Cinema World Tour, Film #29
Country: Iran
Rating: 10/10
I was searching for this film for years and years. When I visited the beautiful country Iran last year for two months, I was asking all my friends if they know or even have this film, but with no success. I can't believe I finally found Close-Up and that it lived up to it's expectations. This film is indeed as good as everyone says. It's so wonderfully new and fresh and weird. Literally the ultimate film-ception: a film about a man who pretends to be a famous film director and to want to shoot a film with a upper class Tehrani family. In this film a film is made about this incidents, the persons acting as themselves. This film itself is Close-Up, undoubtedly a masterpiece. From the first to the last second, the film is clever, original and creative. In the first scene, it already establishes a strange, hypnotic atmosphere- Close-Up is this kind of film which is suspenseful just through dialogue. When the journalist Farazmand talks about the „Oriana“ story, when Sabzian explains in court his passion for art and cinema, when social classes and suffering are criticized. Furthermore, it represents the wonderful Iranian people so well: they are always extremely polite (the word used the most in this film is probably Bebershiit =Excuse Me), extremely intelligent, great with language and even the lower social classes are cultivated.
Close-Up is in every aspect an outstanding work. A film with so much heart, so much complexity and wit, concluding in a perfect ending. But the most interesting two shots are the overlong shots of the green can rolling down the street. Why did the director decide to have these shots so long? What is the meaning of these scenes? You probably can discuss that for hours. Anyways, it only shows how clever, weird and wonderful Close-Up is.
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