264 - Close-Up, 1990, Iran. Dir. Abbas Kiarostami.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

264 - Close-Up, 1990, Iran.  Dir. Abbas Kiarostami.

Mahrokh Ahankhah is a housewife living in Tehran.  She has a husband and two sons.  They lead comfortable lives.

One day on a city bus she finds herself sitting next to the famous Iranian film director Mohsen Makmalbaf.  He is reading a published copy of the script of his most recent film, The Cyclist.

She mentions that her sons are interested in the arts, and that one of them in particular, Mehrdad, is interested in film.  Mr. Makmalbaf autographs his script and gives it to her.  Then he offers to meet her sons and encourage them.

He will.  And he will cast them in his upcoming film and give the boys their own private acting lessons.  The family will enjoy the pleasure of having the great Makmalbaf shine his favor upon them and bring new and exciting opportunities into their lives.

They cannot believe their good fortune.

It turns out they should not believe it.

Because it does not exist.

Mohsen Makmalbaf is not Mohsen Makmalbaf but Hossain Sabzian, a divorced, jobless cinema fan who dreams of working in the film industry.

He regards Makmalbaf's film The Cyclist as a prophetic masterpiece that compassionately depicts the suffering that men like Sabzian experience on a daily basis.

His wife has left him, taking one of their two children and leaving the other with him, for his mother to raise.  He lives with his mother.  He works at a print shop, but work is sporadic and scarce, and he spends his time dreaming of another life.

When a strange woman speaks to him on the bus, he responds impulsively with the claim that he is the director, and the feeling that follows when she affords him respect is one that he cannot shake. He becomes addicted to it.  He longs for the treatment he receives when the family believes him to be an important man.

Sabzian is not the only one with ambition.

Hossain Farazmand has it as well.

Farazmand is a struggling journalist who longs for the scoop to a story that will give him his big break.  When he discovers that Mr. Ahankhah has alerted the authorities that he believes he has an impostor staying in his home, Farazmand races in a taxi with the two officers who go over to arrest him, running up a large tab and paying for the police to travel with him.

Our director, Abbas Kiarostami also has ambition.

And he uses this story to expand his career and secure his legacy.

Kiarostami has been working in film for 17 years, starting as a title designer and writing and directing his own shorts.  By this time he has made around eight features, and he is working on a feature now.

But when he reads Farazmand's article, published in a prominent magazine, he drops everything and races with a camera to document it.

He includes footage of himself asking police officers for information on the case, meeting with Sabzian in prison, and negotiating with the local judge to allow him to film the trial while moving the trial date forward to fit his own shooting schedule!

Kiarostami will set up two cameras in court: a wide lens facing the judge and a close-up on Sabzian. It is this close-up that gives our film its title, as he focuses on the kind of man who would willingly deceive a family for the mere purpose of feeling the emotion of his own experienced fantasy.

The plaintiffs, the Ahankhah family, and the defendant, Sabzian, both represent themselves without council, but Kiarostami is allowed to ask questions from behind the camera!

Sabzian presents himself as a sad sack who just wants a little mercy for his pitiful life.

The judge, Haj Ali Reza Ahmadi, comes across as the most interesting character in the film, showing himself to be empathetic, thoughtful, insightful, and wise.

Every person in the film plays himself.

No one is an actor.  Everyone is the real person who experienced these real events, including both film directors--the one with the stolen identity, Mohsen Makmalbaf, and the one making the film, Abbas Kiarostami, albeit from off camera.

However, this film is not properly a documentary.

While the trial is filmed in real time, Kiarostami has affected the outcome by asserting himself into the proceedings.

And the story leading up to the trial is done through reenactments, with both the duper and the duped, the reporter and the police, and even the taxi driver, going back in front of the camera and reliving the events for Kiarostami's film.

Kiarostami even gets Makmalbaf to meet Sabzian when he is released on parole, to carry him on his motorcycle to buy flowers and visit the Ahankhah family to ask them personally for forgiveness.

The film made a stir when it was released, and it introduced Kiarostami to the international cinema audience.  Both he and Mohsen Makmalbaf continued steadily to make movies--Makmalbaf, now 60, to this day, and Kiarostami, until his death last year at age 76.

Hossain Sabzian, however, did not fare so well.  According to Coco Ferguson, he spent his inheritance on a camera, made experimental wedding videos, was spurned by his own family, and died seventeen years later selling DVDs at a bus terminal.  He never appeared in a movie outside of this one.

In a documentary included on the Criterion edition, Sabzian's neighbors state that he behaved oddly as he continued to live inside his fantasy world.

When one neighbor is asked if he would say such a thing to Sabzian's face, he does.  Sabzian, still alive, listens to his neighbor and agrees with him.

He is a dreamer.

And he will always be one until his dreams come true.