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Abbas Kiarostami – Close-Up (1990)

Posted By: newland

Date: 21 Feb 2009 16:51:00

A brilliant exploration of the power of movies, "Close-Up" reconstructs the true story of a cinephile’s attempt to become a filmmaker he admires. Hossein Sabzian introduces himself as celebrated Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and, under the pretext of working on a film project, enters the private life of a well-to-do Teheran family and eventually faces fraud charges. The film blends documentary and drama by featuring the actual people involved and has a final scene that is described by Geoff Andrew as "one of the sharpest, funniest deconstructions of film form ever shot".

Almost reminiscent of an old Errol Morris documentary in its very muted sense of ridiculousness, Kiarostami's "Close-Up" deserves an "A" for originality alone. It's the true story of a man who leads a prosperous family to believe that he is Mohsen Makhmalbaf, one of Iran's most revered film directors, and tells them that he wants to use them and their house in his next film. What at first appears to be an elaborate con is really nothing more than a desperate, harmless deception by a man who never amounted to anything in life and who for once feels like he's someone important. What sets the film apart is that Kiarostami constructs the entire incident using everyone involved: from the "fake Makhmalbaf" to the family he tricked to the judge at the trial and even Makhmalbaf himself and then the incident is recreated in Kiarostami's usual banal, documentary-style fashion. In the end "Close-Up" is concerned with its director's (and Iran cinema in general's) examination of the nature of cinematic "reality" but it also a deeply felt portrait of loneliness, despair and need, and a much greater film for it. Melancholy and joyous, a miniature masterpiece. — liehtzu, IMDb reviewer

Here's a movie that engages the audience completely without a single car chase, without a single shot being fired, no aliens, no UFOs, no bad guys, no good guys, and it goes without saying that no one falls in love, let alone sex and cheating and the rest of what makes up 95% of the movies today! Yet, without using any of these standard tricks of the trade, Kiarostami keeps his audience glued to the screen from the first to the very last frame! — fmoslehi, IMDb reviewer

Director's view :

I read the story in a weekly magazine and it fascinated me so much. To quote Marquez, one is more chosen by a subject than choosing it. The first point that struck me was that the guy was not a fraud. He was rather infatuated by an image. That is why he went to the extreme of contriving a plot that could not be taken but as a hoax. What a filmmaker could do for him was to rehabilitate him, portray him as a young man who is in love with cinema, with the movie people.
But, the film is not about the cinema. It neither defines, nor praises the cinema. At least, the film's main subject is not the cinema itself. As a matter of fact, the film is like a prism of which praising the cinema is one of the aspects. The film's main point is man's need for social esteem and recognition, apart from the basic necessities of life.
Of course, there are some other aspects of the film which deserve consideration. Naturally the cinema itself, its nature and its rightfulness, are minor aspects of the film. Take, for example, the trial scene, where "Sabzian", the sham "Makhmalbaf", talks of photography. Pay attention to his hands' movements, to listeners' look. Cinema attracts everything and everybody…
I seek to keep reminding the viewer that he is watching the filmed version of a real story. I am not a fan of narrated adventures. The excitement of an adventure does not allow the viewer to delve into the depth of the things running on the screen. That is why I miss no chances to remind the viewer that the footage is the reality replayed, not a fictional adventure. Film is the story of the distance between an ideal self and a real one. The more the distance between the two, the less a man's mental balance. Everyone keeps trying to bring the two closer to each other to attain sort of balance.
I create the reality before the camera and then I pull the truth out of it. What I seek to arrive at, in this affair, is that Hossein Sabzian is a martyr, is a man in love, while many people are convinced that he is a sheer impostor. The truth I am eagerly trying to pull out of this reality is that man is good at the bottom of his self. — Abbas Kiarostami

IMDB review — DVD description (UK Soda Pictures) — Kiarostami interview

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Subtitles (from opensubtitles.org)

1990 Special subjects DVD-Rip HDTV Classics Art-house

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