100/100

Cinema, even within its immaculate bursts of truth, is a realm of masks and modest deceit. The mystical aura of the screen is the equivalent of a magician's assistant, cluttering and distracting the audience from the formation of the tapestry of the entire experience. Close-up, directed by Abbas Kiarostami, is a stirring deconstruction of cinema and its various influences on society and its audience. With natural and affecting "performances", a faultless sense of editing, and a monstrously quintessential view on the power of moving images; Close-up is simply one of the greatest films ever made (maybe even THE greatest) and one of most extraordinary viewing experiences that I've ever had.

For a film to weave fact and fiction so…

PTAbro's World Tour Stop 16: Iran

This is the story of a liar. An earnest man who lies for the sake of art. A fabricator of reality, in order to control the immediate, the susceptible, the observers. One man who takes a situation he is presented with, twists the facts, and presents them as truth. He manufactures a role, and draws others into the world he is creating; taking normal people and turning them into participants in a thought experiment to see how much they will believe, how far can he take it before it all falls apart. Suspicions arise, but he has a gift for soothing the wary. He creates a back-story, seemingly on a whim, and strengthens his…

The act of watching films is almost laughable in its strangeness. For a couple of hours we believe that the people onscreen actually exist, and their stories have the power to move us in ways that stories in real life cannot.

Close-Up is about a man who impersonates a director he admires. He carries out in real life the same conceit that films do, except this time nobody knows subconsciously that he's just pretending. There was never a moment when I was sure that I was watching a documentary or a film.

The film eschews all traditional methods of storytelling to focus almost exclusively on brilliant, self-aware dialogue. At the beginning of the film, the impersonator, Hossain Sabzian, asks the…

I know I'm guilty in the eyes of the court, but my love of art should be taken into account

Unifying fiction & truth, Close-Up explores the soul of a man on trial for fraud, where we find not a wicked man, but a gentle, yearning and forlornly misunderstood one. It is remarkably raw and ultimately human, with dialogues that ring poetics of deeper virtues and alarming legalities. Unexpectedly disarming and affecting without an ounce of manipulation, the film comments on the act of making films, the willful deception that viewers buy into when consuming film for the sake of escapism, and the meaning that viewers imbue in what they experience. Kierostami himself is perhaps enemy to its subject even as…

As Close-Up proceeded, I immediately thought of Color Me Kubrick, another true story about someone impersonating a famous, but somewhat reclusive director. While Color Me Kubrick was an amusing film, made especially absurd by John Malkovich’s portrayal, it wasn't really anything to write home about. One thing that did strike me with Close-Up was the opening credits, where everyone was listed as playing ‘themselves’. Now that’s novel. Is this a prank?

Those thoughts quickly vanished as I began to get sucked deeper and deeper into this beguilingly simple re-enacted quasi documentary. As I was watching, I simply couldn't rationalize why it captivated me so. Absent was dramatic tension, traditional plot beats, court room emotional histrionics, anger, or tears. Just calm,…

First off lets address whether or not the story deserved to be made into a film! Absolutely not! This wasn't headline news material perhaps it warranted a blurb in the entertainment section in the local newspaper but it really didn't warrant an entire film dedicated to it!

But I'm tickled pink they did! Let me tell you why...

1. Well known director Abbas Kiarostami caught wind of the story when he was in the middle of a shoot and thankfully had the foresight and wisdom to drop everything he was doing to direct this Iranian masterpiece!

The film is about another famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf whose identity was stolen when a man impersonated him to gain the attention, admiration and…

Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up is a humanistic, idiosyncratic and intimate examination of a multitude of themes and concepts, explored in tandem with the empathetic deconstruction of Hossain Sabzian's soul - a soul which should be considered as an extension, or representation, of our own; we probably all, at least slightly, relate to Sabzian. 

Rich in the ideas it raises and the thought it prompts, Close-Up provides inspection into questions of art (specifically as escapism), facade, desire, empathy, class-divide, social identity and more, all of which themes are carefully intertwined with one another, imitating the symbiotic relationship between them in wider society. Yet perhaps most human of all is Close-Up's raw and unashamed acknowledgement of one's disappointment with life; specifically, how life's…

What a magic trick this movie is. An odd courtroom case is filmed by the camera, the person charged is studied in the frame, everyday people are asked to become actors and recreate what they experienced, and the result offers a complexity of meanings and readings, but also depending on your viewing experience, it also illicts an emotional reaction by its final frame. 

Close-Up (1990) is a Persian film from Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami, a docu-drama about the crime of a person, Hossain Sabzain, pretending to be another, acclaimed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Sabzain as Makhmalbaf tricked a wealthier family into spending time with them, pretending to start a film project and subsequently borrowing money, a charade that couldn’t last…