<p align="center"> <a href="http://jeanatacc.com/2011/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Close-Up.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-3709" alt="Close-Up" src="http://jeanatacc.com/2011/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Close-Up-300x228.png" width="300" height="228" /></a></p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo7iaw8YYS1qcq43jo1_500.png">http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo7iaw8YYS1qcq43jo1_500.png</a></p>
Prior to the 1990s, Iran had a very different international image. Seen as a totalitarian state ruled by religious fanatics burning the American flag in effigy, many would think of it as a scary place, particularly after the Iranian revolution and subsequent hostage crisis that spanned a 444 day period from 1979 to 1981. It would not be until 1983 that the Iranian government would sponsor a revival of the country’s film industry that things would begin to turn around. (Rosenbaum &amp; Saeed-Vafa) While most of the films produced at this time were primarily child-centered, such as <i>The Runner</i> and <i>Bashu, the Little Stranger</i>, there was nevertheless a compassionate and humanistic voice in the films that represented a community wishing to heal and change their image. (Chesire) It was not until 1990 that filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami would begin an era of cinematic sophistication and adult complexity with his greatest film: <i>Close-Up</i>.

In 1989, Kiarostami learned of a truly bizarre criminal court case: a poor man named Sabzian had been arrested for impersonating Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, becoming friends with a local family and promising them roles in his next film after being mistaken for Makhmalbaf on a bus. It was only when he appeared unaware of having won an award at an Italian film festival that the Ahankhah family became suspicious of his true idenity, and promptly informed the authorities. Even though he was already in the middle of making another film, Kiarostami was so struck by the story that he immediately halted production and arranged for the opportunity to meet all the parties involved and make a film about the still-in-progress trial. What follows is a meditation on the nature of identity, truth, and the way cinema directs our lives, and the result is neither a work of fiction or documentary, but something far more transcendent, and it should absolutely be preserved for these reasons.

Released in 1990, the film was met with a rather mixed to indifferent response from the Iranian film community. However, it was immediately an international sensation, having gained traction at a number of film festivals, making its way all the way to Cannes. The film was considered to be the beginning of a new era of Iranian cinema, one that redefined the image of the nation and its people to a global audience not as war-torn radicals, but rather as people of unexpected sophistication and with a deep love of art and cinema.

Today, the film has been deemed the greatest Iranian film ever made by <i>Film International</i>, and Iranian publication, and the writers of <i>Film Comment </i>voted Kiarostami as being the most important director of the 90s. (Film Comment) It was also ranked No.42 in the British Film Institute’s 2012 <i>Sight and Sound</i> critic survey of the 50 greatest films ever made, as well has having been restored and selected for preservation by the Criterion Collection.

Watching the film, it’s not difficult to understand why it is so revered, along with its creator. The film presents a completely innovative mixture of truth and fiction, and never lets on which is which from scene to scene. The courtroom scenes are not passively observed by Kiarostami, but rather see him as an active participant, albeit an invisible one. Each of the films non-chronological flashbacks are reenactments of events, but played by the real people involved in the case. The script, like many works of adapted history, embellishes many monologues and moments of dialogue, but is often based on first-hand accounts of what was actually said. The key difference, of course, is that this was not entirely an after-the-fact account. The flashbacks are reenactments, but the courtroom scenes are being show to us as they are taking place, and many scenes use very precise manipulation of film elements to create a dramatic effect that otherwise were not actually present in the moment being filmed. (Chokrollahi and Mansouri) Indeed, this blurring of the lines between what is real and what is being manipulated within reality to achieve the cinematic effect desired. Trying to discern all the varying different levels of reality and meta-reality going on within the film is certainly a mind-bending task.

While the film is certainly a cerebral work, I was also struck by just how moving it is. The film is a deeply empathetic portrayal of a man whose frustrations with his life led him to commit falsehoods, but not with money in mind. Sharing a deep love of cinema with the Ahankhah’s, he finds people who finally treat him like another human being, not just another anonymous poor man. The way Sabzian finds comfort within cinema as a means to express and contextualize his despair and anger struck a chord with me, and rung so true that I almost didn’t care what was or wasn’t real in the film anymore. What mattered was that the emotions it was conveying were very real indeed.

It’s easy to compare a film like this to Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, <i>Rashomon</i>. In fact, both films had similar reactions at the time of release. Kurosawa’s film was met with indifference and mixed reviews in Japan, but was heralded as the beginning of the world cinema movement in the United States, receiving rave reviews, winning awards, and going on to influence countless filmmakers and spark interest in foreign cinema. Japanese critics were baffled by the international reception of the film, initially chalking it up to a fascination with the exotic and foreign (Kurosawa). Hoewever, the film has endured as one of the great pieces of filmmaking, and has been studied for decades since. More importantly, however, is the way in which <i>Rashomon </i>dealt with ideas of the distortion of truth and justice through perception forty years prior to Kiarostami’s <i>Close-Up</i>. Like Kiarostami’s film, <i>Rashomon</i> deals with a trial of a crime as told by four key witnesses, each with a different version of the story. The film explores the nature of truth and justice through the frame of motivations and flashbacks. The key difference between the films is in how Kiarostami had 40 years of cinematic evolution to frame his film as being a self-aware metafilm, rather than just a straight philosophical meditation on truth in a postwar era.

I hope that future generations continue to discover and preserve <i>Close-Up</i>, if only because of how truly great the film is. But more that that, the film is a dense, yet accessible look into the way cinema, and by extension, art, shapes and directs our lives. It is at once a riveting courtroom drama, a mind-bending mystery, and a complex look at how the humanities makes us feel like humans again, and for all these reasons, it should absolutely be preserved for all time.

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<p align="center"><b><span style="text-decoration: underline">Works Cited</span></b></p>
<p align="center"><b><span style="text-decoration: underline"> </span></b></p>
 Cheshire, Godfrey. "Close-Up: Prison and Escape." <i>The Criterion Collection: Film Essays</i>(2010): n. pag. <i>The Criterion Collection</i>. 22 June 2010. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. &lt;<a href="http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1492-close-up-prison-and-escape">http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1492-close-up-prison-and-escape</a>&gt;.

A critical essay on the film. Analyzes the film's thematic impact from the historical perspective of both the events the film covers as well as the time period leading up to the film's release. Helped me to understand the unique point of view from an Iranian filmmaker post-Iranian revolution.

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<i>"Close-Up" Long Shot</i>. Dir. Mamhoud Chokrollahi and Moslem Mansouri. Perf. Hossein Sabzian. The Criterion Collection, 1996. DVD.

A short documentary about the central character of Close-Up, Hossein Sabzian. The documentary takes place 6 years after the events of Close-Up and follows Sabzian to examine the effects the trial, and Kiarostami's film, had on him. Helpful by putting into perspective a post-release thought process about the film.

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<i>Close-Up (Audio Commentary)</i>. Dir. Abbas Kiarostami. Perf. Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum. The Criterion Collection, 1990. DVD.The Criterion Collection. 2010.

Audio commentary recorded in 1990 for the 2010 Blu-Ray and DVD release of Close-Up. Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum, authors of "Abbas Kiarostami" contribute and not only provide insightful information about the events of the film, but also the socio-political climate of Iran at the time.

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"Film Comment’s Best of the Nineties Poll: Part Three." <i>Film Comment</i>. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. &lt;http://www.filmcomment.com/article/film-comments-best-of-the-90s-poll-part-three&gt;.

Film Comment's Best of the 90s poll. Helped verify information.

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Kurosawa, Akira. "Akira Kurosawa on Rashomon." <i>Something like an Autobiography</i>. New York: Vintage, 1982. N. pag. <i>The Criterion Collection</i>. 06 Nov. 2012. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. &lt;http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/196-akira-kurosawa-on-rashomon&gt;.

Excerpt from Akira Kurosawa's autobiography where he discusses the making of Rashomon. Helped me draw comparisons to the reception of Close-Up.

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