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…

Film #2 of Project 90

”I like to be an artist.”

Close-Up is the kind of movie that leaves you speechless, it is an incredibly unique and massively bizarre cinematic experience unlike any other “movie”, in only 98 minutes director Abbas Kiarostami challenges complex and mind-bending concepts like reality, art, human identity, truth and fiction and presents us a film (a film?! Who can say that this is a film?) which with its super-advanced form of narration and magical performances holds an unimaginable power to astonish and shock. A fearless effort which expands the language of cinema and improves its charm and magic.

What is the reason behind so many people’s love for cinema? Isn't it because for a couple…

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,…

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…

This film is really quite unique. It is a reenactment of a true story in Iran. The film is built around real-life footage of the real court trial. The craziest thing about this whole film is that the actors in the film play themselves. They are reenacting events from their own past. It is just absolutely crazy. The film felt rather documentarian from a cinematography standpoint. Very few cuts, but the cuts that are present you can feel. It does feel very choppy in the editing. Surprisingly the performances do feel a little bit dry due to the fact that none of the actors had acted before. The ending of the film came out of nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. In what…

I don't think I've ever seen a film quite like 'Close-Up', Abbas Kiarostami's masterful, deeply insightful look at identity and the everyday unfairness of life, using cinema (and art as a whole) as a crucial backdrop. This isn't wholly a documentary, nor is it wholly a work of fiction. Instead, it's a stark, piercing combination of the two that makes the bold decision to use non-professional actors in order to achieve true realism, and oh does it succeed.

Kiarostami's direction drew me in and held my focus in a way few directors ever have, even in some of the best of films. His use of still 'close-ups', with shots that linger longer than one would expect to get full impact,…