Iran - A man's world, and not that great for men, either: A Separation

Wish I like the recent Iranian movie "A Separation" more than I did because there are some really great things in it and it's a tremendous cultural document, a view into Iranian families and contemporary life that is shocking in some ways to American audiences - in some ways because it shows the similarities across our great cultural divide and in other ways because it makes evident the vast differences. On the plus side, the movie is completely honest, very well plotted - influenced both by reality TV and by the recent spate of documentaries made with small, light, unobtrusive digital equipment, it's a story of a 40ish married couple with a 10-year-old daughter breaking up: the wife wants to go to live abroad, the husband wants to stay to take care of his elderly father, the daughter torn between the two. Movie opens with a great scene in which the man and wife argue their case before some kind of court magistrate - who refuses to allow the separation - obviously, he favors the man's position and he's particularly put out by wife's desire to live abroad (this scene filmed from magistrate's POV, we never see him). Wife leaves to live temporarily with her mother, and much of the film focuses on father's attempt to manage household - but it's as far from single-dad comedy, and even from single-dad drama (Dustin Hoffman learning to make French toast and becoming a better mom than estranged Meryl Streep - right) as you can imagine - lots of complications ensue with hired household help, which leads to various court scenes and confrontations, some very well dramatized. Overall, unfortunately, I found the movie about 30 minutes too long and tediously paced in sections; I credit the writer-director for not pandering and making the film "popular," but my mind did wander at times. That said, some great scenes: the fight in the waiting room of the hospital, for example. You wonder if this film would be as good or as well received if it had been made in America, the family transposed into an American family, and the first-thought response is, no, it wouldn't, we cut it a lot more slack and take it more seriously because it's a foreign film. On deeper reflection, however, that's really an unanswerable question: what makes this film excellent is its view of Iranian society in particular: part of the plot hinges, for example, on the housekeeper's unwillingness to clean up when the elderly dad pees in his pants because seeing him naked might be a sin; she calls some kind of hot line for advice. Though the mom in this film seems much more free-thinking than we'd imagine an Iranian woman to be, it's also obvious from every shot that Iran is a man's world - and not that great for men, either.