The art of being seen: A review of Abbas Kiarostami’s ‘Close-Up’

What is the greater crime to you? That this man claimed to be Mohsen Makhmalbaf? Or that, having been born poor, he was predestined to never even have the chance to become Mohsen Makhmalbaf?

That question sits at the very centre of "Close-Up" and refuses to leave.

Abbas Kiarostami's 1990 Iranian docufiction tells the story of Hossein Sabzian, a man who impersonated the great filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and convinced a Tehran family that they would star in his next film.

It sounds like a straightforward fraud case. It is anything but.

Sabzian claims he impersonated Makhmalbaf for two reasons: his love of cinema and the fact that, for the first time in his life, he finally felt respected — the way an acclaimed Iranian film director would be.

There's a fine line between truth and longing here.

Nobody was afraid of Hossein Sabzian, the poor man. But everybody listened to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the celebrated auteur.

Why would anybody obey him, as he is just a poor man? 

The lines between fiction and reality are blurred to an extent that is almost unprecedented.

Kiarostami uses all the real-life people involved — the real Sabzian, the real Ahankhah family, the real reporter, and the real judge — all playing themselves, re-enacting the events that led to the arrest and everything after.

There is never a moment when you feel certain you are watching a documentary or a film.

That uncertainty is the point.

Kiarostami keeps us constantly aware that we are watching his movie, not reality and not truth.

Sabzian's actions are both part of a micro-rebellion against class divides and the transgression of a cinephile against the fictional nature of the medium itself.

He carries out in real life the same conceit that films do, except nobody knows they are watching a performance.

He was the director, the actor and the screenwriter all at once.

At the beginning of the film, Sabzian asks Kiarostami to pass along a message to Makhmalbaf: "Tell him that 'The Cyclist' is part of me."

It is the confession of a man whose entire inner life was built inside someone else's art.

The family, for their part, was eager to be exploited. They were eager to star in his movie, even to give up their house for him.

One of the sons loans the imposter money, not out of kindness but to prove he is the kind of person willing to please a big-shot film director.

Kiarostami quietly implicates everyone.

The Ahankhahs wanted glamour. Sabzian wanted dignity. They want to tell the world that they were not fooled by this poor man out of their money and respect.

"Close-Up's" genius is that his defence is impossible to fathom unless the viewer can share his passion for art as a cultural and intellectual emancipator.

You need to feel what cinema means to someone who has nothing else before you can judge him for reaching toward it with both hands.

Kiarostami himself said 'Close-Up' was his favourite film and explained that he could see that the children in his earlier documentary "Homework" would grow up to be like Sabzian, because they were all products of the same society and system.

Sabzian is what a system produces when it gives a man a soul too large for the life it assigns him.

One might wonder why a man as talented and intelligent as Sabzian, whose real-life self is indistinguishable from his performance, was born into an impoverished background when he so clearly has something to contribute to art and cinema.

He has all the magnetism of a great actor.

The tragedy is that in another life, perhaps he would have been one.

"Close-Up" is such a beautiful film that makes you feel the weight of a life unlived.