Out of the 50-odd 2011 releases I’ve seen, these five films have made my year. A Separation and Senna are probably the two I’d put at the very top of the list, having responded quite strongly to them emotionally, while the other three are more aesthetic choices.
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi — Iran)
Superb Iranian drama that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. The acting is superb across the board.
Original blog post => HERE
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Senna (Asif Kapadia — UK)
Thrilling, gripping, moving, gut-wrenching & inspiring. That about sums it up, I think.
Original blog post => HERE
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Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt — USA)
Bleak and austere, beautiful and hypnotic, there’s very little dialogue but plenty of stunning shots & some great acting (Michelle Williams really shines in this and Bruce Greenwood is unrecognizable). This is definitely going to be on my Best-of-2011 list. About the polarizing ending: the last shot is exactly what I had imagined the film would end with.
Original blog post => HERE
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Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz — Portugal)
Full-blown intrigue and romanticism, women at their most delicate fainting right left and center, some awesome tracking shots and camera angles, tons of characters, locations, languages, sub-plots, costumes, and some seriously grandiose interiors. And all that over 4.5 hours.
Original blog post => HERE
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The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr — Hungary)
Gloom, doom and gusty winds.
Original blog post => HERE
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Films of 2011 blogged on this tumblr => HERE
Films of 2011 I saw and liked (not ranked, but listed in some sort of chronological order) => HERE
Asghar Farhadi, writer, director and producer of A Separation — still my favourite film this year so far— talking about his film at a press screening during the New York Film Festival.
Nader and Simin, A Separation (2011) by Asghar Farhadi
Superb Iranian drama that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. One of the very very best I’ve seen this year so far — no wonder it received this year’s Golden Bear for Best Film and Silver Bears for Best Actress and Best Actor.
Dave Calhoun for Time Out London:
[…] We meet thirtysomething couple Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) in the divorce courts, a front-on shot hiding the judge but revealing an awkward rapport between the pair as Simin insists she wants to leave Iran. She doesn’t want their eleven-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) to grow up ‘in these circumstances’, she says. Nader disagrees, not least because his elderly father with Alzheimer’s lives with them and needs care.
The situation is unresolved. Simin moves in with her parents, while Nader hires a woman, Razieh (Sareh Bayat), with her own domestic pressures, to look after his father while he’s at work. She’s from a lower class, and her presence helps the film in its effort to examine differing attitudes in Iran to status, gender and religion – an examination that never overwhelms a drama that puts to the fore strong writing, characterisation and acting.
A marital separation and new domestic situation may seem trivial or everyday, but it’s this new set-up which proves a catalyst to events – best left unrevealed – of potentially life-changing proportions. Small decisions have big repercussions and we’re never sure who’s right or wrong as an intensifying debate drags in other protagonists, including Razieh’s hot-headed husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), Razieh’s daughter, a teacher and a judge.
‘A Separation’ is lively and suspenseful as both drama and debate. It employs a tricksy moral compass that swings all over the place as we see its story from various viewpoints. It prods gently at middle-class entitlement of the how-can-this-be-happening-to-me variety, but it also avoids the trap of coming down on the side of less worldly characters. If it reserves a significant amount of sympathy for anyone, it’s for the side players – the old man and the kids – to whom its gaze keeps returning, refusing to forget those outside the eye of the storm but equally bruised by it.
Peter Bradshaw for the Guardian:
[…] As the movie progresses, terrible things happen in a succession of unintended consequences. Flawed people behave badly and they will make ferocious appeals to justice and to law in preliminary hearings very similar to the divorce court, heard by harassed, careworn officials oppressed by the knowledge that there is no black and white, but numberless shades of grey. Despite the angry denunciations flying back and forth and the fizzing sense of grievance being nursed on both sides, the messy, difficult truth is that both parties can be justified, that all-or-nothing judicial war will bring destruction, and that some sort of face-saving compromise will somehow have to be patched up. The women see this, but not the men.
[…] Farhadi shows how this situation is like a pool of petrol into which any event lands like a lighted match. Everyone is aware of their rights and how angry they feel at injustices and slights, and the women are grimly aware of the double responsibility of finding a working solution and persuading their menfolk to accept it. Yet one thing cannot be bargained away: the children. In the end, Termeh is the central figure. She sees everything, she forces her father to make a key admission, and then, excruciatingly, is put into a false position on his behalf. Her pain and anger are all mostly hidden. But she is the person on whom a terrible, unspeakable burden is to fall – a burden both judicial and moral. The adults’ pettiness and selfishness have forced this on her: it is an insidious kind of abuse. With great power and subtlety, Farhadi transforms this ugly quarrel into a contemporary tragedy.
![Nader and Simin, A Separation (2011) by Asghar FarhadiSuperb Iranian drama that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. One of the very very best I’ve seen this year so far — no wonder it received this year’s Golden Bear for Best Film and Silver Bears for Best Actress and Best Actor.
Dave Calhoun for Time Out London:
[…] We meet thirtysomething couple Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) in the divorce courts, a front-on shot hiding the judge but revealing an awkward rapport between the pair as Simin insists she wants to leave Iran. She doesn’t want their eleven-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) to grow up ‘in these circumstances’, she says. Nader disagrees, not least because his elderly father with Alzheimer’s lives with them and needs care.The situation is unresolved. Simin moves in with her parents, while Nader hires a woman, Razieh (Sareh Bayat), with her own domestic pressures, to look after his father while he’s at work. She’s from a lower class, and her presence helps the film in its effort to examine differing attitudes in Iran to status, gender and religion – an examination that never overwhelms a drama that puts to the fore strong writing, characterisation and acting.A marital separation and new domestic situation may seem trivial or everyday, but it’s this new set-up which proves a catalyst to events – best left unrevealed – of potentially life-changing proportions. Small decisions have big repercussions and we’re never sure who’s right or wrong as an intensifying debate drags in other protagonists, including Razieh’s hot-headed husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), Razieh’s daughter, a teacher and a judge.‘A Separation’ is lively and suspenseful as both drama and debate. It employs a tricksy moral compass that swings all over the place as we see its story from various viewpoints. It prods gently at middle-class entitlement of the how-can-this-be-happening-to-me variety, but it also avoids the trap of coming down on the side of less worldly characters. If it reserves a significant amount of sympathy for anyone, it’s for the side players – the old man and the kids – to whom its gaze keeps returning, refusing to forget those outside the eye of the storm but equally bruised by it.
Peter Bradshaw for the Guardian:
[…] As the movie progresses, terrible things happen in a succession of unintended consequences. Flawed people behave badly and they will make ferocious appeals to justice and to law in preliminary hearings very similar to the divorce court, heard by harassed, careworn officials oppressed by the knowledge that there is no black and white, but numberless shades of grey. Despite the angry denunciations flying back and forth and the fizzing sense of grievance being nursed on both sides, the messy, difficult truth is that both parties can be justified, that all-or-nothing judicial war will bring destruction, and that some sort of face-saving compromise will somehow have to be patched up. The women see this, but not the men.
[…] Farhadi shows how this situation is like a pool of petrol into which any event lands like a lighted match. Everyone is aware of their rights and how angry they feel at injustices and slights, and the women are grimly aware of the double responsibility of finding a working solution and persuading their menfolk to accept it. Yet one thing cannot be bargained away: the children. In the end, Termeh is the central figure. She sees everything, she forces her father to make a key admission, and then, excruciatingly, is put into a false position on his behalf. Her pain and anger are all mostly hidden. But she is the person on whom a terrible, unspeakable burden is to fall – a burden both judicial and moral. The adults’ pettiness and selfishness have forced this on her: it is an insidious kind of abuse. With great power and subtlety, Farhadi transforms this ugly quarrel into a contemporary tragedy.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lns0x6wUOS1qzoziho1_500.jpg)
