Close Up

by Abbas Kiarostami, عباس کیارستمی

Genres: Media Tie In

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He graduated from university with a degree in fine arts before starting work as a graphic designer. He then joined the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he started a film section, and this started his career as a filmmaker at the age of 30. Since then he has made many movies and has become one of the most important figures in contemporary film. He is also a major figure in the arts world, and has had numerous gallery exhibitions of his photography, short films and poetry. He is an iconic figure for what he has done, and he has achieved it all by believing in the arts and the creativity of his mind.

Reviews

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abbas Kiarostami: "Can I do anything for you?"

Hossein Sabzian: "Could you make a film about my suffering?"


I've been trying to figure out a way to write about this film (and Iranian New Wave cinema) for awhile now. I was finally helped by reading The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison. In an essay called "The Site of Memory" (which was written while she was working on Beloved) she was discussing the difference between reality/truth and fiction. To paraphrase: Morrison says that if we concede that the material world is chaotic and without order--that the quote attributed to Oscar Wilde that "truth is stranger than fiction" was a great understatement, fiction--no matter how fantastical and magical--is the paradigm of strict order and making sense of the strangeness of reality. I will talk more about this in the context of books when I review The Source of Self-Regard, but I will use this idea to talk about this movie "documentary."

A working-class printer and book binder living in poverty named Hossein Sabzian passes himself off as the film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to a upper-middle class Iranian family for a week before being arrested. The film director Abbas Kiarostami reads about the case and becomes obsessed with it. He decides to make a film about the incident and the trial of Sabzian. What makes this movie so significant is that he has Sabzian, the family, the police and even the judge re-enact what happens with only the actual trial and the post-trial reconciation meeting being the actual "documentary" footage. In 1978, none of these people would ever intersect into the others world, but 1990 Iran was 11 years out from a revolution and 2 years out from war with Iraq--it was a moment.

It becomes apparent that Sabzian is a different sort of person. Contrary to his social class, he is a hard-core cinephile that probably knew and loved film more than Martin Scorsese. He's malnourished and lives dire-poverty, but he's quoting Sartre, Tolstoy, and Orson Welles. You can see that he's a man that has suffered hard through his life, even before 1979. His obsession with the movies keeps him in poverty and has cost him his family and any sort of comfort or possibility of stability in his life. The follow-up documentary Close-Up, Long-Shot (1996) goes even deeper into the man's psyche. Sabzian is a person who if I read about him in a book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I would not be surprised at all, but it is so jarring to see in real life. His story is tragic, pathetic, but real; you loathe him on the surface, but identify with him deep in your heart (that's what scares people about this film).

So now we talk about Kiarostami and what the purpose of this film could be. Abbas Kiarostami had been making movies long before the Iranian Revolution, but this film launched him as a major force in cinema. At that time (1990), the most popular film maker in Iran was Mohsen Makhmalbaf, but this film made Kiarostami the representative Iranian film maker outside Iran. A possible hypothesis for this film is that give the chaos of the country from 1979 to 1990, there was a chance to put order into a place were randomness and chaos was leading to wanton suffering. You have a man who should have been at minimum Iran's Roger Ebert, if not a great film-maker in his own right. Instead he's just a poor man who obsseses with movies and the other working-class people around him don't get why. Sabzian's sister compared him to Jean Valjean of Les Misérables. I've not read or watched that work, but I will say he deserved a better life than the one of him being punished at every stage of his life (even his childhood) just because he was a cinephile.

Maybe Kiarostami saw this and thought if he could literally have reality play itself out in front of his camera--if he could combine the parts of reality he could not control with the parts (i.e. the re-enacted parts) he could, then maybe he could--for only a moment--bring order to reality. Put another way, Sabzian impersonating Makhmalbaf and Kiarostami making a movie about it were both possibly attempts to give Hossein Sabzian "blue eyes."

"Sabzian talks about the movies like a great philosopher." - Abbas Kiarostami.

[صان · Rating 4 out of 5]

سربازا دارن فردی رو که خودشو جای مخملباف جا زده دستگیر میکنن و میبرن. زن صابخونه میگه: "نبرینش بزارین اول غذاشو بخوره"

[Nastaran · Rating 5 out of 5]

حسین سبزیان یه عشق سینماست که خودشو جای مخملباف جا میزنه و یه خانواده رو حسابی فریب میده. وقتی دستش رو میشه بازداشت میشه و روزی که ازاد میشه مخملباف میره دنبالشو میرن خونه ی اون خانواده فریب خورده. کیارستمی این ماجرا رو فیلم میکنه و میگه روزی که برای ضبط با سبزیان و گروه فیلمبرداری به اون خونه رفتیم سبزیان رو به خانواده میگه من کلاه سرتون نذاشتم بهتون گفتم با یه گروه فیلمبرداری میام اینجا و اومدم.

[Niuosha · Rating 5 out of 5]

خودمون رو دوست نداريم،نه.
حتى مخملباف هم دوست نداشت مخلباف باشه.خودش گفت.

[Rêbwar Kurd · Rating 4 out of 5]

فاصله‌ای میان بودن و وانمود کردن، میان حقیقت و تصویر، میان زندگی و سینما. «کلوزآپ» نه صرفاً یک فیلم است، که خود زندگی‌ست، با همان میزان از سوءتفاهم، میل، دروغ، و حقیقتی که از دل همین دروغ‌ها بیرون می‌زند.

عباس کیارستمی، با وسواس یک فیلسوف و ظرافت یک شاعر، داستانی واقعی را بازآفرینی می‌کند؛ اما نه برای بازسازی واقعیت، بلکه برای آشکار کردن ذاتش. داستان مردی که خودش را به‌جای فیلمساز جا می‌زند، اما حقیقتاً مشتاق سینماست. این مرد—سبزیان—با فریب وارد زندگی خانواده‌ای می‌شود، نه برای دزدی یا فریب‌کاری مرسوم، بلکه برای زندگی در رؤیا. چه کسی می‌تواند او را محکوم کند، وقتی فیلم و زندگی آن‌قدر در هم تنیده شده‌اند که مرز میان‌شان محو شده است؟

«کلوزآپ» ما را با پرسش‌های عمیق اخلاقی و انسانی تنها می‌گذارد: دروغ او، اگر به زیبایی انجامید، هنوز هم خطاست؟ آیا بازی کردن نقش کسی که نیستی، اگر از سر عشق باشد، خیانت است یا پرستش؟ کیارستمی به قضاوت علاقه‌ای ندارد. او فقط آینه‌ای روبه‌روی ما می‌گذارد؛ آینه‌ای که نه تنها صورت سبزیان، بلکه چهره‌ی خود ما را هم نشان می‌دهد، با تمام نقش‌هایی که هر روز بازی می‌کنیم.

فیلم در نقطه‌ای میان مستند و داستانی معلق است، مثل واقعیت که همیشه میان حقیقت و خیال سرگردان است. و بازیگران—چه آن‌ها که حرفه‌ای‌اند و چه آن‌ها که نسخه‌ای از خودشان را بازی می‌کنند—در سکوت و خجالت، در اضطراب و تردید، ما را به قلب تنهایی انسان امروز می‌برند.

«کلوزآپ» یک فیلم نیست؛ یک اعتراف‌نامه است. برای تمام ماهایی که در تنهایی‌مان، از خود واقعی‌مان می‌گریزیم و به تصویری دل می‌بندیم که کاش بودیم.

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

A film about human identity, it helped to increase recognition of Kiarostami internationally.