Nema-ye Nazdik
Abbas Kiarostami (1990)
Defining Close-up as a ‘docufiction’ (as Wikipedia does) may be technically accurate but doesn’t begin to do justice to Abbas Kiarostami’s fascinating and imaginative film. Around half of it consists of footage of an actual criminal trial that took place in Tehran in 1989. The defendant, charged with fraud, was a man in his mid-thirties called Hossain Sabzian. Most of the other half comprises reconstructions of events leading up to his arrest and trial. In the latter sequences, all concerned play themselves and Kiarostami’s magic touch enables his non-professional cast to perform with the ease and confidence of seasoned pros, except that they’re more natural than most seasoned pros. All the people on screen are thoroughly and vividly believable – Hossain Sabzian outstandingly so – and the film’s two parts articulate seamlessly. But that summary of Close-up doesn’t do justice to Kiarostami’s achievement either.
Hossain Sabzian is divorced, unemployed and a cinephile. A fan especially of Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Hossain is reading the published screenplay of Makhmalbaf’s recent hit film The Cyclist (1987) during a bus ride. The woman sitting beside him strikes up a conversation, mentioning her enthusiasm for The Cyclist and her two sons’ love of cinema. On the spur of the moment, Sabzian tells the woman, Mrs Ahankhah, that he is Mohsen Makhmalbaf and that he’d be happy to encourage her sons’ interests in film. He asks her to write down her address, she does so and, in the days that follow, Sabzian visits the Ahankhahs’ home several times. He says he’d like to use the place as the location for his next shoot and to cast the two Ahankhah sons in the film. He requests and receives money – for travelling expenses – from one of the sons. Their father’s suspicions that the persistent visitor is an imposter are increased by a magazine photograph of the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf, despite there being some facial resemblance between him and Sabzian. Ahankhah père contacts a journalist, Hossain Farazmand, who confirms that Sabzian isn’t who he claims to be. The authorities arrest him at the Ahankhahs’ house – not before Farazmand, fancying his chances of a scoop, has taken photographs to accompany his planned piece ‘Bogus Makhmalbaf Arrested’.
The order of scenes in Close-up doesn’t follow this chronological sequence of events. Kiarostami begins with Farazmand, accompanied by two soldiers, travelling by taxi to the Ahankhahs’ home. Sabzian doesn’t appear in the film until he emerges from the house under arrest. His chance meeting with Mrs Ahankhah, which sets everything off, features at a later stage as, in effect, a flashback. Even without Sabzian, the preliminaries are absorbing, especially the conversation between the cab driver and the soldiers, as they wait in the taxi while Farazmand disappears into the house for a few minutes before the arrest is made. This conversation is surely predetermined to the extent that the ‘actors’ were instructed to make conversation – yet we seem to be eavesdropping on something that’s actually happening. This sense of reality is strong enough to feed through even to Kiarostami’s visual conceits, which seem like things the camera happened to pick up, though they must have been planned. For example, an empty drink can rolls slowly across the frame (twice!) to almost hypnotic effect.
In custody and awaiting trial, Sabzian receives a visit from Kiarostami, who wants to film the court proceedings. He also has an interview with Haj Ali Reza Ahmadi, the judge appointed for the trial, asking for the trial date to be brought forward and for permission to record in the courtroom. (By this point in Close-up, it’s almost academic whether Kiarostami’s interactions with Sabzian and the judge are the original meetings that took place between them or reconstructions of these meetings.) Kiarostami succeeds in both his requests: the nerve he shows in making them – he wants the trial date changed to suit his own film-making schedule rather than for the defendant’s sake – almost eclipses Sabzian’s more desperate effrontery in pretending to be a movie director. At the trial, Kiarostami is allowed not only to sit on the right-hand side of the judge (albeit on a seat at a lower level) but also to put questions to Sabzian and others giving evidence, who include the Ahankhahs and Farazmand.
The trial proceedings are altogether unexpected for Western viewers with (like me) an almost complete ignorance of Iranian judicial procedure of the time. Sensitively incisive questioning of the defendant yields a fuller picture of what prompted his reckless pretence. Sabzian, his accusers and other witnesses sit in close proximity to each other and express themselves temperately. The only blatant emotionality comes from Sabzian’s mother, when she pleads for mercy on behalf of her son – and she too controls her feelings as best she can. The judge’s more sophisticated questions prove him exceptionally well qualified to contribute to Close-up‘s richly textured exploration of appearance vs reality. At one point, interrogating the defendant’s interest in films and acting, Haj Ali Reza Ahmadi asks, ‘What part would you have liked to play?’ When Sabzian replies, ‘My own’, the judge reminds him that ‘You are playing your own part’. Although it’s tempting to describe the trial as an illustration of truth being stranger than fiction, such a description is too primitive in light of the complicated relationship of truth and fiction that Kiarostami develops.
The judge is also sympathetic towards Sabzian, who has no prior criminal record but alimony to pay to his ex-wife, with whom he has a young son. Ahmadi (along with Kiarostami!) asks the Ahankhahs if they’re willing to pardon Sabzian. They agree to do so in the hope that he won’t misbehave again. His sentence is accordingly lenient: a minimum of one month in jail – time that he has already served. He emerges from prison to be met by the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose embrace reduces Sabzian to the tears he just about kept in check in the courtroom. He rides pillion on Makhmalbaf’s motorcycle to the Ahankhahs’ house; they stop en route for Sabzian to buy a flowering plant to present to the family by way of apology and gratitude. The dialogue is audible as Makhmalbaf advises Sabzian to choose a plant with pink flowers rather than yellow but not while they’re on the road. Although his film crew follows the motorcycle all the way, Kiarostami gives Sabzian private time with the man he impersonated by contriving (I guess) a technical hitch that cuts out the sound of their conversation. The film’s funniest line comes when Sabzian uses the intercom on the entrance to the house to announce his arrival. Mrs Ahankhah’s voice answers. Sabzian gives his name, which she doesn’t recognise even when he repeats it. He hasn’t much option but to say ‘Makhmalbaf’. She knows who he is then. The real Makhmalbaf has to intervene to get the family to answer the door.
Midway through Close-up, an extended scene inside the Ahankhahs’ home reconstructs what took place there at the same time that the taxi bearing Farazmand and the soldiers was making its way towards the house to arrest the fraudster. This masterly dramatisation of Sabzian’s rising concern and anxiety – marvellously communicated by the man himself – is painful to watch. When, at the end of the film, he’s allowed back inside the house and a smiling Mr Ahankhah says of Sabzian, ‘I hope he’ll be good now and make us proud of him’, the effect is oddly healing. This is the last line of the film, which ends on a freeze frame of Hossain Sabzian’s face. He died in 2006 at the age of only fifty-two but not the least amazing aspect of Close-up is that it delivers happy endings for all concerned. Cinephile Sabzian, as well as meeting and receiving kindness from his hero Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is truly and centrally involved in the making of a film. To a lesser extent, so are the movie-loving Ahankhah sons and their parents. Newshound Hossain Farazmand gets the big story he was after. And Abbas Kiarostami has created a great piece of cinema.
10 March 2023
