Film Review: Kiarostami’s “Close-Up”

Abbas Kiarostami’s remarkable 1990 film enters The Criterion Collection.

Few films defy taxonomy like Close-Up. A fiction film spliced with documentary footage — or is it a documentary film spliced with fictional footage? — Abbas Kiarostami’s feature is a high-water mark for Iranian New Wave cinema. Released in 1990, it saw a gorgeous re-release from The Criterion Collection on DVD and Blu-Ray last week.

Close-Up explores cinema’s power to intoxicate and deceive audiences through an aggressive experiment in film structure. In other words, it’s an art film. It lives and breathes for cinema lovers. It prods, meanders, and intentionally bores — like most Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us) films. As the director himself once said, “Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks. Those are the kind of films I like.” That about sums up the Kiarostami MO. Roger Ebert once described his work as existing solely for “film festivals, film critics and film classes.” He didn’t mean that as a compliment.

But I would disagree. Close-Up, like Kiarostami’s best films, transcends formal experimentation. It’s a work of avant-garde humanism. It speaks of cinema and society. Similar to Taste of Cherry, the director’s other Criterion-anointed film, Close-Up grounds its minimalist aesthetic in human tragedy.

That tragedy stems from a bizarre real-life case of stolen identity. While riding the Tehran city bus, a poor, unremarkable man (Hossain Sabzian) cons a woman into believing he’s Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the famed Iranian filmmaker. She invites him to her home, where the man continues his act. The woman’s entire family falls under his spell. Sabzian, a faceless member of Iran’s underclass, transforms into a celebrated director. He relishes every moment. He returns to their home, again and again, to wax artistic about his latest film.

But the charade doesn’t last. Sabzian’s mask starts to slip. The Ahankhah family has him arrested, convinced his scam was an elaborate plot to gain their trust and, in time, rob their home.

Kiarostami read the initial newspaper blurb and rushed to make a film about Sabzian, a figure he found sympathetic. That film, Close-Up, consists of dramatic reenactments and footage of Sabzian’s subsequent trial. The real kicker: Kiarostami has Sabzian and the family play themselves to reenact the events. He also fakes some, but not all, of the trial footage.

The result is dizzying. Even as I write this, I’m not sure where the documentary ends and the fiction begins. Close-Up asks us to question the distinction. It asks us to consider the roles we play in our daily lives, with or without cameras. It questions whether cinema can capture reality at all. What can cinema really accomplish, given that we — as humans — inherently alter our behavior when under the gaze of human eyes and camera lenses?

Welcome to an Abbas Kiarostami movie.

At the film’s core, meanwhile, you’ll find an accessible portrait of the power of movies. Sabzian, like many of us, uses cinema to escape from life’s drudgeries. He has no intention of robbing the Ahankhah family; he only wants to emulate his hero, if only for a few days. Sabzian, the film suggests, takes cinematic escapism to a logical extreme. He doesn’t just escape into a Makhmalbaf film, as any of us might; he escapes into Makhmalbaf.

Our pity for Sabzian gives the movie its strong emotional crux. Despite his dubious behavior, Sabzian never appears malicious or incompetent. Just confused. His intense affection for Makhmalbaf, though genuine, seems only a symptom of his frustration with real life. [spoiler alert] The film culminates in one of cinema’s most moving moments, when Kiarostami arranges for Sabzian to meet Makhmalbaf. The sequence begins cathartic and weepy, as though long-lost brothers are reuniting on “Oprah.” But Kiarostami has one last surprise. He radically undermines the scene with a “technical difficulty,” leaving viewers with only a partial glimpse of their encounter. Cinema, we understand, can only begin to capture the beauty and reality of this moment.

As he did in his screenplay for Crimson Gold, another film about an unlikely criminal, Kiarostami wants to explore the roots of aberrant behavior in modern Iran. His answer’s the same in both films: poverty. Poverty led Sabzian to reject reality for fantasy, to playact as a Public Figure. Like Bicycle Thieves, a classic of  Italian neorealism, Close-Up wants to reveal the causes of crime; it strives to help us understand outcasts like Sabzian. Even in a difficult, experimental film like Close-Up, Kiarostami’s humanist vision shines.

And make no mistake: This is a difficult film. Shots linger on inanimate objects. Scenes extend beyond their typical shelf life. Characters stop their cars to ask for directions. Close-Up embodies the Kiarostami MO: It bores, but it haunts and lingers for days.