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.