Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will bring A Separation to Blu-ray in August. Director Asghar Farhadi won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 2012 Academy Awards Ceremony for this intimate drama about an Iranian family struggling to balance their culture's rigid social strictures with their own ever-pressing emotional needs.
From Sony's official synopsis:
"Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave Iran with her husband Nader (Peyman Moadi) and daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) and sues for divorce when Nader refuses to leave behind his Alzheimer-suffering father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi). Her request having failed, Simin returns to her parents' home but Termeh decides to stay with Nader. When Nader hires a young woman to assist with his father in his wife's absence, he hopes that his life will return to a normal state. However, when he discovers that the new maid has been lying to him, he realizes that there is more on the line than just his marriage."
Sony's Blu-ray presents the film in its 1.85:1 original aspect ratio. The disc also includes a number of bonus supplements, such as:
Way overrated. I think the success of this film is a testament to people's ignorance of Iranian cinema. There have been far better Iranian films than this. Once you get past all the hyperbole, it's average at best. Oh, wait, I forgot, you can't be critical of a film on these boards without getting voted down... fan boys...
Seeing the raves for this I'm wondering if two versions of the movie were released. I didn't dislike A Separation, but I didn't like it either. Yes, the characters are believable and we have the verite presentation so beloved by the tweed hat crowd, but once the scene was set......nothing happened. It was a simple story of misunderstanding and deception. The greatest value for me was anthropological.
And before people start waxing about the wonderful world of Iranian cinema, let's not forget about Close Up, the biggest con perpetrated on gullible hand-wringing Westerners since the Sokal Affair.
