Le passé (The past) by Asghar Farhadi "The past is never dead. It's not even past."― William Faulkner, Requiem for a NunThe past, that thing that is holding us down everyday , the thing that is stopping us to think with hope and joy about the present and the future. Probably each one of us would like to change something from their past , either is a reply said in a bad moment , a deed that we shouldn't have done it or something that we were supposed to do but we were afraid what might happen afterward.In Asghar Farhadi's movie , the past is a weight on the characters's shoulders, on their conscious , even on the little ones , who are supposed to be free from any moral weight , because thats what make childhood wonderful isn't it? The entire story is a jigsaw for the characters , and for the one that is watching the movie , who , like a sherlock tries to combine all the clues and facts that the story is giving us in order to unlock the mystery behind it. The movie is based mostly on the theory of chaos , where a reply said in the wrong moment , a gesture or even a look can have really bad results in the future , and that is what Asghar Farhadi is exemplifying with great skill.The storyline is simple at the beginning , gets more complicated as we watch further and starts to untangle as the movie reaches its final. There are few characters , each one of them defined well , even the one that doesn't appear until the end. The music is fine , nothing notable , and same about the places, which doesn't really matter in this particular movie . I gave 9/10 because I found myself enjoying the thrill of every moment , even for some people those moments could mean nothing. To better understand what all of this means you have to watch it , it's a sincere movie about life and the consequences of our decisions in life. I hope this might be useful regarding your decision to watch or not the movie Le passé by Asghar Farhadi.

Lots of movies feel like movies, no matter how hard they try and make them not to. This one feels like a real slice of life.. for all the numerous characters portrayed. The Past is a very good film.. probably one of the best you'll see this year. There are no glaring weaknesses.. OK.. nitpicking you can say some of the subtitles are not on the screen long enough to read them properly.. but that's another separate issue. The acting is absolutely first rate (all the kids are bizarre good.. Bérénice Bejo is superb)..and the script matches perfectly. Everyone involved knows what they're doing.. how many films you've seen recently can you make that claim about. You know when you really look forward to watching something again without too much of a delay.. you've come across something special. This one without hesitation goes into the video library.

An Iranian man named Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) arrives in France to sign the divorce papers to his French former wife, Marie (played by Berenice Bejo, who was lovely as Poppy in The Artist). He is surprised that Marie wants him to stay in her house instead of booking him into a hotel. But he is more surprised when he learns that he will share that house not only with Marie and her three children (from a previous marriage), but also with her current lover, the Arab Amir (Tahar Rahim). Soon Ahmad learns that Marie's elder daughter, Lucie (Pauline Burlet) hates her, blaming her for the attempted suicide of Amir's wife, who is in a coma. Not going to tell more about the plot, but we are less than halfway into the film, and many more shocking revelations will occur.This is the fourth film by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi that I have seen (after A Separation, About Elly, and Fireworks Wednesday). All his movies have a remarkably similar structure. We have a few people interacting, usually representing different social classes (or cultures and nationalities, as in this film). Then, halfway into the movie something happens that sheds light, as in a psychodrama and after very heated discussions, the dark secrets and lies of the protagonists.To me, this film, despite its acclaim at the Cannes film festival, is less accomplished than his previous films. One reason I didn't like this film so much is the fact that the protagonist, Marie, is so relentlessly unlikeable. In past movies, all characters have, despite their flaws, a deep humanity. But here Marie is thoroughly unappealing, selfish, self- centered, manipulative, immature, angry. There is nothing likable about her, but we have to share her antics for more than two hours. This is not a criticism of Bejo's acting, since she plays very well a very unsympathetic character.

Asghar Farhadi has once again proved how talented he is with the family dramas. The movie right from the start keeps offering viewers something about their lives that adds to the whole picture of the situation. It very nakedly expresses how indecisive humans can get and how unknowingly we become a part of complexities that exhaust us. The movie very diplomatically points at no one as the villain or the hero, very much like his last film or like many of the acclaimed dramas that have come out over the years. The quick sands of relations that pull us deep so slowly and the next moment we are stuck as much as we try to move. The layers are intertwined in a poetic fashion that help us deeply understand each one of the characters and their ordeal and yet blame no one for the situation. The acting stayed flawless throughout, justifying every inch of the master piece writing. The editing was sharp and keeps us focused without letting us realize any of the transitions with major gaps in the tensions. The beauty of the direction lies in how Asghar succeeds in turning a drama with elements of a thriller. The sheer consistency in his direction makes us viewers wait for his next with as much anticipation that he left us with after his last Oscar award winning drama, "A Separation".