Title: Close-Up
Rating: 5 Stars
Well, the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound best film list is turning into a roller coaster. I recently watched and wrote about Meshes of the Afternoon, ranked sixteenth on the list. It was a weird, experimental fourteen minute long film that I just didn’t get. I then moved onto number seventeen on the list, the 1990 Iranian film, Close-Up. It is also a somewhat weird, experimental film. Considering the fact that it’s around ninety minutes long and is subtitled, I approached it with significant trepidation. However, unlike my experience with Meshes, I loved it.
The first challenge to the film is how to categorize it. I’ve seen it referred to as a metafilm. I also have seen it called docufiction. The fact that it’s difficult to label is part of what makes it amazing.
Let’s talk about the documentary part of the film first. Before the film was conceived, an impoverished man named Hossain Sabzian was riding a bus reading the screenplay for the film The Cyclist, a film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Sitting next to him was Mrs Ahankhah. Seeing him reading the screenplay, she mentioned that she enjoyed the film. Sabzian immediately claimed to be Makhmalbaf. Learning that her sons are interested in film, Sabzian went to her house to meet them. Over the next two weeks, Sabzian continued to visit them and told them that he wants to use their house as the setting for his next film and to have their sons act in it. At one point Sabzian borrowed some money for cab fare. Growing suspicious, Mr Ahankhah began to think that Sabzian was an imposter planning to rob them. Mr Ahankhah brought over a journalist named Hossain Farazmand. The journalist confirmed that Sabzian was not Makhmalbaf. Mr Ahankhah called the police and Sabzian was arrested.
It is at this point that Abbas Kiarostami, the director of Close-Up gets involved. He reads Farazmand’s article and immediately drops the project that he was working on and heads over to visit Sabzian in prison. He interviews Sabzian on film while he is sitting in prison. He manages to work the Iranian bureaucracy to accelerate the trial date. He even gets the judge to agree to let him film the trial.
The trial is fascinating. Clearly the Ahankhah family thinks that something nefarious was going on but really couldn’t figure it out. Yes, he did accept a fairly insignificant amount of money from them for the cab fare. They theorize that he was trying to get them out of the house so that his ‘gang’ of thieves could come in and rob them. There is just zero evidence that he was planning to do this, and he vociferously denies that he was doing so, let alone the facts that he has no criminal record and that there is no evidence that he’s involved with any criminal gang.
As this is going on, both the judge and the prosecutor repeatedly ask Sabzian’s purpose for pretending to be Makhmalbaf. Although Sabzian answers eloquently and at length, they make no progress divining his motives. They keep telling him that he’s not answering this very basic question. He eloquently again answers but they end up not anymore enlightened.
One answer is that his real life seems so small. He had a job but is currently unemployed. He’s married with two children but his wife has apparently given up on him and has abandoned him and taken one child. He and his son are now living with his mother. It’s clear that he’s impoverished.
Given the opportunity to assume, if only temporarily, another, much larger life, he apparently took it. Once started, he became so committed to his lie that he couldn’t abandon it. Seeking to discover how far he’d take it, the judge asked him if the Ahankhah family had put up the money and made available their house, would he have created the film. Even though in no way a filmmaker, after a few seconds of thought, Sabzian answered that yes he would, but he wouldn’t have let it get that far.
Makhmalbaf’s films held special meeting for Sabzian. Somehow Sabzian believed that Makhmalbaf felt his anguish and through his films sought to express them.
Taking on the role of Makhmalbaf, Sabzian essentially became a method actor. He fully committed to his role. Not only that, but he apparently had dreams of becoming an actor. He said that he was using this experience as training for a future role of a director. He was using these experiences as a store for when he had to act for real. As an actor, he hopes that he can express the feelings that he feels that he can’t express himself.
Apparently he did exactly that.
Yes, this is where it gets even weirder. The judge, since obviously a crime was committed but for no obvious financial gain, kind of leaned upon the Ahankhah family to forgive Sabzian. Even though one of the sons was still pretty clearly suspicious of him, they agreed to and withdrew their charges.
After the trial, the director, Kiarostami, moved from documentary to fiction. Somehow, he managed to convince all of the principals of this story to fully recreate the scenes called out in the trial. So, we get to see Sabzian meet Mrs Ahankhah on the bus. We see the growing suspicions of Mr Ahankhah. We see the journalist confer with Mr Ahankhah and confirm his suspicions. We see the police come and arrest Sabzian.
I have to reiterate, these are all of the real people. There are no actors. The Ahankhah is acting as themselves. Sabzian is acting as himself. The journalist Farazmand is acting himself. Even the police that arrest Sabzian are acting as themselves.
Amazingly enough, the acting is actually good. They are all apparently naturals. Think about what Sabzian is doing. He is acting like himself pretending to be someone else. I would love to know how much acting direction Kiarostami had to give.
Since there is no line between the real people and the actors playing roles, there is no line between the documentary and the staged scenes. The same camera work is used so the staged scenes and the trial appear to be one seamless film.
At the end, the film circles upon itself once more when the real director Makhmalbaf comes to pick up Sabzian on his motorcycle. In Sabzian’s pretend film, he was intending that the key scene would be one of Ahankhah’s sons on a bike. Here the key scene is Sabzian riding along with Makhmalbaf. At first, Sabzian is overcome by seeing Makhmalbaf and falls into his arms weeping.
As the bike ride continues, Makhmalbaf and Sabzian converse. As they do so, the dialog cuts in and out. Although the director Kiarostami tried to claim a technical malfunction, the reality is much weirder. It turns out, that in the conversation, Makhmalbaf’s delivery was quite stiff while Sabzian was naturalistic. The contrast between the film professional and the amateur was so stark that Kiarostami deemed it unusable.
This film was fascinating. Even now, a day later, I find myself thinking about it. In art, what is real and what is fake? Is this a documentary? How real were the fictional scenes? Did Kiarostami write the scenes? Ultimately, what was Sabzian’s real motivation? Why did he continue even though he knew was probably going to get caught?
This was a wonderful example of a film that created something that I’d never really seen before.
dorkenstein 