments between moments, the sticky emo­tion­al sinews that sim­ply won’t tear when two peo­ple have appar­ent­ly part­ed ways.

He com­pre­hends and pre-empts the dis­par­i­ty between what peo­ple say and what they real­ly mean, how the act of con­vers­ing with a loved one (or an ex-loved one) can become a mine­field of seman­tic sec­ond-guess­ing, and how human rela­tions are com­posed of per­haps lit­tle more than peo­ple relay­ing banal infor­ma­tion between one another.

The Past opens on a joke, but only one that you’ll get if you’re famil­iar with Farhadi’s the­mat­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. Bérénice Bejo’s har­ried, bleary-eyed moth­er-of-two Marie is wait­ing behind a glass win­dow at a Parisian air­port for Ali Mosaffa’s Ahmad (her soft­ly spo­ken, Iran­ian ex-hus­band) so they can finalise their divorce. He sees Bejo and wan­ders up to the win­dow to greet her.

They mouth words to one anoth­er but noth­ing can be heard. Yet they have total com­pre­hen­sion of each oth­ers’ inten­tions. The irony of this fleet­ing moment feels all the more cru­el when placed against the blis­ter­ing and com­plex dra­ma that ensues — per­fect, unequiv­o­cal clar­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, achieved only when words are not there to get in the way of things.

Farhadi’s film tooth-combs over a brief peri­od in which Marie is attempt­ing to firm­ly sev­er a tie with her past so she can move freely into her future. That future is with Samir (Tahar Rahim), a dry-clean­er whose wife is in a coma and who isn’t sure quite what the eti­quette is for upping sticks and mov­ing on. So much hap­pens in the film that a more detailed plot pré­cis would be utter­ly worth­less. Farha­di is far more inter­est­ed in deliv­er­ing a broad­er the­sis relat­ing to the emo­tion­al rip­ple effect of trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences and the way peo­ple gauge whether it’s right to hurt those close to them if it may be for the greater good.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, it’s very straight and tight, with only a hand­ful of styl­is­tic flour­ish­es to take you momen­tar­i­ly out of the dra­ma (includ­ing an extreme­ly mov­ing long final shot). The Past is more mut­ed and Bergmanesque than A Sep­a­ra­tion and less play­ful­ly aca­d­e­m­ic than his 2009 film, About Elly. The deep browns and beiges of the colour scheme per­fect­ly con­vey the mud­di­ness of the sit­u­a­tion, while the pac­ing gets more fran­tic as mat­ters accor­dion out in all direc­tions. The title offers a (thud­ding­ly?) blunt encap­su­la­tion of the film’s basic theme: that how­ev­er hard you try to expunge it, the past will remain with you always and forever.