Close-Up

In the first twenty minutes of Close-Up, we find out about a man named Sabzian who has impersonated a famous Iranian filmmaker maybe to con a wealthy family, about a journalist who hopes that breaking the impersonator story will make him famous,  about a wealthy family's dreams of fame and the movies, about a taxi-cab driver who never goes to the movies and we watch a (now famous) empty spray paint can as it rolls down the hill.  As it rolls away from the camera, the camera stays still and the world opens up around it.  We see autumn colors, random passers-by, we notice the neighborhood and we can't stop watching the can and wondering how long it will continue. 

Kiarostami made this film based on a real story by inviting the actual people to play themselves again and the reality he (re)creates is so convincing, so ordinary, so simple, and yet so attuned to beauty and story and humanity that it changes us. 

The close-up shots in the film are mesmerizing, but for me the title refers more to a statement about how a movie can position us so close to something true that we cannot help but be changed by it. 

The thing that I am valuing today is:  stories (movies, books) that use formal innovations to explode our expectations in ways that both derail and re-create our reality.  

(Thank you, Abbas Kiarostami!)