The Past

Captivating. Incredibly well-directed, with very strong performances. And it seems churlish to complain that it can't quite measure up to Farhadi's 2011 masterpiece when it's, nevertheless, easily one of the best pictures of 2013.

Its ultimate weakness is that it is the follow-up to the perfect film.

Farhadi's first venture into a foreign language (French from Farsi) does not mark a substantial change for him artistically. This is a good thing. His characters still enter the film as black boxes rather than blank slates, and the dramatic peaks consist of expositions and revelations. The name of the film is almost ironic, because we like to think of the past as absent, gone, while Farhadi teaches us that it is ever-present. A highly intricate and intensive film with an ingenious final shot.

The plot details are pure melodrama and soap opera (marriages, divorce, affairs, moody children, secrets and lies), and there are perhaps too many twists involved, but Farhadi is a talented writer and a consummate craftsman. He and the cast are juggling a lot of complex emotions, history and motivations, yet they all do so with empathy and a keen eye for how they're all haunted by the past in one way or another. Less bravura than "A Separation", but still a mature and insightful film.

Same recipe as 'A Separation'. The formula still works.

Doesn't work as well as his other efforts, mostly because the characters aren't as three-dimensional and the different storylines don't get the right amount of attention.

The genius of this work lies in the fact that there are layer upon layers of emotion and thought processes at play yet the story itself is so coherent and easy to follow. You'd be hard pushed to find a more moving, exquisite family drama in the history of cinema, it really is that good. The acting is phenomenal, as is the script.

There's always something a bit bourgeois about Farhadi's movies. The photography is rarely great and the editing naive. Yet, he also always manages to convey very interesting idea. Beyond the simple interpretation of the movie as exploring the weight of the past and how we deal with it, my main take from this is the inscrutability of the past, how we come to acknowledge it and how we can cope with it, the characters opting for various solutions. To be ranked next to Upstream Color (also 2013).

i adore farhadi's complex and emotional storytelling. i really do. however with this one i felt sucked into one melodramatic twist to another. it was like listening to a friend who is keen to make his all relationships more complex and weary..

No Mystery after one hour, I stopped watching.

Liked it overall, but I felt the plot in the second half was a bit overcooked. I know this structure is Farhadi's stock in trade, slowly revealing the details of an event the audience was not witness to through conversation, but this time I felt he went a bit too far with it and I ended up losing sight of the story through the overabundance of plot as it twisted back on itself over and over. Not to mention Burlet and Rahim acting like sullen zombies for the whole two hours, that got pretty old.

The title is ironic, because normally when we think of the past we think of it in the preterite; gone and behind us. But that isn't true. The past always catches up with us in one way or another, and since we're highly-functioning human beings with this twisted thing we call "memory," there are some things we can't forget. Additionally, our knowledge of the past gives us an added sense of responsibility over what should be done in the present, and working through that responsibility is hard.

someone get Farhadi on the phone and tell him he knows wassup

Not as potent as "A Separation" but Farhadi exercises a brilliant level of restraint once again. I thought the intimate nature of the film was compromised a bit in the final act.

Excess act of being such a "good boy" for the main character is a bit annoying. otherwise, the movie is very good indeed.

ps70

rewatch

(2nd viewing)

Very, very good, if downbeat, drama about the complexity of responsibility.

dat tear at the end! and the movie would be a lot better if we could've heard some music.

It is an amazing film!!

This film dramatizes the reality that our decisions come with built-in consequences. In a world where moving from one marital relationship to the next has become normalized, Farhadi raises important questions about the lasting damage that results from such decisions. This is not just about two people hurting each other, but about a community of people around them that also suffer the effects of the marriage breakdown. People are part of communities, not just individuals.

It could be breathtaking if it was 20 minutes shorter. Great performance, great last scene and great fact that relationships is the main figure in the movie.

Very well-told. I love these powerful family dynamics and these totally relatable, earthly characters (great performances too, my favorite is Aguis). I love Farahdi's twist on the stereotypical "family drama" -which is to create riddles around the characters' unspoken secrets so as to methodically expose this domino of inevitable emotional repercussions and to spice up the proceedings as well. Just as good -if similar- to the much more praised "Jodaeiye Nader az Simin".

Serious drama about complex relationships in household. A heavy watch but a perfect ending.

In the past, I wouldn't have liked a film like this, but I thought this was pretty darn good. The characters that you think you should hate, end up being the most level-headed ones. The actors were all great. I loved Berenice Bejo as the mother. The drama was strong and there is quite the little twist towards the end...

Bir ayrilik ve Eli hakkindaya nazaran biraz daha soguk olsa da gerek uzak diyarlardaki hayat gerekse derinlemesine islenen insani incelemesiyle yine filmi begendirdi ferhadi abi. It wasnt perfect like a separation or about elly however it was enough for examination about people and marriage life.

A deeply life-like story of a couple of days of signing the papers for divorce. An ex came back home after years and faced a troubled family he left behind. Wife's got a new lover and everything is under suspicious vail. It needed an outsider to solve the mystery where everybody was involved. It's all about the past. Nice work!

The depressing complexity of adulthood is gently depicted in this foreign film. I would advise to beware, the dumb yet joyful mantra which guides youth ("The goal is to feel") is so much easier.

French people get angry, shout a lot... is the basic premise. This family drama has some strong performances and a serious tone, but I couldn't really see why people rated it the best foreign film of the year. It's solid. It's convincing. It's complex. It's not really seductive, fun or exhilerating though.

A Big, Serious, Arthouse human drama sort of deal, but I don't mean that dismissively. This is kind of perfect for what it is, maybe "melodramatic" but Farhadi downplays things enough for me. Not stylized like an Iñárritu film (Farhadi is covering the same kind of territory) but not "bland" either. After the RoboCop remake and Joe Swanberg's latest, I maybe needed to watch well-photographed scenes of people yelling at each other. In that regard, this is perfect.

farhadi might be making sly comment on a separation with how this film builds on plot twists and ultimately maintains ambiguity.

The last scene is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen.

Farhadi's best yet.

A moderate family drama. It rewards patience with its slow unveiling of its story and secrets, but it pales in comparison to its realist contemporaries as it feels rather muted and at times uncompelling.

Farhadi denies the handheld camerawork that worked in A Separation, moves to France and assumes a laboratorian and artsy technique to depict post-divorce tensions. Le Passé plays like a melodrama of self-indulgent mise-en-scène, revealing subtle mysteries to create a phony, hardly believable climax. Kids watching grown-ups fight all the time, relationships forged in lies and secrets, lack of communication weakening love and trust -- but dry shots for every tiny bit of true.

New patch for "A Separation" released!

more schematic and contrived than farhadi's best, but farhadi is always good.

Bizi ikilemde bırakan tarafsızlık ibresini bu filminde hafifçe kaydırmış görünüyor. Kötü anlamda değil. Doğuya ait edebiyatın yerleşik retoriğinden sıyrılıp batılı aile kurgusunu karalamak yerine yine doğrudan insana ateş ediyor Üstat. Seviyoruz kendisini...

ayrilik, bosanma, fransa, yasak iliski, evli çift, intihar (çamasir suyu içerek), koma, iki kadin arasinda bir adam, kuru temizlemeci, eczane, iranli adam (Ahmed 4 senedir görüsmedigi esi Marie'den bosanmak için Fransa'ya döner. Bu arada Marie baska bir adamla birliktedir. Ahmed'de bosanma gününe kadar ayni evde kalacaktir. Evin kizi Lucie annesinin evliligine karsi çikmaktadir. Çünkü annesinin evlenmeyi düsündügü Samir'in esi komadadir. Güzel bir dram.

The Past is a fantastic movie and presents a wonderfully human drama about life in a multicultural, dysfunctional family. It is perfectly paced, mixing the heavy drama and the lighter moments with precision and care, it touches on a whole host of issues without spending too much time hammering home one idea, and it has fabulous performances from the whole cast. It's a glimpse into these people's lives, and it does is in an emotionally compelling way while telling a complex story.

Asghar Farhadi's follow-up to his Oscar-winning film "A Separation" feels like a slight retread, as it covers familiar ground with a story about a woman who is asking for a divorce from her second husband while having an affair with a man who's wife is in a coma. Once again, the victims here are the kids, as we see how marital problems wreak havoc on children. Incredible acting from children and stars (Berenice Bejo) alike didn't help me get into the story, even though it's all very well done.

again Farhadi has shown his wonderful ability in creating critical situations and for the first time I liked his endings. I didn't expect him to make another decent film but he did.

Reaffirms Farhadi's peerless command over layered, dramatically complex storylines, yet without leaving the same lasting impression as his previous efforts. I'd say the problem lies in the film's focal point - to which the title refers to - which generates some nail-biting tension only to build up to a minor resolution. Bérénice "smirkface" Bejo gets away with too much praise but the rest of the characters are well portrayed and the last scene is pretty much perfect.