Abbas Kiarostami’s film Close Up (1990) is probably one of the most underrated films of the 20th century. It’s finally been picked up by Criterion (release date set for June 2010) and recently had a short run at Film Forum in New York City.
Anyone who wishes to be an artist or has any interest in the arts needs to see this film. Close Up is a “postmodern” film that brilliantly dissects the processes of inspiration, reevaluates the artist’s duty and the ethics of art, and asks all the most vibrant, stimulating questions surrounding art. Is art real? Can art change people? Is art necessary? How does art fit into our late capitalist society? Who can be an artist? Am I an artist or just playing the part of one?
Some postmodern films are pretentious and exhaustive, but Kiarostami’s film manages to be suspenseful and captivating on the story level. The summary of the plot should be enough to wrap your head around: it is a film about a filmmaker who wants to make a film about a man who pretends to be a filmmaker.
Kiarostami talks about his relationship to the film in the following interview:
“Close Up moved me deeply. It started with a magazine account of the story that I read. I was getting ready to make another film, and my crew was getting ready to shoot at a school. But this story had such an impact on me that I could not sleep for a couple nights… Close Up is the only film I really like among my films… Because to me this was a different film. Everything happened so quickly. The subject matter was so strong, and I put so much effort into making it.”
Supposedly, all events that happened before Kiarostami found out about the story are re-created, and all events that happened after are “real,” with no definite markers to indicate whether the footage is authentic. Some scenes are clearly recreated and familiarly “filmic:” good cinematography, good sound, dense, scripted dialogue. The first section gently lulls us into believing we are watching a “normal,” if overly “arty” film. In one scene the taxi driver kicks an aerosol can down an alley and the camera follows in a tracking shot that seems to last forever. It’s a strange moment in the film because it’s never explained. Most likely, this is Kiarostami dropping signs for no other reason than to emphasize artifice in a film that seems to defy artifice.
Other scenes in the film are represented as “real” footage: signified by shaky, hand-held camerawork, bad audio, 16-mm film. The scenes inside the courtroom are particularly clumsy--the boom mic dips more than once into the shot as if the person assigned to hold it up is getting tired.
It’s in the court room that Sabzian (the Makhmalbaf impersonator) is “given audience” and becomes in a sense the “creator” of the scene. “Close up” refers both to the camera lens that is pointed at him and also to the much coveted actor’s shot, where a single face momentarily dominates the screen, usurping power from the director to the actor.
KIAROSTAMI: We would like to film the trial. Do you agree to that?
SABZIAN: Yes. Because you are my audience.
KIAROSTAMI: How?
SABZIAN: Because of my passion.
KIAROSTAMI: Which passion?
SABZIAN: Art. Film.
KIAROSTAMI: We have one camera with a close up lens. Do you know what that is?
SABZIAN: Yes.
KIAROSTAMI: The other has a zoom lens.
SABZIAN: I don’t know that one.
KIAROSTAMI: It has a zoom lens, to film details of the proceedings. This one [the close up lens] stays on you.
The entire film is filled with such provocative lines, where we see in microscopic detail the circumstances in which art is made, the interplay between creator, subject (content), and audience. There is a constant negotiation of control between Kiarostami, Sabzian, the duped Ahankhah family, the judge, and the viewers of the film. Sometimes we are overwhelmed with sympathy for Sabzian, other times we find him duplicitous and catch ourselves scrutinizing his facial tics.
The last scene is by far the most perplexing and powerful moment of the whole film; perplexing because it’s not “well made” (Skip to 4:40 in the clip). The camera is placed far away from the action, across a busy street. We are told that the real filmmaker Makhmalbaf is supposed to enter the scene but he doesn’t “get out at the right spot,” so is obscured by a taxi and then a small tree. The sound comes in and out intermittently. “Mr. Makhmalbaf’s mic is faulty,” someone says. A moment later, we see a figure embrace Makhmalbaf—it looks like Sabzian, just out of jail. His head is bowed, he is weeping uncontrollably, he can’t even look Makhmalbaf in the face. He carries a cloth sack with his belongings in one hand. It is heartbreaking, even from so far away, even with the sound cutting out. “Don’t cry,” we kind of hear him saying in quick spurts. Sabzian’s shame is so palpable you can’t imagine that this could have been acted. Or, is it because of the way Kiarostami has chosen to frame this moment that makes us believe it’s “real” and therefore more powerful?
It’s amazing to me that this film can be so deceptively spontaneous and messy while being mind-blowingly suggestive. For example, in the opening scene, there are four men riding in a car—a journalist, a taxi driver, and two police officers—all non-artists. When the journalist asks the taxi driver if he’s seen Makhmalbaf’s film The Cyclist, he says, “I’ve no time to see films,” as if to suggest that the world of commerce and the world of art are irrevocably segregated. Art is for the frivolous, wealthy elite, while commerce is for the rest of us who must work to survive. Touchingly, it is the taxi driver who, while idling in his car, picks a bouquet of flowers to decorate his dash and then kicks the aerosol can down the alley—the one moment in the film that is, again, deliberately “artsy.” It seems as if Kiarostami is saying that the very act of noticing and meditating on the strangeness and beauty of a can rolling down an alley is what happens when we look at art. To kick a can down an alley is an everyday thing, but to focus the camera on it, give it its own close up, can imbue the event with so much more.
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