When you're reading or watching a mystery, there are often clues that carry entire side plots, tangential characters who cross the main character's path and affect them in significant ways without even realizing it. Sometimes these characters are only red herrings; sometimes their lives are imperative to the solution to the mystery. Though The Past is not a traditional mystery, Asghar Farhadi has taken a tale about a family predicament and tells the story from the point of view of its tangential characters, unleashing a fascinating riddle that slowly pieces itself together.
The film follows Ahmad, whose separation from his wife, Marie, had sent him back to Iran, but who returns to Paris in order to sign the divorce papers. He gets entangled in the affairs of Marie and her boyfriend, Samir, when she asks him to speak to her daughter, Lucie, about why she's been giving the family so much trouble. Following the sentiment of a mystery, Ahmad becomes our "detective", working to make sense of Marie and Samir's complicated love affair in order to understand Lucie's plight. In fact, all of the characters in this film are chasing the truth, adding their own information in when called upon, until suddenly the story has evolved into something completely different.
Farhadi, whose last film, A Separation, won last year's Foreign Film Academy Award, has written a screenplay that is nothing short of brilliant, and has beautifully articulated the story onscreen. Bérénice Bejo leads the cast in many a poignant moment; her complex performance is truly breathtaking, and upholds the performances of those who interact with her onscreen.
At 130 minutes, you will finish The Past wishing there was another two hours. Please don't miss this film while it's at the MC... you won't be disappointed.
