Blog 4 - Close Up and docufiction.

This week we discussed the concept of docufiction and watched an example of one in Abbas Kiarostami’s Close Up. The nature of this genre is an interesting look into the very complexity of the medium of the documentary and on a closer look, I find that it says more about documentaries then some actual documentaries do.

Kiarostami set out to make the movie after reading an article written by the journalist portrayed in the first moments of the film. He was then given permission to film the court proceedings of Hossain Sabzian, who was being accused of fraud in an attempt to impersonate Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

This film is considered a classic and a masterpiece of world cinema. I think it plays a very important look at the inner workings of documentary as well as the complexity of truth itself.

In the film we see a man who is impersonating another man, all the while the film is impersonating a documentary. It has many scenes ripped straight out of reality while also reconstructing past scenes, with people playing themselves. This to me is an expert move in the central theme of artifice. I think the film shows truth by obscuring it. The entire point is to lean back and think “wait a minute, was that real?” and by doing that you do the same thing to the world beyond that. I think documentary serves to have a point and build evidence around it. Is it bad documentary making to include dramatizations? To have a title sequence? To put the director in the event, therefore changing it? The nature of the documentary is to use reality as your paintbrush, and I think Close Up does a really good job of this.

            The style of this film helps put ourselves in the place of Hossain and his fraud. Watching this we are compelled to think that, just like him, we impersonate every day, whether it be someone else or others reflection of ourselves. The style of this film lends itself very clearly to that.