Abbas Kiarostami's film "Close Up"isn't a documentary although it deals
with incidents that have happened and 'the actors' are the real people
involved 'acting out' those events, and it's a masterpiece. The events
it depicts concern a Mr Sabzian who introduced himself to an Iranian
family as the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, promising to put them in his
new film, his arrest for fraud and his subsequent trial. Everything we
see happened but what we get is a dramatic 'reconstruction',
played out by the participants themselves. It's part of Kiarostami's
genius that the 'performances' he gets are superb, particularly from
Hossein Sabzian himself, (if this is 'acting' it may be the greatest
performance by a non-professional ever). The result is a wonderful love
letter to the cinema, to those who love it and, of course, to Sabzian
that is both very funny and deeply moving as well as a brilliant
deconstruction of the whole movie-making process. (Is the final
sequence actually happening as in a real documentary or is it too a
reconstruction?). It has just been voted the 42nd greatest film ever
made; it's easy to see why.
The films reviewed here represent those I have liked or loved over the years. It is not a list of my favourite films but all the films reviewed here are worth seeing and worth seeking out. I know many of you won't agree with me on a lot of these but hopefully you will grant me, and the films that appear here, our place in the sun. Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, 3 September 2019
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