“The Past”
Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Starring Bérénice Bejo, Tahar Rahim, Ali Mosaffa, Pauline Burlet, Elyes Aguis, Sabrina Ouazani
Foreign, Drama, Mystery
130 Mins
PG-13
The Past is an extraordinarily difficult film loaded with powerhouse performances of perpetually grieving characters and a blanket of dreary subject matter. While it’s nice to get a break from the mindless drudge of early year releases, The Past goes too far in the opposite direction, offering a piece of work so harrowing and relentlessly gloomy that it’s near impossible to find any joy in watching it.
Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) plays Marie Brisson, a forlorn woman who we meet through a pane glass window as she picks up Ali Mosaffa‘s Ahmad from the airport. At first their relationship is ambitious and we’re left guessing their status. Director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) seems to want to keep us in the dark for as long as possible as we’re not able to gather much about these two and the relationship they share. They could be friends, lovers, roommates or even family. As we try to piece together the details, the only thing that’s clear is that they have history. They have (sigh) a past.
As recklessly dour as A Separation, The Past quickly explodes into a series of accusations, abjection, and atonement; a collection of difficult scenes that provides the cast a series of lofty showcases but does little to stimulate our need for dramatic solace. We’re constantly grieving alongside the characters, breathing in their misery and sighing at the folly of their crumbling affairs.
Bejo, Rahim and Tahar Rahim (A Prophet) are each afforded a bevy of opportunities to exhibit their dramatic capacity and with so much attention paid to the characters, it’s their exceeding commitment to the work that makes The Past compelling when it is. Each brings a sense of life to their character; shades of good and bad, airs of hope and despair. Their roles are fully human, peppered with fault and wound up by life, and that’s what keep the film afloat, demanding our interest and earning our empathy. Regardless of their mighty work though, the film is still 100% glum.
Ostensibly, the narrative comes down to our human capacity for guilt and blame and how the two can affect our lives in irrevocable ways. It’s about discarded relationships, rekindled flames and the connections we forge on our way to the grave. But all this harrowing philosophizing just goes to show how it’s no fun to watch people argue about who’s to blame for someone’s suicide attempt.
The character dynamics carry weighty gravitas and their tempered interactions hue closely to the real world but, for me, movies are at least partially about escapism and there’s no semblance of escape here. Watching The Past is like watching life through the window of a death ward. It’s dark and unforgiving and can take anything from you at any moment. Seeing the crusted loose ends of existence, confronting regrets and admitting the purposelessness of it all is an exercise we have to confront in the privacy of our own minds so watching Farhadi and his cast do so doesn’t astonish so much as depress. His Hakuna Matata is decidedly grim and certainly not sing song.