Close-Up

“Factories lack raw materials. How can they hire anyone?” “A director can’t be poor… he can’t wake up to find there’s not a crumb to feed his family.” “I feel the urge to shout to the world the anguish of my soul, the torments I’ve experienced, all my sorrows—but no one wants to hear about them.” This thing is one big fucking onion that necessitates so much peeling, so much thought and consideration (for the viewer and the makers) on so many different levels of the film. But here’s a scattered ass response anyways: Artists are not singular, and in fact are a major part in what binds the fabric of our reality together. This and the Taste of Cherry are such gorgeous rejections of the egoist, external filmmaker to the point that Kiarostami himself is written into each. He found the balance between Tolstoy’s internal turmoil becoming conveyed as art and understanding the context and material conditions that predate the art so beautifully. This is all placed behind a political backdrop where western, colonial embargo looms, and is centered in class struggle where both topics don’t just limit the material resources of the suppressed and exploited working class; the ruling, capitalist class in their exploitation also limits the material artistic aspirations of the proletariat, making the artist a privileged class, typically of privileged means, that necessitates the blood money of capitalist patrons to produce art. SPOILERS I’m saying that^^ in thinking abt the sons of the rich family having tangible, yet obviously privileged, aspirations in film and looking down upon well-paid managerial positions while the life of the poor ’scammer’ can only become the scrutinized, exploited subject of a work (which interestingly somewhat implicates Kiarostami as apart of this bourgeois, patron-backed class). The subject of this film saw the literally walled-off aristocrats that represented what kept him from his dreams and simply acted, but the act of fooling them reflected his desire to be a transcendent artist, and not one rooted in reality. Not saying that to criticize the subject’s actions. He’s pretty damn justified given his conditions, and the film’s position agrees. Still, this is just such a profound and nuanced adaptation of the story that leaves no stone unturned while still feeling inadvertent in its stone-turning process. The subject felt more dignified being someone he was not, felt happier, and even anticipated going to put on this facade. That really tore me up, especially after his mother is introduced to the story… lot of waterworks near and at the end of this one. Speaking of the ending… incredibly uplifting even though I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why right when it ended. It almost feels Nietzschean in the sense that each character seemingly accepts the eternal return of the same in that final scene, returning to be apart of each other’s lives despite what happened, with the aim of making the differences that lie between the sameness of return as fruitful as possible for each of them collectively. Even though the family’s actions (mostly the sons) near the end seem to be bare minimum in the class solidarity regard, that “I hope he will make us proud of him” from the father at the end made me bawl.