The Past (2013)

Simply Perfect

Please don't spend money on this.

A different way of telling a story

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Do you know those people who look down on European films? They cling to action and claim that European cinema was sooooo boring, that nothing ever happens in French films in particular. All the protagonists do (apart from drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes) was to have problems, suffer from their problems and talk about their problems.How I hate this attitude. Yet I have to admit that "Le Passé" proves them right. This film is the worst cliché of European art-house movie come to life: Nothing ever happens and all the people on screen do (apart from drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and shouting at their kids) is have problems, suffer from them and talk about them.The story is about a web of relationships that are revealed through the two hours runtime. Everybody's unhappiness ends up to be depending on the question who has the responsibility for driving Samir's wife into a failed suicide attempt. To learn that we have to go through endless dramatic dialogs of who wants to leave whom, who fails to have a life with whom and who drives whom crazy.All personalities are failures in maintaining stable relationships with each other - another annoyance to the spectator. Though there are some interesting points, like Ahmad (Marie's ex-husband) being the more empathic contact for the children and why Marie chose Samir instead of him, it could all be quite an amusing setup, but all of this remains unanswered.The whole story reminded me very much of a typical Chekhov play, but then Chekhov wrote his studies 150 years ago, and Farhadi has nothing new to add.Three stars for the actors, that's it.

Lots of movies feel like movies, no matter how hard they try and make them not to. This one feels like a real slice of life.. for all the numerous characters portrayed. The Past is a very good film.. probably one of the best you'll see this year. There are no glaring weaknesses.. OK.. nitpicking you can say some of the subtitles are not on the screen long enough to read them properly.. but that's another separate issue. The acting is absolutely first rate (all the kids are bizarre good.. Bérénice Bejo is superb)..and the script matches perfectly. Everyone involved knows what they're doing.. how many films you've seen recently can you make that claim about. You know when you really look forward to watching something again without too much of a delay.. you've come across something special. This one without hesitation goes into the video library.

I wasn't surprised when I read the Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi, for this movie, Le Passe ("The Past") was the same as "A Separation". Farhadi has excellent talent, and this movie was close to as good as his earlier movie mentioned. I am now a fan. The movie is a bit slow to start but draws you in to it's deep storyline and has you hooked halfway. It's layers of problems are several-deep, and there's a feeling of a real mess, authentic tragedy. At the core though, the filmmaker has made a standout tale of caution for the scope of damage that affairs can cause from children to of course those who are cheated upon. (spoilers) Not always, but as it ought to be, final scenes in movies should be the most memorable. Many movies may not be able to achieve that, but this one does. Highly Recommended - 8/10

This is the movie that Bérénice Bejo won Best actress for at the Cannes Film Festival. While I liked her performance, I would not say that she was really this overwhelmingly good. Tahar Rahim showed his potential and my favorite display here was by Ali Mosaffa. "Le passé" is director Asghar Farhadi's next project after his Best Foreign Langue feature winner "Jodaeiye Nader az Simin".Basically you could describe it as a relationship drama. The central female character has a new boyfriend and her ex-husband returns from Iran to France to fulfill the divorce. Obviously the questions arise to what extent she still has feelings for him and if he has some for her and how he gets along with her new man etc. In order to avoid tensions her new boyfriend has to move out for a while, so the two men can't clash and get in trouble, but obviously that only works well for a short amount of time. However, there is not much dispute between the two, actually there only is during one situation which is about repairing a sink. And as if this was not complicated enough already, her new boyfriend also has his own shadows in the past, namely his wife who is in a coma and who he obviously still has feelings for.While I enjoyed most of the film, I did not really like the whole laundrette storyline and I feel Farhadi could have come up with something more convincing than the letter references. The daughter, who was an essential domino in this part of the movie and pretty much the connection between the comatose wife and the female main character played by Bejo did not really convince me with her performance. It was all too showy and inconsistent that it sometimes felt as if there was a lack of authenticity. Early on, it was not too easy to understand who was who and how they were all related to one another.Despite these criticisms, it turns out a pretty good movie. The final scene at the hospital involving Rahim's character is possibly the emotional highlight, the performances are mostly quality and I also liked how all characters are dysfunctional and have their flaws. If you don't look beyond the surface you may think that Mosaffa's character was a bit of a saint, but then you realize, he's not perfect either. He left his wife and children, did not appear to a date they agreed on in the past etc. This movie is certainly worth a watch, especially if you liked Bejo in The Artist, enjoyed Farhadi's previous work or are just interested in what Iranian cinema looks like these days.