In the last weeks a friend and I have decided to take a dip in the filmography of one of those acclaimed and at the same time unknown directors from Persia. His name is Abbas Kiarostami and his work seems to be the ocean we were looking for to take that plunge. After having watched the priceless ‘Where’s the friend’s house’ and the documentary ‘Homework’, both of them having children as main characters, today was time for ‘Close’ up’. This movie, released in 1990, seems to be the beginning of one of the Kiarostami’s film obsessions: impersonation.
From the start of the movie, his agility to include daily moments of huge simplicity but deep meaning in the middle of the action amazed me. He manages to say a lot about the social and cultural surroundings with those brief touches of reality. The movie itself is built up as a game between reality and fiction, using the false documentary language in some parts of it to show us what we want to see, all the time from the perspective and the codes that we need at any moment. As a storyteller, you need to be a master to control that multilingual nature in a film and it has been proven to me that Kiarostami is, not only a master but an honest narrator who doesn’t hide his voice when the viewer demands it. Scenes filmed in real time are another point that fascinates me about his films. In ‘Close ‘up’ he uses them, along with brilliant downtimes, to build up the tension and to create a feeling of no escape around the main character.
Everyone who plays someone else’s role in life is willing to get as far as they allow him. That idea is seen throughout the movie as something more familiar than the viewer may think at the beginning. One who pretends, after all, is just expressing somehow something he has inside. But in this, as in every one of his three films that my friend and I have had the pleasure to watch so far, the prize is kept for the ending. Today I have no doubts about the humble optimism hidden behind the thick glasses of Kiarostami.
