The Past

The Past is a film about a dark hidden secret and as the title suggests, the past is very present in the lives of all the characters in the story. They can't move on with their lives they are all stuck in the past for some reason. The desire of being happy is big but what is haunting them has a strength that the present and even the future will not be able to cure easily. The performances are so intense that when the film ends, despite the run time of two hours and ten minutes, you definitely wanna see more of this people's lives. The acting by Bérénice Bejo, Ali Mosaffa, Tahar Rahim and the children of this film are truly fantastic! Without the strong acting from all of them this film wouldn't have worked so well. What is more beautiful about this film is that it has the power to drag you into it. The informations needed to structure the story are delivered to us piece by piece and we start making questions in our head and as we are more into the important point of the problem the tension increases more and more. Asghar Farhadi did an excelent job directing this film. The first time I heard of him was because of his Academy Award winning film A Separation, that I still haven't seen but after I saw this I will make sure to see it very soon. Honestly, I haven't found any flaws in this film and I think The Past is for sure one of the best films of 2013.

This movie is your classic slow-burning character-driven drama. The first half of the film sets the stage for the wave of unresolved issues that need to be resolved (maybe?) in the second half of the film. While the movie is slow to unfold at no point is it ever boring. That said, the movie does turn it up a couple of notches in the last 30 minutes and ends with a fantastic and thoughtful scene at the end that summarizes the main question of the movie: the past. follow me at https://IHATEBadMovies.com or facebook IHateBadMovies