A Separation

Two years ago, Asghar Farhadi wrote and directed the extraordinary movie A Separation.  It's a deeply moving film about a couple in Iran: she wants to leave the country with her young pre-teenage daughter to have a better life; he wants to stay because his father has Alzheimer's, and lives with the couple. She asks for a divorce from the court; the court doesn't think she has sufficient cause because there's nothing wrong with the man and it isn't as if she doesn't love him. From this somewhat unusual starting point the film wends its way through increasing complications as the husband tries to find someone to look after his father during the day, and winds up before the court again on a very different charge. To say how it all pans out in any detail would be to thoroughly spoil the movie if you haven't seen it.
There are lies at every hand, all seemingly small, but all causing further trouble for the liars. The trouble is, the truth is difficult, and sometimes it seems easier to lie in order to get yourself out of a difficult situation. Almost no one in the story is immune from this difficulty, though some try harder than others to avoid the lies.
The Iran in this movie is a very different one from that we generally see on TV in the news. Yes, there are issues over sin, and the women have their heads covered all the time, and the Quran is used as a tool to swear by on several occasions. But beyond that, these are ordinary human beings living in a modern society that has everything any Western society has. For me it was an eye-opener in these terms.
The justice system is different: the plaintiffs and defendants can shift place at the drop of a hat, and there is only one harried, though authoritative, man dealing with each case. No lawyers, and only one or two other court staff in each small room. Dozens of complaints are being heard throughout a large building simultaneously. This was also intriguing, though somewhat scary. The judge has power to condemn to death, and almost does. But he can be pleaded with too, and that's the amazing thing. None of this nit-picking over the minutia of the law. You have to speak for yourself and speak well, and may be interrupted by the person in opposition to you.
The large cast is uniformly good, from the older actors to the children. There isn't a performance out of place here. Camera work, intentionally, isn't always steady - it's right in the middle of all the action at all times, but that unsteadiness is never obtrusive. Catch up on this movie on DVD.

Argo

If you haven't been to see Argo, go and see it.  Ben Affleck's new movie is an accomplished piece, full of suspense, excellent acting (including Affleck himself), a well-told story and a film that has you sitting on the edge of your seat in more than one place.

The opening sequence, in which a mob of Iranians storm the American embassy in Teheran is quite terrifying, and the last half hour or more of the movie is nail-biting as the six 'Canadians' attempt to make it out of the airport.  

Okay, have I said enough to convince you this is worth watching?   When the story isn't in suspense mode, we have some wonderful performances (and great lines) from John Goodman and Alan Arkin as two old-timer Hollywood movie-makers who can turn a turkey in to an eagle but who, in this case want the turkey to remain a turkey.

The movie tells the true story of six American embassy workers who escaped out the back door of the embassy when it was stormed by Iranians angry at the US for harbouring the Shah, a man who was apparently much hated by his people for his opulent behaviour and more.  (At that stage they didn't know they were exchanging one devil for another, in the form of the Ayatollah Khomeini.)   The six men and women managed to find shelter at the Canadian embassy (at this point the Canadians were still okay as far as the Iranians were concerned).  They hid there for nearly three months, while the Yanks back home figured out a way to get them to safety.

Finally a plan to turn them into a Canadian move-making team scouting for locations in Iran was hit upon; ridiculous as it seemed, it was even less ridiculous than some of the other ideas the US Government came up with.  Ben Affleck plays Tony Mendez who was given the job of getting the job of going to Iran and getting the Americans out.  He was the right man: he had contacts in Hollywood who set up a fake production company, and he had the nous and courage to walk into Iran, and persuade the American that this was somehow a good plan.  (Not all of them agreed!)

Affleck shows utter assurance throughout not only in his acting, but even more in his directing, which manages to give background to the story in a few short minutes (much as the first film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy did), enables us to clearly understand what's going on at all times, and presents the story via a huge cast, many of them familiar faces in small roles.  He even manages to give enough personality to the many characters for us not to feel in any way disengaged from them.  This film marks Affleck as a major director: he never eschews story-telling for action sequences (though there are several) and we never think...uh, oh, lots of people running round and lots of guns.  There are lots of guns - a scary number, in fact, many of them in the hands of women - and there are plenty of big crowd scenes, but these are so expertly handled that they never revert to filler.

This is movie-making at its best.  Go see it!