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About Elly (2009): The Film That Doesn’t Know Its Own Subject
About Elly is named after a woman whose inner life it never enters. The title promises a portrait. What the film delivers instead is a mirror — and the people looking into it are not Elly. She is sitting in the back seat of a car on the way to the Caspian Sea. She has…
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A Separation (2011): The One Question the Judge Cannot Ask
A Separation constructs a moral universe in which every adult lies, and every lie is eventually exposed. Then it ends before the one character who knows the whole truth is allowed to speak. INTERROGATING JUDGE: Why do you want to leave the country? SIMIN: I don’t want my daughter raised in these circumstances. INTERROGATING JUDGE:…