Product Description

Studio: Facets Multimedia Release Date: 02/19/2002 Run time: 100 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67101 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-03-19
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: Farsi
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 100 minutes

From The New Yorker
On a bus in Tehran, an unemployed movie buff reading a published screenplay passes himself off as its author, the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Invited into the home of a credulous family, the impostor announces his plan to make a film starring their adult son. The father, growing skeptical, invites a journalist to visit, who, in turn, brings the police. Having read an account of this true case, the director Abbas Kiarostami decided to make a film of it, in which each participant would reënact his own role-including Kiarostami himself. In so doing, he also gained permission to film the trial, which was presided over by religious authorities. In this 1990 masterpiece of ironic reflexivity, Kiarostami's clear, self-possessed vision reveals the dogma of others while conveying none of its own, besides a faith in the power of the cinema itself to expose the artifice on which it depends. If religion is the suppression of the evidence of the eye through the dictate of the word, such calmly unwavering images, with their wry humor and generous sympathy, have the force of a quiet, steadfast resistance. In Farsi.-Richard Brody -Richard Brody
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

"There's nothing about this case that's worth filming."
Nothing less than a narrative nesting-doll of reality informing illusion that's based on reality that might be illusion, etc. etc. This legendary film from Abbas Kiarostami concerns itself with a true-life case in Iran involving an imposter who -- for no real motive other than a "love for cinema" -- presents himself to a well-to-do Tehran family as the famous Iranian director and Kiarostami colleague Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The movie begins with the apprehension of the imposter from the family's gated residence. It then becomes quite documentary-like: Kiarostami, with back turned toward the camera, interviews the suspect in jail, asks permission of the local bureaucrat assigned to adjudicate the case if the trial may be filmed (to which the bureaucrat replies bemusedly, "There's nothing about this case that's worth filming"), and then finally sits in on the actual trial itself, which is shot in an inferior film stock that would seem to indicate that we're watching the proceedings as they're happening rather than watching an actual movie. This whole "is-it-live-or-is-it-Memorex" feel continues on to the meeting between the actual Makhmalbaf and his imposter. During this scene, you can hear Kiarostami griping to his sound man in the background as the pair exchange hugs. Then the sound starts cutting out as the camera crew follows the pair through Tehran on a motorbike. (Don't get mad at your DVD -- it's on purpose.) All this would seem to tip the scales towards actual documentary, but perhaps Kiarostami is simply having a bit of postmodernist fun with us. The film has a happy resolution, but questions remain: WHY did the imposter pretend he was a famous director? "Love of cinema" doesn't seem to quite cut the mustard as a motive. WHY, once he ingratiated himself into this wealthy family's daily life (he claims to be making a new film and wants the young adult son, who's a Makhmalbaf fan, to be the star of the picture), didn't he burglarize their home? Clearly, money wasn't the motive. Perhaps he did it for fame . . . which brings up the final haunting question: is the imposter being genuine in this movie, or is he once again playing a role, this time as the guy who was playing Makhmalbaf to a credulous family? In either case, the imposter got the fame he perhaps wanted. It goes without saying that this endlessly subtle film, rippling with layers of widening significance like a lake on a windy day, has only added to Kiarostami's fame.

Perhaps Kiarostami's best work -- but you have to be patient
The basic story has been summed up by other reviewers, so I won't repeat that now. What I do want to give is a personal account of my experience with this film, that I hope will motivate a few to take a look -- and to be patient. The film doesn't work its magic right away -- and in fact the beginning can be somewhat disorienting.

I'll admit, I'm biased. I've become fascinated by the work of Kiarostami in the past few years. Plus, I am very much drawn to films where reality and fiction intersect and overlap in interesting ways. Still, I'm convinced that with a bit of patience -- if you just give yourself the time to let the film work on you without bringing to it expectations that it won't fulfil -- anyone would be overwhelmed by the marvelous simplicity of this film.

Kiarostami has a way of finding the fantastic in the mundane. Somehow, he sets up his films in such a way that I can find myself for the most part merely interested wondering what it is all about, and then suddenly surprised to find myself overwhelmed, surprised by an emotional response that was not manipulated from me with music but somehow, mysteriously. This happened to me while watching ABC Africa, and even more powerfully during this film. His style, the way he achieves this, can almost be thought of as an anti-style -- I know that may not make a lot of sense, but it would take longer than I have here to make clear what I am thinking when I say this. It seems like he is doing very little, but the effect is (in my experience) magical, unexplainable and overwhelming. (For those familiar with Paul Schrader's exceptional work on transcendental style in Bresson, Ozu and Dreyer, I'd suggest Kiarostami as another who works in this vein -- but whose work is quite distinct from these three).

the most emotionally powerful films I've ever watched.
I've greatly appreciated most of Kiarostami's films as well as other distinguished Iranian filmmakers' works. I recall when I got this film, it was a little late night, and I was already quite sleepy, but I played it anyway. Yes, I must admit that I had a somehow hard time to concentrate on its plot. Perhaps, this film is not a film that you may find out in your local rental stores, neither a film that contains certain predictable film elements that most of majority films do. From the middle of the film, Close-up completely woke me up, and then I couldn't sleep anymore the rest of the night; I watched it once again with full attention.

Close-up moved me deeply and the music hit me; just knocked me down. The subject matter was so strong. Especially, in the ending part, the flower held by the main character came to me as a metaphor of rare hope that sustains our life in which neither such promise nor despair. This is one of the most emotionally powerful films I've ever watched.