Rating A|The greatest work in Iranian film history breaking the boundary between fantasy and reality

Spoilers

If a movie makes you fall asleep, then is it can still a good movie?

Close-Up brought me such a unique viewing experience. At the beginning when I searched for the information about Abbas, "Close-up" was unremarkable until I saw its profile, which suddenly aroused my interest.

Sabzian is a movie fan who claimed to be the famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and used this to gain the trust of the wealthy Ahankah family. Thus, he borrows money from them to “shot a new film”. After the incident, Sabzian was arrested. Director Abbas Kiarostami followed up on the case and filmed part of the proceedings.

After searching, I found that this film shot in 1990 laid the foundation for the shooting style of the famous Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Despite a poor reception at the time of its release, the Iranian Film Critics Magazine voted Close Up the most important Iranian film after a few years. With these, it really attracts me.

However, it is not as interesting as I imagined when starting. It still focus on a lot of long conversations between a few men which makes me almost lose patience. And the courtroom proceedings are apparently the part that was actually recorded. Abbas set up two cameras in the courtroom, one to capture the audiences and one to capture a close-up of Sabzian. The former is a kind of continuous attention at close range, trying to let the audience enter the moral space of him, while the latter keeps a certain distance from him to observe the trial process.

However, the audience should not forget that Sabzian knew he was the subject of the "close-up" (viewing) and that his impersonation of Makhmalbaf was an act. This court trial provided a stage for him to continue his "performance" . This divorced, unemployed, and impoverished young man deserved sympathy, but he avoided many inquiries about "the motive of counterfeiting Makhmalbaf ". Everyone at the scene probably hesitated, whether his defense was "acting" or a true expression?

And it is precisely because the trial part is a "documentary", the picture quality is very rough, and the black-and-white long shots make me drowsy. Coupled with the isolation of Iranian, all this made me fall asleep in the cinema.

However, this article is not intended to criticize this movie. On the contrary, I like it a lot. Now Let me talk about my views on "Close-up".

1

They are acting their own stories

What is most interesting about Close-Up is that it breaks the boundary between drama and documentary by inviting the protagonists themselves to reenact the events. This way of storytelling also gives the film a peculiar charm. For example, Sabzian and the hostess of the Ahankah family reenacted the scene of their acquaintance, and finally he followed her back to the house, perfectly recreating the cause of the "fraud".

French film critic Faudun once said, "Most of Abbas's films are like pure film installations, which make reality face questioning." Abbas breaks the balance between performance and reality in the film. He reconstructed the film so that the audience could not distinguish the boundary between virtuality and reality. This "false reality" is intentional.

2

A daily gaze for the can rolling down the hill

In the first half of "Close-up", the reporter repeated a long unfocused conversation with several people until they parked the car in front of Ahankahe's house. The driver turns the car around, looks up at the trail of the plane, and picks up a small bunch of flowers from the garbage dump. He drops a spray can on the ground, which slowly rolls across the street. Abbas leads the audience to watch the process slowly, with great patience.

I was also completely attracted when watching this shot. It can be felt that Abbas is watching the tiny changes with his own eyes. Maybe he is just a person who loves to be in a daze. At a certain moment, he suddenly wants to shoot a shot of an empty can rolling down, which actually shows his lovely side. As he mentioned in his creative notes, "I want to express the idleness of the person standing outside the house..., I just like this frame.”

3

The last meeting is filled with mystery

At the end of the movie, we see Sabzian meeting the real Makmarbuff for the first time. Hw hugged Makmarbaf affectionately and they leave together on their motorcycles. However, the director made a design here to make the dialogue between the two intermittent. We follow this intermittent conversation until reach the door of Ahankakh's house.

The sound design here is clearly intentional. So why is their dialogue handled in such a way that the final climax loses its substance? In my opinion, one of the reasons is that this film is shot in a mixture of documentary and feature film, the director cannot decide the content of the dialogue in many cases. Because the conversation also actually took place between the two, "the unedited dialogue could take the film to a new direction". The blank space here not only deepens the "reality" of the movie again, but also leaves the content of the dialogue to the audience's imagination. At this time, the audience also participated in the creation of "Close-up", and what is the relationship between the two in their minds will be presented.

I have to say that this was an extremely bold attempt, and it was successful for me, allowing me to pay more attention to the details in the movie. And when Makmarbuff said, "You want to become me, but I'm actually tired of myself, and I want to be you more.", I felt a dislocation of the relationship even more. The two people who have never met before are brought together by admiration and curiosity, creating a wonderful emotional connection. Whether they are fraudsters or famous directors, they are the same at this moment.

After watching Close-up, I had doubts about "truth and falsity". What is true and what is false, perhaps the answer varies, but as long as you pursue what you believe, the truth will appear in your mind. The materialistic viewpoint really inspired me after watching it, thanks to Abbas for bringing me a wonderful night.

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