Asghar Farhadi at ACMI
March 2013
With his 2011 film A Separation, Asghar Farhadi achieved a good deal: he reignited international interest in Iranian cinema, he gained a polished piece of Academy Award hardware for Best Foreign Language Film (the first Oscar to be won by an Iranian), and he decisively secured his standing as a master filmmaker.
In anticipation of the release of his next project entitled The Past, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) will guide viewers through the development of Farhadi’s lauded directorial vision by screening a retrospective of the four feature films that preceded his 2011 success, as well as A Separation itself.
Setting forth to view the back catalogue of an established filmmaker can be a daunting commission, especially when the films in question are “foreign language” and/or difficult to track down. And yet commercial obscurity is one of the most alluring characteristics of a director’s early works; it is here that the viewer can uncover any conceptual skeletons and detect the early workings that generated the filmmaker’s professional triumphs (“and the Oscar goes to”).
According to ACMI’s Kristy Matheson, Farhadi plotted the course of his directorial practice from the outset, with his ideas clearly germinating in his early films. In Fireworks Wednesday (2006), Farhadi presents an archetypal upstairs/downstairs storyline that plays out within the cultural framework of Persian New Year. For Matheson, the tension, complexity and tone of this earlier film provides a retrospective acknowledgement of the narrative form refined by Farhadi in A Separation. This is middle-class Iran, populated by urban identities, acted out in universal domestic interactions, and far removed from the sensational headlines through which Iran is ordinarily represented in the West.
In curating this series, Matheson’s objective has been to provide the audience with a rare opportunity to witness the persistence of Farhadi’s vision, particularly given the general inaccessibility of his earlier works on DVD or with English translations. ACMI has specially imported the 35mm prints for this season, so the viewer is offered the enjoyable viewing experience that goes along with watching works on film. The films being screened in this season are also valued for being “beautifully subtitled”, an important consideration given the volume and intricacy of dialogue in Farhadi’s work.
In About Elly (2009), which was previously shown in Melbourne as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2009, Farhadi’s characters are, in their essentials, like the members of any urbanite friendship group you see around town. Planning a retreat to the countryside for the weekend, they pack the children and gourmet foodstuffs and set off for a playful few days, only to have their best laid plans dissolve in an ocean of misunderstandings. Undoubtedly the disparity in cultural norms between Teheran and Melbourne are at times stark; yet this cultural juxtaposition between the characters and the viewer merely serves to drive home the underpinning parallels that go along with being human and social.
The universality of contemporary urban existence is a central proposition of the current season at ACMI, and is one that will undoubtedly stay with the viewer long after April 12 (when the retrospective closes). While the directorial style of Asghar Farhadi is discreet and elegant, the products of his labour pack a hefty punch, challenging the viewers’ preconceptions at every turn. At the same time, his films could just as easily be set in Berlin or Chicago as a coastal vacation spot outside Teheran; they can be watched and fathomed as axiomatic human stories. Ultimately Farhadi makes films about being personal and universal, but never generic.
Directed by Asghar Farhadi shows at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Federation Square, from March 26 to April 12.
acmi.net.au
Images:
Still from About Elly (2009) Source & Courtesy: Hi-Gloss Entertainment
Still from Beautiful City (2004) Source & Courtesy: Farabi Cinema Foundation
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