1990 ‘کلوزآپ ، نمای نزدیک’ Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
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…
A fascinating piece of deconstructionist cinema, Close-Up is a unique film to be treasured; sad, funny, beautiful, inspired, inventive and tremendously compelling piece of work that makes you think about yourself, society, ambition and the power of the movies.
Close-Up hovers within the fuzzy boundary that defines cinema verite; there are many layers here, and Kiarostami creates an artifice within the film, and then shatters it. The actors play themselves, re-enacting their own roles and giving their recounts and suggestions, and then are ordered themselves to act in a certain manner. It's a subject with various layers built on the complexity of its human relations and the way people perceive one another.
The genius of Kiarostami was not to just…
100
"We'd like to film this trial. Is that all right with you?"
"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
Close-Up is pretty damn flawless. It is a minimalistic yet nothing short of unique, humanistic, sad and layered work of empathy, understanding, a film about film, art and how it affects us, about wanting to be someone you're not. It is a film difficult to describe and classify, but what Kiarostami achieves by subverting genre in his storytelling is remarkable. Sabzian's film obsession is very relatable, his little speeches in the court room gets to me. And what a beautiful, beautiful ending with the most gorgeous piece of music, can't really get better than that. That last freeze-frame. Magic. Masterpiece. How was this even made?
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,…
"I don't have time for movies, I'm too busy with life!"
Dammit, Abbas, I know I've gotta get off my ass and all that but you can't just attack me like this in the first 5 minutes.
I feel I need to rewatch this several times to fully grasp the artistry and complexity of Kiarostami most revered film, I do however know I've just seen a truly marvelous work of art, that final sequence will stay with me for a long time.
Who would have thought that what would have amounted to a sentence in a newspaper at most would make for such an incredible film. I will absolutely have to sit through this one again sometime.
Stimulating - a thousand questions present themselves with each passing minute. Abbas Kiarostami is perhaps the singular, hidden star of the whole film. By posing these dilemmas to us, the audience, he is asking us to question him, but in doing so we also have to question ourselves. The man pulled a fast one on us, just as Sabzian does in the film.
This is a miracle.
"A story like this doesn't come along often. You might get two or three your whole career."
A fascinating piece of deconstructionist cinema, Close-Up is a unique film to be treasured; sad, funny, beautiful, inspired, inventive and tremendously compelling piece of work that makes you think about yourself, society, ambition and the power of the movies.
Close-Up hovers within the fuzzy boundary that defines cinema verite; there are many layers here, and Kiarostami creates an artifice within the film, and then shatters it. The actors play themselves, re-enacting their own roles and giving their recounts and suggestions, and then are ordered themselves to act in a certain manner. It's a subject with various layers built on the complexity of its human relations and the way people perceive one another.
The genius of Kiarostami was not to just…
This film is a whirlwind. Sabzian slowly reveals himself to be an incredibly tragic character worthy of sympathy. And those close-ups just burn and burn and burn. Wonderful to behold.
החלק המתועד הכי מרגש והטקסט בו הכי יפה והוא אפילו לא החלק הכתוב :(( נשבר לי הלב מהסרט להתראות
The best movies about movies are about fans. Profiles of people who can’t help but love movies, who interact with them incessantly in their own heads, I don’t know, they just seem to me like the truest representations of what these things are and what they mean and do to us. This one’s up there with American Movie and The Wolfpack as one of the most affecting.
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title says it all
