Chicago – Abbas Kiarostami’s 1990 masterpiece, “Close-Up,” is the type of cinematic landmark guaranteed to infuriate audiences and exhilarate film scholars. Yet adventurous viewers willing to look beneath the film’s perplexing and rather stilted surface will discover a multi-layered mind-game of endless fascination that’s more provocative and relevant than ever.
Any viewer unschooled in the history of Iranian cinema shouldn’t be frightened away from exploring this picture, especially since the Criterion edition of “Close-Up” includes a wealth of informative and addictive special features (we’ll get to those later). It’s difficult to over-estimate the film’s importance in post-revolution Iran, where the work of auteurs like Mohsen Makhmalbaf was largely ignored by the mainstream public. Kiarostami’s real-life human subject, often filmed in probing yet mystifying close-ups, is Hossein Sabzian, a devout film lover who passed himself off as the director Makhmalbaf.
Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0
Though this true...
Any viewer unschooled in the history of Iranian cinema shouldn’t be frightened away from exploring this picture, especially since the Criterion edition of “Close-Up” includes a wealth of informative and addictive special features (we’ll get to those later). It’s difficult to over-estimate the film’s importance in post-revolution Iran, where the work of auteurs like Mohsen Makhmalbaf was largely ignored by the mainstream public. Kiarostami’s real-life human subject, often filmed in probing yet mystifying close-ups, is Hossein Sabzian, a devout film lover who passed himself off as the director Makhmalbaf.
Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0
Though this true...
- 7/1/2010
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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