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.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf Monoochehr Ahankhah Mahrokh Ahankhah Nayer Mohseni Zonoozi Hossain Sabzian Abolfazl Ahankhah Mehrdad Ahankhah Ahmad Reza Moayed Mohseni Hossain Farazmand Hooshang Shamaei Mohammad Ali Barrati Davood Goodarzi Haj Ali Reza Ahmadi Hassan Komaili Davood Mohabbat Abbas Kiarostami Hassan Farazmand Hushang Shahai
Close-up, Nema-ye Nazdik, Primer plano, Kelozap, کلوزآپ
Politics and human rights political, democracy, president, documentary or propaganda emotional, emotion, family, moving or feelings racism, african american, powerful, hatred or slavery biography, artists, musician, emotional or songs political, president, historical, politician or democracy Show All…
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…
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."
A beautifully bare-boned film that I can truly say is unlike anything I’ve seen. Probably not for everyone but the story is soo damn interesting to me. I’ll leave it at that.
I’m also just realizing this was my 69th out of 100 films this summer and I totally regret not wathing ‘Love’ instead.
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…
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?
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…
CLOSE-UP was made for cinephiles.
It was made for me, someone who obsessively escapes into movies and endlessly devours them, pulls them apart, rebuilds them up, and processes them so passionately till they become life, drink, eat. Cinema is life. And life is cinema. Which is to say, movies are the way I process and interpret reality, make meaning, explore truth, detect lies, feel, struggle with existence, alchemize pain, connect with others, become others, and really just the space I melt into to make sense of how strange and confounding this life is.
I was so perfectly moved by what I felt in this film. And the feels are BIG. It takes what I find so special about the movie-watching…
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,…
