Note: This essay was done for a
series being put on by The Dissolve commenters to celebrate the month of
October by discussing unique experiences in horror cinema.
My first viewing of Close-Up left me underwhelmed. A year and a half ago I started working my way through the BFI Top 50, as I hadn't seen a good majority of the films listed. Needless to say, my expectations were high. When I got to Close-Up, I was confused by its inclusion. At first glance, Kiarostami's film seemed very simple. An Iranian man, Hossein Sabzian, is arrested for duping a family into believing that he is famed director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. These events are shown in flashback recreations and interspersed with Kiarostami's documentation of Sabzian's real-life trial. I separated these elements into staged and documentary categories, and Close-Up quickly left my mind as I moved on to the next film in my marathon.
Then a strange thing happened. Close-Up kept popping into my thoughts. A month later, I was still regularly thinking about it, which is rare for a film that I didn't have an initial positive response to. Eventually, I started reading about the film, and my post-viewing interest became a full-blown obsession. I quickly learned that my division of Close-Up into neat "fake" and "real" segments was worthless and that the film was far messier in this regard than I could have ever anticipated. I found out that Kiarostami had written parts of Sabzian's "dialogue" during the courtroom scenes and that the Ahankhah family was unhappy with the verdict (Cheshire). Also, the sound cutting out during Sabzian's meeting with Makhmalbaf, one of the most memorable parts of the film, wasn't an actual error on the part of the filmmakers, but an intentional edit of Makhmalbaf’s conversation (Tarik).
My mind started spitting out thousands of questions. Were Sabzian and the Ahankhah's aware of Kiarostami's manipulation? Where do each participant's "performance" end and their real life begin? Was Sabzian affected by having a film made about him? If so, how and what happened to him after it was finished? If I was somehow able to find concrete answers to any of these questions, dozens more were immediately raised. At one point, I did a cursory internet search to try and find the original article detailing Sabzian's case and couldn't come up with anything. This caused me to seriously think that Kiarostami had fabricated the entire event, used trained actors, and thrown in the documentary angle just to spice the film up. One aspect of the film that particularly haunted me was Kiarostami's role during Sabzian's trial. Kiarostami prods Sabzian into giving these elaborate answers that make his deception seem more reasonable. Kiarostami also ensures that the judge understands precisely what Sabzian is saying at all times (Tarik). In my view, Kiarostami basically directed reality in a way that would provide a satisfying narrative arc for a movie, which kind of freaks me out and makes me question whether or not he crossed a line in his manipulation (Cheshire).
The main reason I'm writing about this film for Scarefest is due to Sabzian himself. Here's what we learn about him through Close-Up. He lives with his mother, he's divorced, has two children (one who lives with him), doesn't have a stable job, and loves cinema. That last point is key. Some of Sabzian's lines wouldn't be out of place in the comments section of The Dissolve:
Sabzian’s plight is directly responsible for an odd fear I’ve developed over the past year. Like everyone else here, I watch and read about a lot of movies, and as that love has grown, I can’t help but worry that it will negatively affect my own life. Like I will get so obsessed and enraptured with how the world is represented in movies, that reality will become boring and uninteresting. A lot of this has to do with the specific time I watched Close-Up. During my senior year of college just as I was becoming less and less interested in my major, and after I had moved to a new dorm to become an RA, which caused to me to drift away from the friends I had made in the past three years. I was lonely, bored, and had a growing affection for a film. All of which gave me a lot in common with Sabzian, and that terrified me.
P.S.
Hopefully, I don’t come off as too conspiracy-theory crazy in this piece. A lot of my initial reaction to Close-Up had to do with stuff that was outside of the film that I became obsessed with for reasons I don’t think Kiarostami intended. I watched the film again recently in preparation for this piece and had an entirely different experience. I let myself just roll with the film’s shifts between documentary and fiction. I’m still not sure how I feel about Sabzian though. I didn’t respond to him at all during my first watch, became worried that I would turn out like him as I mulled over the film, and had a much more basic, sympathetic response to his situation during my rewatch.
References
“Close-Up” Long Shot. Dir. Mahmoud Chokrollahi. Feat. Hossein Sabzian. The Criterion Collection. 1996. DVD.
Benbrahim, Tarik. Interview with Abbas Kiarostami. Close-Up: The Criterion Collection. (2009).
Cheshire, Godfrey. “Close-Up: Prison and Escape.” The Criterion Collection. 22 June 2010. Web. 21 Sept 2014.
Then a strange thing happened. Close-Up kept popping into my thoughts. A month later, I was still regularly thinking about it, which is rare for a film that I didn't have an initial positive response to. Eventually, I started reading about the film, and my post-viewing interest became a full-blown obsession. I quickly learned that my division of Close-Up into neat "fake" and "real" segments was worthless and that the film was far messier in this regard than I could have ever anticipated. I found out that Kiarostami had written parts of Sabzian's "dialogue" during the courtroom scenes and that the Ahankhah family was unhappy with the verdict (Cheshire). Also, the sound cutting out during Sabzian's meeting with Makhmalbaf, one of the most memorable parts of the film, wasn't an actual error on the part of the filmmakers, but an intentional edit of Makhmalbaf’s conversation (Tarik).
My mind started spitting out thousands of questions. Were Sabzian and the Ahankhah's aware of Kiarostami's manipulation? Where do each participant's "performance" end and their real life begin? Was Sabzian affected by having a film made about him? If so, how and what happened to him after it was finished? If I was somehow able to find concrete answers to any of these questions, dozens more were immediately raised. At one point, I did a cursory internet search to try and find the original article detailing Sabzian's case and couldn't come up with anything. This caused me to seriously think that Kiarostami had fabricated the entire event, used trained actors, and thrown in the documentary angle just to spice the film up. One aspect of the film that particularly haunted me was Kiarostami's role during Sabzian's trial. Kiarostami prods Sabzian into giving these elaborate answers that make his deception seem more reasonable. Kiarostami also ensures that the judge understands precisely what Sabzian is saying at all times (Tarik). In my view, Kiarostami basically directed reality in a way that would provide a satisfying narrative arc for a movie, which kind of freaks me out and makes me question whether or not he crossed a line in his manipulation (Cheshire).
The main reason I'm writing about this film for Scarefest is due to Sabzian himself. Here's what we learn about him through Close-Up. He lives with his mother, he's divorced, has two children (one who lives with him), doesn't have a stable job, and loves cinema. That last point is key. Some of Sabzian's lines wouldn't be out of place in the comments section of The Dissolve:
- “It’s a film you have to see a few times.”
- “I read it, and it brings calm to my heart. It says the things I wish I could express.”
- “For me, art is the experience of what you’ve felt inside.”
Sabzian’s plight is directly responsible for an odd fear I’ve developed over the past year. Like everyone else here, I watch and read about a lot of movies, and as that love has grown, I can’t help but worry that it will negatively affect my own life. Like I will get so obsessed and enraptured with how the world is represented in movies, that reality will become boring and uninteresting. A lot of this has to do with the specific time I watched Close-Up. During my senior year of college just as I was becoming less and less interested in my major, and after I had moved to a new dorm to become an RA, which caused to me to drift away from the friends I had made in the past three years. I was lonely, bored, and had a growing affection for a film. All of which gave me a lot in common with Sabzian, and that terrified me.
P.S.
Hopefully, I don’t come off as too conspiracy-theory crazy in this piece. A lot of my initial reaction to Close-Up had to do with stuff that was outside of the film that I became obsessed with for reasons I don’t think Kiarostami intended. I watched the film again recently in preparation for this piece and had an entirely different experience. I let myself just roll with the film’s shifts between documentary and fiction. I’m still not sure how I feel about Sabzian though. I didn’t respond to him at all during my first watch, became worried that I would turn out like him as I mulled over the film, and had a much more basic, sympathetic response to his situation during my rewatch.
References
“Close-Up” Long Shot. Dir. Mahmoud Chokrollahi. Feat. Hossein Sabzian. The Criterion Collection. 1996. DVD.
Benbrahim, Tarik. Interview with Abbas Kiarostami. Close-Up: The Criterion Collection. (2009).
Cheshire, Godfrey. “Close-Up: Prison and Escape.” The Criterion Collection. 22 June 2010. Web. 21 Sept 2014.
Random Notes
- Strangely the two films Close-Up reminded me of were Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction. Citizen Kane came to mind due to a few specific shots that were similar to Welles’s film. There’s a scene where Kiarostami is interviewing Sabzian in prison and his back is to the camera, obscuring his face, much like the reporter character in Kane. During the recreation of Sabzian’s arrest, there’s a shot of him way in the background, with another person turned slightly away from camera in the foreground. Comparable shots are all over Kane.
- At the beginning of Citizen Kane there’s a shot of Kane’s room through a broken snow globe, and near the end of Close-Up there’s a shot of Sabzian and Makhmalbaf riding a motorcycle through a cracked windshield. Both reflect each film’s concerns with fractured identities.
- I don’t know if Citizen Kane was an influence on Close-Up. It's possible since Kiarostami started working before the revolution, when it was much easier to see foreign films. I've never heard him bring it up interviews or seen Citizen Kane mentioned in discussions of Kiarostami's work. Still, the similarities are striking. Both films follow an investigator trying to learn about someone else intercut with flashbacks to that person’s life.
- I thought of Pulp Fiction, because both it and Close-Up begin with car rides featuring long, rambling conversations that also lay out the basic plot of each film. Also, the two films jump around in time, but not in the exact same way.
- Unless Kiarostami had a time machine there’s obviously no way he could have seen Pulp Fiction before making Close-Up. However, it’s possible that Tarantino had seen a few Kiarostami films during the early 90’s. He is an admirer of Kiarostami’s work (one of Tarantino’s quotes was even used in the trailer for Through the Olive Trees). You would have needed to be very on top of film culture to know who Kiarostami was in the 90’s though. Either way, it’s cool that similarities can be found between films with entirely different subjects and styles made in different countries.
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