30 from the 90's (Post 13 of 30)
Close-Up (1990)
One of the reasons that I am trying to look at everything on the 1001 list is to watch films that I would have never come across otherwise. Close-Up is a story of a con man named Sabzian (who looks like former Iranian President Mahmoud Abdojinizad to me) who poses as the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf to trick a family into making a film about them. I guess that’s all he really wanted, though the family he deals with do question whether burglary might be an additional motive. The odd part about this film (inspired by an article in the newspaper that director Abbas Klarostami read) is that the roles in this film are recreated by the actual con man and the actual family involved! Fiction and re-creation meet here in a really strange way. The real Mohsen Makhmalbaf even has a small part (as himself, of course) towards the end of the film. It has been noted that there are hints of Rashoman, the neo-realists, the deconstructionist cinema of Godard and the alternating points of view of Robert Altman all here. I admit I’ve never seen anything quite like this before, and think it's a very welcome edition to the 1001 book.
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