It was with 1999’s Taste of Cherry that Abbas Kiarostami firmly cemented his international reputation, becoming the first Iranian filmmaker to win the Palme d’or at the Cannes film festival. But by then, his contemplative, intelligent films had been spurring debate in his home country for many years. Close-Up (1990), Kiarostami's emphatic declaration of Iranian cinematic artistry, looked back on cinema itself through a refracted lens, blending fiction, fact and fantasy into a story both stimulating and sad.
Close-Up was inspired by a news story Kiarostami read concerning Hossein Sabzian, an obsessive cinemaphile who impersonated Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and thereby insinuated himself into the life of a wealthy family, if only for a few days. Kiarostami then insinuated himself into Sabzian's trial, convincing the judge to not only allow the director to film the proceedings, but to question the defendant as the cameras rolled. The director also managed to persuade Sabzian and his victims to re-enact the story of their meeting and brief association, and then, upon Sabzian's release from jail, staged a meeting between the impersonator and the impersonated, with Mohsen Makhmalbaf carrying Sabzian on the back of his motorcycle to the home of his victims to ask for their forgiveness.The result is an examination of cinema and the troubled mind of a man who has devoted his life to a fanatic appreciation of the art. Close-Up, as with all of Kiarostami's best work, uses the drama and melodrama of everyday life to present his viewers with tantalizing, even baffling questions, and wisely leaves the answers to us.
Criterions' new DVD and BluRay editions of the film include audio commentary by Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum; The Traveler, Kiarostami's first feature film; a documentary on Hossein Sabzian, six years after Close-Up; a new interview with Kiarostami; and A Walk with Kiarostami, a documentary portrait of the director by Iranian film professor Jamsheed Akrami.
1990. 98 minutes. $39.95. www.criterion.com.
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