A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)

[Black Hat]

I think what I failed at trying to convey with my point here is my personal belief, derived from my own experience and in talking with other artists, that there is an element of the unconscious that comes out in creativity. Hence, why I mildly objected at using the term 'intentional' to describe the motives behind the work. Of course, much of it was indeed intentional but, I also reckon that there were many elements of the script which connected or resonated with people that in my view, based on my own instinct and familiarity with the culture, that resulted from the unconscious because that's just the world they know. Perhaps I'm still not elucidating what I mean properly but, that's the trouble with trying to explain the unconscious, deciphering the objective from the subjective.

I have seen Offside and even tho it's resolution is a pleasant one the premise of the film is one that feeds right into the downtrodden, pathetic, suffering Iranian people narrative that drives me nuts. To be clear the community here I'm sure does not buy into it but, many of the upper west side set do.

[matrixschmatrix]

It's certainly true that there's a dominant narrative about the lives of Iranians that goes on in the Western world, and the US in particular, which is set up by the news media and which colors and perhaps is reinforced by a lot of the Iranian works that actually get played here- that the Iranians are suffering, repressed, and in a society run by misogynistic, homophobic theocrats.

Regardless of how accurate or inaccurate that portrayal is of the actual government or political situation, it's understandable to find a movie wonderfully refreshing simply for showing the lives of people having problems that don't imply that everything would just be great if America invaded Iran and fixed everything.