On Jan. 11, the man who oversaw Iran's uranium enrichment program was slain in an assassination the Islamic regime blamed on American and Israeli intelligence. And this reporter was scheduled to meet and interview an Iranian visitor.
It felt a little surreal. But it must have been even more so for the visitor -- especially when, four days later, the Iranian won one of America's highest honors in his field.
Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation" became the first Iranian film to receive a Golden Globe Award when it was named best foreign-language film at the Jan. 15 ceremony. The movie -- about a husband and wife separating, and the moral choices that follow from the chain of events that separation sparks -- was made inside Iran, but has received at least as many plaudits in America. While it might surprise those who have heard the Iranian president speak of America as Iran's "enemy," Farhadi himself didn't seem so shocked.
"From the experience of this trip, I feel that people are not so much different as the same everywhere," Farhadi said. (He spoke through a translator, on and off -- his English seemed better than the translator's Farsi.) "The emotional personality of Americans and Iranians seems very similar, actually. As much as family is important to Americans, it's important to Iranians, and vice versa."
His film shows the fault lines in some parts of Iranian society. But it also explores such universal themes as the moral complexity of family life. Farhadi believes the film -- which begins with the wife petitioning for a divorce in court, where she's forced to explain her reasons -- only looks foreign. "On the surface, it's different. But in depth, it's identical," he said. "People's feeling and emotions -- like love -- are the same everywhere."
As good as the film is, it's impossible to talk just about "A Separation" with its writer-director. More pressing, it feels, is the question of how the movie got made. The film's wife wants a divorce because her husband won't let her take their daughter abroad -- but she doesn't want to raise a girl "under these circumstances." The criticism of the regime is implicit, but unmistakable.
"Censorship is like weather. Maybe weather in winter," Farhadi said, in halting but clear English. "Morning is sunny, noon is rainy, afternoon is windy. If you are lucky, you go on a sunny day and you pass everything. You can't predict it." Farhadi, the man himself admitted, submitted his film on a sunny day. "Being from there, I know how the system works."
The 40-year-old filmmaker is forced to think about the authorities as soon as he begins developing an idea. But he didn't complain -- and not just because he knew the authorities could read this interview on publication.
"You can find some way for making your movie. It's difficult, but you can," he said, though he was quick to add, "Until now. Tomorrow, I don't know." When your work is based on the whims of bureaucrats, you can't count on a future for that work. "A Separation" had to stop filming for a week, after Farhadi spoke at an awards ceremony in support of some banned filmmakers.
There are two types of movies, he argued: those that leave audiences thinking afterward, and those that let them go to bed without a thought afterward. He wants to make the former.
"Maybe your answers are different from my answers and the other audiences'. It doesn't matter. It matters that you think. Today, the world needs thinking."
