Close Up

Abbas Kiarostami (1990)

It's a very unique movie in terms of its attitude towards the reality. It's based on true story and there is quiet a lot of documentary shots in there, however even more of the film consists of reenactments of events, which are done by the persons involved themselves.

It's a story of a poor Iranian man who happens to be a cinephile and who pretends to be Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an internationally highly acclaimed director and major figure in Iranian cinema. Makhmalbaf himself came from very poor background and made his name making socially realistic movies. His film The Cyclist (1987) was a huge hit in Iran and many poor people of the country associated themselves with the movie at that time.

By pretending to be Makhmalbaf Hossein Sabzian enters rich family in Tehran who also are cinephiles and dream of the career in industry. Together they start to slowly work on “Makhmalbafs” “movie project” until finally Sabzian is exposed, arrested, taken to the court and charged with fraud. It must be said that although he did borrow some money from family it's obvious that the material aspect wasn't his main motivation. It's much more about realizing (or more likely enacting) your dreams and getting respect from others.

When Abbas Kiarostami read this story in magazine, he canceled the shooting of another movie and rushed to make this one. He needed to rush because he actually follows Sabzian with his camera in prison and in court, however the rest of the movie as I mentioned above is subsequent reenactments of the events preceding the court. In that sense it's an amazing hybrid of fiction and documentary.



"We can never get close to the truth except through lying," famously said director. The movie manages to be almost unimaginably simple and complex at the same time. Visually it is made in a very simple documentary style and the story itself is fairly simple, although the narrative there is nonlinear it's quiet logical and easy to follow. However the reality in the movie becomes so intertwined with fiction, if we consider reenactments as fiction, which they are of course, that the end product is some sort of very complex and multi layered entity in itself - a movie, a piece of art and to some extent journalism at the same time. Something which probably wouldn't be possible to achieve either by making a pure documentary or pure fiction. If we bear in mind that it's a movie about ordinary people who are obsessed with cinema as both the means of self expression and escape from social reality, to the extent they do all sorts of crazy things and live in their own dream world which is doomed to crash at some point, because it doesn't fit with reality and who then are invited to star in real movie about themselves, watching it becomes a truly mind blowing experience.

And it's not just an art for arts sake or abstract meditation on reality or the impact of cinema. Nothing like that. The most powerful thing about Close Up is that it's an absolutely true story about real people with Kiarostami giving a good background of social realities of Iran in the last years of Iran – Iraq war.

It's a very influential movie and a masterpiece form one of the great living classics of world cinema.

The Human Animal

Viewed as a pattern of human feeding behavior a trip to the supermarket is a remarkable endpoint of a long journey through evolutionary time. A journey that started in the primeval forest and ended at the checkout counter. To me it's a story of arboreal ape which became a ground dwelling predator which in turn became a credit card customer. (Desmond Morris)




The Human animal is a TV series made in 1994 and available to watch on google video. I found them rather fascinating. They are made by Desmond Morris English zoologist, painter and curator of animal art. It's an anthropological study of human beings as animals. It's not quiet scientific in the sense that it doesn't seek to establish any truth or prove any theories. As Morris himself points out it's rather a personal view on the issue. But it's the view of a very well-informed man. In a way a man who has the right to have opinion, and to his credit he himself more or less always makes a clear distinction between facts and theories and opinions.
I found there some pieces of information which I never stumbled upon before and which I'm not sure if are really consistent with the mainstream science. For example the very complicated behavior of spermatozoon whilst in the body of a woman. He is suggesting that there are spermatozoon that are guarding the egg from another spermatozoon possibly from another man. I don't know I'm not a biologist and apparently he knows what he is talking about, I just wander why such information, which I find absolutely fascinating isn't available anywhere else. Or maybe it is? Maybe it's all my fault and I'm just making fool of myself now.
I found absolutely charming the idea that at some point in our evolutionary journey, just a few million years ago, we were semi aquatic apes, which could be one of the reasons why we lost the hair on our bodies. Though Morris himself admits that there is lack of evidence to prove such theory, the idea of my ancestors being something like otter-apes or mermaid-apes or call it whatever is very interesting indeed. At least it feeds my fantasy.
In the 60's Morris had a chimp called Congo, who learned to paint and his paintings were quiet popular then. In the series Morris examines learning patterns of children when they learn to draw and finds similarities. So what if many things in our culture our social rituals, dinners, and anthems, and football games and behavior on the date and elsewhere really can be explained at least partially from zoological point of view? After all we are apes.
And there is much more, and all this is done without any cynicism. It's rather a celebration of the beauty of nature.

It is possible to find all 6 series on google video.