Abbas Kiarostami

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paulofilmo
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by paulofilmo »

djross wrote:Here is the philosopher Bernard Stiegler discussing the film:

http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia20/parrhesia20_stiegler.pdf


This no longer works. I watched CU recently, and wanted help with understanding.

djross
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by djross »

paulofilmo wrote:This no longer works.


That must be quite recent. Not sure if it is really gone or if the site may just be down. If you message me your email address, I can send it to you.

karamazov.
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by karamazov. »

Not sure why Kiarostami's dying hit me so by surprise. Partly it might be that he was a bit older than I had thought, for some reason; perhaps also I was duped by the vitality of what I've seen of his work, including somewhat recent. A very special filmmaker, for sure, even if I have reservations about the much-lauded "Close-Up" ['90]. I remember thinking in passing, maybe just a few days before his passing, that I wondered what he was working on currently.

Part-way into the interview on Janus' site, and also enjoyed reading your book review, Herr Ross. Thanks for posting. I daresay what you described about Iran being kind of an interesting cultural experiment might be not entirely disanalogous to [the lack of] cinema in France during the occupation [which, as we know, was part of the cultural context for the nouvelle vague, and so on].

I guess fortunately for me, I still have quite a lot of his movies left to discover, several of them some of his most celebrated. RIP

djross wrote:
paulofilmo wrote:This no longer works.


That must be quite recent. Not sure if it is really gone or if the site may just be down. If you message me your email address, I can send it to you.

fyi, it's also been archived on the "way back machine": here.

djross wrote:Yes it is true he was one of a kind. One reason, I think, is the long apprenticeship he served in the Iranian children's film unit (just as Bergman served a long apprenticeship in theatre and making his early films). Unlike some directors who may have started out making commercials in the advertising industry, or making music videos, Kiarostami's apprenticeship involved tackling the problem of what cinema is and what it is for, how it can and should relate to the audience, and how to allow young audiences room to interpret the movie without making things too obvious nor treating them as simpletons. The lessons he learned through this unique history and process were different from those learned by other filmmakers, and this perhaps goes some way to understanding the singularly direct yet allusive character of his approach.

Wow, that is really fascinating.

djross
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by djross »

karamazov. wrote:I daresay what you described about Iran being kind of an interesting cultural experiment might be not entirely disanalogous to [the lack of] cinema in France during the occupation [which, as we know, was part of the cultural context for the nouvelle vague, and so on].


Another connection between the New Wave and Kiarostami could be seen in what Stiegler discusses with respect to the protagonist of Close-Up: the (politics of the) desire to get behind the camera. This relates to the New Wave not just because a number of them were critics who became filmmakers but because of the role of filmmakers such as Godard and especially Marker in creating collectives such as the Medvedkin Group with striking factory workers in Besançon, Sochaux and elsewhere.

Trevor Stark discusses this period in detail here: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00083.

A more theoretical discussion by Stiegler on this and related matters is available here (including brief discussions of both Kiarostami and the New Wave): https://www.academia.edu/12692352/Bernard_Stiegler_The_Organology_of_Dreams_and_Arche-Cinema_2013_.

By the way, I'm assured that Parrhesia Journal is only temporarily down.

paulofilmo
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by paulofilmo »

karamazov. wrote:
djross wrote:[If you message me your email address, I can send it to you.

fyi, it's also been archived on the "way back machine": here.


Cheers chaps
x

I liked this so far

Whereas he is reading a book that is the scenario of a film he has seen, with his imagination being the seat of
an experience he has of a work across another work, something happens in Sabzian’s head—something entirely
crazy—which consists in the fact that he tries to pass for Makhmalbaf to see if by doing so he can make Mrs.
Ahankha believe that he is Makhmalbaf—to see if he can make cinema, no doubt to the point of starting to
believe in it himself.


The magic/power of the lie. Like the chair in FA. But the magic of cinema frays for me because CU feels like a Documentary. This is my trouble.

djross
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by djross »

Do documentaries never participate in, or conjure up, what you describe as the magic of cinema? That said, Close-Up is not at all a documentary, even if it contains elements of documentation.

For me, Kiarostami was responsible for the best movie of the year on three occasions: in 1990 with Close-Up, in 1994 with Through the Olive Trees and in 1999 with The Wind Will Carry Us.

VinegarBob
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by VinegarBob »

djross wrote:For me, Kiarostami was responsible for the best movie of the year on three occasions: in 1990 with Close-Up, in 1994 with Through the Olive Trees and in 1999 with The Wind Will Carry Us.


He was also responsible for the best film of 2002: Ten, which is my favourite of all his films.

djross
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by djross »

Rumplesink wrote:the best film of 2002: Ten.


Second best movie of that year for me, after the most un-Kiarostamian film one could ever imagine: Irreversible.

paulofilmo
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by paulofilmo »

I thought of it as a gift for Sabzian: to be a part of film, to act. The film makes me happy for him, this man, in 1990.

djross wrote:Do documentaries never participate in, or conjure up, what you describe as the magic of cinema? That said, Close-Up is not at all a documentary, even if it contains elements of documentation.[/i].


Not so much in the every edit is a lie sense. There's not a lot of conjuring going on. But I understand I'm alone on this (being indifferent to [for example] F For Fake). But I don't want this to become semantic, mainly for the reason that I can't express myself.

dardan
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Re: Abbas Kiarostami

Post by dardan »

Warning: Meandering wall of text. I wanted to write a short paragraph explaining why Close-Up is a masterpiece, but then added another, after which I got distracted onto a completely different line of thought and then another.


paulofilmo wrote: But the magic of cinema frays for me because CU feels like a Documentary. This is my trouble.


I can totally empathize with this sentiment, as in both Close-Up and Through the Olive Trees I felt the same for a long time. My review for that latter film:

Halfway through, when it based on the plot provided at that point seems to be a rather dull exercise in film, Kiarostami shifts a piece and reveals his master plan. The first, second and third film are respectively about the relationship between child and elder, community and man and woman, each determined by social norms, passion and a queeste which has every character channeling the spirit of those in the other parts, effectively taking part in the same meta-narrative again, again and again


In both Close-Up and Through the Olive Trees he spends a lot of time setting up the pieces without yet applying or putting them into the dynamic both films have received critical acclaim for. If you have seen Bergman's Persona, though he makes use of the concept in his other films as well, then you know he states people have different modes of being called persona's, whose activation depends on context but which, as Close-Up proves, are again deconstructable into multiple structures as well. In that way Sabzian not only brings that theory to life, but also adds resolution to it.

Now, here's the thing. The reason why this translates into that trilogy and Close-Up being a masterpiece isn't for that message, but how he conveyed it. He knew exactly what he was doing in both Close-Up and his trilogy, which as a viewer you can tell through the smallest things: the length with which he stays on someones face, the pauses, the way in which he overlays or builds things upon previous footage.

I touched on this in my review for 'Where is the Friends Home?':

Considering the most important things pertaining to hope, symbolized by the flower, but also its general vision of virtue, vice and community have already been touched upon, I'd like to expand on a more minor element, namely its contrivances. Surprisingly, these not only not grate, but actually work in its favour, perhaps because Kiarostami is so forthcoming and open in using them: having the kid repeat a line, unheard by the adults or framing them out of the screen.


I'm not sure where I got it from, but I believe it was Marx who once wrote that the extent to which a person is able to abstract principles from concrete fact is the extent to which a person is free. In Close-Up, the persona Sabzian constructed for himself is abstracted to a ridiculous degree by Kiarostami. Any good film makes use of such abstraction, because it by implication creates another level on which the film can operate. The very best films are able to pretty much have another discussion on that abstracted level or even take it to another level (e.g. The Face of Another). In Close-Up, these facets of Sabzian interacts with other facets of Sabzian, with these facets of Sabzian themselves being retraceable to a ton of other things.

In the end he turns out to be nothing more than a simple man who, in light of his poverty and meaningless life resulting from the Iranian revolution, can't even prevent the simple falsehood he so 'honestly' tried to persuade others of from collapsing into tragedy. He is a man of vice and a man who has committed criminal acts trying to pass himself off as an honest fraud hoping to get forgiveness with his seemingly forthcoming attitude, yet still you can't help but feel sorry for him.

-----

This is so incredibly far from being a fully exhaustive account of why Close-Up is a masterpiece that I am actually amazed at how much can be said about it.

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