In Tehran, a journalist from Sorush magazine thinks he
has a scoop after discovering a curious case of deception: he has just learned
that a certain Sabzian pretended to be the filmmaker Moshen Makhmalbaf to an
Iranian bourgeois family, that he convinced to make in the movie that he is preparing
to make in their own house. He takes advantage of this to get fed and
"lend" a small amount of money. On that day, the journalist came to
cover the arrest of the man who was finally denounced as a crook by the
patriarch of the family who soon began to doubt his true identity; According to
him, Sabzian probably broke into their house in order to rob them.
Abbas Kiarostami having read this strange story
decides immediately to make his next movie, goes to interrogate Sabzian in
prison and asks the judicial authorities for permission to film the trial. The
judge doesn’t object. The famous director explains to the accused that he will
use two cameras, one with short focus to film him in close-up (close-up) and
the other with a larger angle to hug the whole court...
The pitch summarized above is hardly more exciting on
paper than any other; It is the device put in place, the vertiginous mise en
abyme that results from it and the richness of the themes addressed that make
the price of this singular and magnificent cinematographic essay produced by
the immense Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. All this culminating in a
narrative as captivating as the most effective of thrillers, aiming above all
to know the true motivations of the accused, I advise those who like surprises
not to read this column beyond this first paragraph, to do it only after
discovering the movie since it is difficult to talk about it without having to
disassemble most of its mechanisms. That being said, to be frank, whether or
not we know these latter does not intrinsically detract from the quality of the movie since for my part I discovered it without knowing anything about it and
yet I was caught in it from start to finish. ; It's just that the mise en abyme
turns out to be even more impressive once you get to know the ins and outs of
this quite unique work. But above all, we must remember the importance of
Close-Up since we can say without too much fear of being mistaken that it is
the movie that will have really drawn the attention of the West to "the
existence ", the wealth and nobility of Iranian cinema. While Iran was
arguably the most demonized country of this era, paradoxically it was one of
not only the bravest but also the most humane cinematography there was; Iranian
cinema has probably contributed a lot to modifying the preconceived ideas that
the West had about this people; and this is to the credit of the seventh art,
which is not just a benefactor mission!
As Kiarostami got ready to shoot another childhood
movie after the delicious movie Where's My Friend's House? (Khāneh-ye doust kodjāst?), He puts
this project on stand-by without a second of hesitation. During an interview
with Michel Ciment for the review Positif (N ° 368 - October 91), the filmmaker
said: "... While the whole team was ready to shoot, I read the story in a
newspaper that would give birth to Close-Up. As Gabriel Garcia Marquez already
said, it is not you who choose the work, it is the work that chooses you. I
called my producer and I said that I wanted to change plans, that what I had
just discovered had taken hold of me, that the story was happening and it had
to be shot on the spot, otherwise it would be too late. went to fetch my team
from the school - where the project was to be turned then in progress - and I took
it to the prison ... "
The fact that captivated the filmmaker is therefore
that of a real scam without great consequences, that of a movie lover who
pretended to be a known director; the abused people thought that it was for an
evil purpose, However, the culprit did not appear to have had any bad
intentions, as he told Kiarostami when they first met in prison. That being
said, appearances on both sides will remain deceptive throughout; but we will
come back to the subject and the themes later. First, we need to address the
form, the one that has caused a lot of ink to flow to the detriment of the
human richness of the movie. The first thing to know about the set-up is that
all the characters (except the driver of the first scene) are performed by
non-actors no less than the real protagonists who all agreed to revive the
surprising story of which they were the actors. The first thing Kiarostami does
when he discovers this miscellaneous fact is to immediately go and interrogate
the crook in prison with a hidden camera; this sequence will be integrated into
the movie but not at the beginning, The construction of this feature movie proved
to be quite scholarly despite its apparent extreme simplicity, the filmmaker
did not hesitate to proceed with a temporal breakdown of his narration.
A rather tasty anecdote, also told to Michel Ciment,
also shares the choice of chance regarding this "chaotic" narrative
structure. Kiarostami, who had attended a screening during which the
projectionist had inverted two reels, finding the result better than the
original, decided to reassemble his movie as he had seen it following this
"error". This is the sequence that chronologically begins the story,
that of the meeting in a bus of Szabian with one of the members of the family
in which he will enter, that is the mother, amateur of cinema. In the first
version released in theatres, this sequence happened to be the first; in the
one that has meanwhile become official, it is now at the mid-point, the
scenario making - while remaining perfectly fluid - incessant and stimulating
going and returns between past, present and future.
Kiarostami also uses a "Rashomon" method by
showing us the same scene seen through two opposing points of view, that of
Szabian’s arrest. The first time, during the sequence that opens the movie, we
see the journey by car of the journalist and the soldiers who go to the address
of the family that was stolen to apprehend the culprit, the scene ending when
the latter arrives handcuffed to the car; Then, in the last third of the movie,
the filmmaker makes us participate in this arrest and in the minutes that
precede but this time from the point of view of the crook, who is then in the
house. In view of these sequences that sometimes seem to be taken on the spot
(some are, moreover, like the last one for which Szabian was not informed that
he was being filmed), a question arises from the outset for spectators who do
not necessarily know that the protagonists interpret their own role: is it a
fiction or a documentary? The answer is obviously a kind of unprecedented
mixture between the two, as we can begin to apprehend it by listening to this
other answer always resulting from the interview with Michel Ciment: "...
I shot this first sequence -the one in which Kiarostami comes to meet Szabian
in his cell- with an invisible camera. The scenes of the trial were also
documentary, but some things were changed because I wanted to be closer to the
subject. There were thoughts inside that character that he wasn’t aware of, and
we had to get them out and make him say them. Sometimes, to reach the truth,
you have to partly betray reality..."
Accepting to sometimes disguise reality to bring out a
higher truth, is a bit the leitmotiv and the trademark of Kiarostami.
Interviewed by Jean-Pierre Limosin in 1994, the filmmaker also explained it as
follows: "Whether it is documentary or fiction, the whole is a big lie
that we tell to the viewer. Our art is to tell this lie so that the viewer
believes it. Whether a part is documentary or reconstructed relates to our
working method and does not look at the spectators. The most important thing is
for the audience to know that we are lining up a series of lies to arrive at a
greater truth. Untruths that aren’t real but kind of true." When such a
device - sometimes ignoring what actually happened to reach a completely
different truth, much deeper - succeeds in the sequences of the trial to get
out of its main character with such spontaneity and sincerity such intimate and
touching confessions, one can only bow to the power of the 7th art. For
example, Szabian will explain in close-up (of an overwhelming humanity) why
cinema fascinates him and makes him so dependent on him: When I am depressed
and full of troubles, I feel the need to express the anguish of my soul, the
sad experiences of my life that no one wants to hear about. And then I meet a
good man -the filmmaker Moshen Makhmalbaf- who shows all my suffering in his movies and who makes me want to see them and see them always again. A man who
dares to show people who play with the lives of others, the rich, carefree of
the simple needs of the poor who are mainly material... That’s why I was
comforted by reading this book “ the screenplay of Makhmalbaf’s movie, The
Cyclist ”. He talks about things that I would have liked to be able to express
(...) Art is the development of what one feels inside. Tolstoy said "art
is a sentimental experience that the artist develops in himself and transmits
to others."»
In Close-Up, Kiarostami invites us again - if needed -
not to judge on appearances, the "close-up" camera of the trial going
to accomplish this miracle of bringing out a great part of humanity on the part
of this man, unjustly or not accused of fraud and considered at the beginning
by the spectators that we are with a lot of reluctance. But is he lying again?
Does he still play a character that he is not really? It is in this perpetual
destabilizing state that the witnesses we are going to find each other
throughout the movie; this will mainly keep us powerfully captivated as if we
were part of the jury. Close-Up is also the tribute of a great director to
another of his compatriots, that of Kiarostami to Makhmalbaf, the latter’s
cinema being put on a pedestal during a good part of the movie. It is also a
declaration of love in the 7th art through the passion that animates its main
protagonist. In an interview always given to Positive, but this time to
Stéphane Goudet (No. 442 - December 1997), Kiraostami said: "I think
that filming the trial helped a lot in its successful outcome. The cinema first
set a trap for Szabian and then saved him. Dreaming about cinema led him to
prison. But the reality of cinema saved him."
More than cinema, it is the art in general that the
director feels for mission to put in the foreground within this rigid society
that has always more or less rejected it. Among other things, he explains it in
this beautiful panegyric: "As for the performances in my movies, they
serve less as a reflection on cinema than on the role of art in general, cinema
included. In Close-Up I describe the face-to-face of art and law. I think that
legislators do not have enough time to pay attention to what happens inside a
human being. But art has more time. That is why the device of the movie rests on
two cameras: the camera of the law that shows the court and the trial in legal
terms, so to speak, and the camera of art that approaches the human being to
see him in close-up, to look more deeply at the accused, his motives, his
suffering. It is the work and responsibility of the art to look at things more
closely and to make people think, to pay attention to men and to learn not to
judge them too quickly."
Besides this, the lessons and the questioning on the
substance and on the form will be still multiple, as exciting as deeply
generous, questioning us on the representation, the appearances, the
identity... What is the border between truth and falsehood, between dream and reality?
How far can a passion lead us? Where does the documentary stop, where does the
reenactment begin? Are these scenes taken on the spot or well played? It does
not matter in the end; the important thing is to have given birth to a very
touching portrait of a man that everyone sees at the beginning only as a common
crook. Who will not want at the end of the movie to take him in his arms while
he bursts into tears beside the one whose identity he had assumed, in front of
the door of those he swindled and to whom he comes to apologize at the same
time as their real "idol"? As often with Kiarostami, the setting up
of his final (here in camera hidden for Szabian) leads to a pure moment of
grace, enhanced here by the first appearance of the music, a heartbreaking
theme. Kiarostami has perfectly managed to make Szabian a true movie hero, a
man above all in search of recognition and dignity. Still in the interview
given to Michel Ciment a year after the release of his movie in France, he paid
a nice tribute to his "real and fictional" character: "I
discovered that he was not a criminal and I wanted to know who he really was.
There were some things I knew for sure: that he was unemployed, hopeless,
without money. I wanted to get closer to him and discover more of his
personality. Every day of filming brought me new informations. I measured with
him the power of love. When someone loves something very strongly - and in this
case it was the love of cinema - he shows an incredible boldness and strength.
Close-up also shows that, after oxygen, what man needs most is respect and
dignity. This character knew he had an 80% chance of being arrested, and yet,
because of his need for dignity, he clung to the 20% and went into the
house."
Finally - and this is not the least of its qualities -
the movie also questions with discretion and subtlety censorship (the mother who
calls her son to order when he dares to complain about the economic situation
of his country), dictatorship, unemployment, the social conditions, the
suffering and distress of the Iranians, the predominant place of art in Iranian
society, etc. Close-Up, in addition to being a movie of great nobility of
feelings and, despite its crude appearance of cinema-truth closer to reality,
of a great plastic beauty (the trial scenes in a "fake black and
white" that lets see some pink carnations of the skin, small colorful
clothing details...), also proves to be a breathtaking demonstration of the
omnipotence of cinema (Kiarostami’s movie will have had a positive impact on the
trial, the outcome of the case and the life of Szabian who wins both
friendships and respect) as well as an exciting meditation on artistic
creation. With an astonishing economy of means and a remarkable apparent
simplicity, Kiarostami makes us witness a disarming and touching human
adventure; close-ups of exceptional intensity on Szabian during his trial will
probably haunt us for a very long time.
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