Close-Up

1990, 100 minutes, docudrama, directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Iran
I just watched Close-Up, a documdrama by the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. It tells the story of Ali Sabzian (who looks a lot like Mahmood Ahmadinejad, the current president of Iran) who on a whim tells a woman sitting next to him on a bus that he is his favorite film director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. This one-off lie becomes an elaborate deception when the woman, the matriarch of middle-class family, brings the scruffy and sporadically employed Sabzian home and introduces him as Makhmalbaf. From there Sabzian pretends to cast one of her sons in his next film and scouts the house for upcoming shoots.

Kiarostami shoots the trial of the real-life Sabzian in which the family he duped sues him for fraud and "attempted fraud." It's then we find out that the would-be movie star son has given Sabzian 1900 tomans (around $237 US dollars, according to an unofficial source from 2005--hey, I don't have the staff of The New York Times at my disposal. If I did I'd be writing fairy tales about WMD in Iraq, but I digress). Kiarostami also uses the real Sabzian and real members of the family to re-create the scene in which Sabzian first encountered the woman on the bus and some of Sabzian's subsequent visits to her home. He briefly interviews the family and in one hilarious scene the father explains that he knew all along that Sabzian was an impostor, but went along "as a lesson for the children."

It's in Sabzian's eloquent defense of himself at trial that he becomes a sympathetic character. I'm tempted to call him an anti-hero, but he seems too sensitive to warrant that label. He speaks movingly about his love of Makhmalbaf's films and his passion for "art and film." He also talks about the hardship of living at the weak end of the socio-economic spectrum. The economic distress of the society at large is hinted at in an earlier scene when the unemployed, but college-educated son of the taken family talks of his brother who despite being trained as an engineer works at a bakery. It's easy to see Sabzian as a artist whose vision has been thwarted by social inequities and political failures and one understands why he was so easily intoxicated by the respect the family accords him simply for renaming himself--but then there's the 1900 tomans.

Like all Kariostami's movies (or at least the three others that I've seen) this film has a quiet, thoughtful quality about it and the rough-hewn production values add a starkness that seems to cast the characters and story in sharper relief. After the trial the real-life Mohsen Makhmalbaf picks Sabzian up at the courthouse on his motorbike. I really want to know what happen to this guy.