The Past

One of my favorite movies from recent years was A Separation, an Iranian film about the breaking apart of a family that ended up winning the foreign film Oscar, the first picture from that country to win an Academy Award. In cases of stunning success like this, I sometimes wonder if the filmmaker can follow it up. With his new film called The Past, writer/director Asghar Farhadi proves that he’s no flash in the pan. It’s similar in its compassion, patience, multiple perspectives, and narrative mastery, but if anything it is even deeper and more complex than its predecessor. It would…