Abbas Kiarostami | کلوزآپ ، نمای نزدیک‎‎ (Klūzāp, nemā-ye nazdīk), (Close-Up) / 1990

you oughta been in pictures

by Douglas Messerli

Abbas Kiarostami (screenwriter and director) کلوزآپ ، نمای نزدیک‎‎ (Klūzāp, nemā-ye nazdīk), (Close-Up) / 1990

 

Abbas Kiarostami’s 1990 film Close-Up begins simply enough. A journalist has hired a taxi and, along with two policemen, makes a visit to the pleasant home of the Akankhah family. After the journalist enters alone, he returns to the taxi, and, joined by the policemen, returns to the house where they arrest Hossain Sabzian.

      Given the horrors about Iranian state arrests we often hear told in the West, the incident seems almost comical. What is the relationship between the  journalist, Hossain Farazmand, and the two young policemen, and who is this timid man, Sabzian, who have they just quietly arrested? On camera, incidentally, all the figures are played by themselves. Has the film’s director, Kiarostami, also tagged along with these men, or is this a film segment made “after the fact?”

       The rest of the film, primarily through the scenes of Sabzian’s trial—which again Kiarostami is filming, after he has convinced a judge that he should be able to document it (the only oddest thing about Iranian justice is the strange liaisons made between the police and others)—which reveals Sabzian’s almost inconsequential crime.

       Again, in a scene apparently shot in retrospect, we see the accidental bus meeting between Sabzian and Mrs. Akankhah. A near-encyclopedic cinephile, Sabzian is reading the script of popular Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The Cyclist. (He was also a fan of the films of Lars von Triers, it was revealed after his death). When Mrs. Akankhah expresses interest in the script—she has been taken to the movie by her two film-loving sons—Sabzian tells her that he, himself, is the director; he quickly signs the book for her and gives it to her as a gift, promising, after he procures her address, to visit her cinema-loving family.

      After a few days, he does appear at their home, enchanting the sons and her daughter, and promising them to try to film a movie, using them as actors. Who wouldn’t be delighted? The two brothers, both engineers by education, have been unable to find work in the current Iranian economy, one of them now heading a bakery company; but what these brothers truly desire is careers in film, and now one of Iran’s greatest directors seems to be offering just that possibility.

      Sabzian promises to return again, borrowing, from one of the brothers, 1,900 tomans for the taxi home, claiming he has forgotten to bring his billfold. If anything, the family is charmed by the director’s absent-mindedness.

      Soon after, however, Mr. Akankhah, begins to suspect that Sabzian is a fraud; yet still the family puts him up for a night. Sabzian’s next visit to the house, however, is the one we have witnessed in the first scene, wherein the poor dreamer is arrested for fraud.

      After the Akankhahs quietly lay out in detail how they have been defrauded, the judge asks Sabzian for his own version of the events. With Kiarostami’s focusing in on a close-up of his face, the handsome young man (who does, indeed look something like the real Makhmalbaf) describes how much that director’s films have meant to him, and how The Cyclist, in particular, has made him feel that he and his class are not completely ignored: “For me, art is the experience of what you’ve felt inside.” Although he has never made such an assertion before, the temporary belief that he was a man of importance instead of a destitute being who cannot even buy his own children food, made him feel like a real human being, a man of importance, who could make decisions about his own life instead of being subject to the entire society’s whims.

      What is even more startling—as the young identity-thief speaks of his life of poverty and dreams, about which the audience can only be moved—is his revelation that what he truly would like to have been was an actor. But, of course, he is now being a kind of actor, with Kiarostami’s camera framing his face with a close-up that Nora Desmond would have died for.

      With the agreement of the Akankhah family, the judge releases him, and with the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Sabzian returns to the Akankhah home to apologize for his deceit, the great Iranian director (being filmed by the now great Iranian director Kiarostami) hugging the would-be actor/director rather imperiously proclaiming: "I hope he'll be good now and make us proud of him."

      In a sense, of course, Kiarostami’s camera, which has so carefully recorded Sabzian’s own defense, has already made us “proud” of him, as we have been enchanted by what we now perceive as his truth-telling and his own humility. And by the end of this mesmerizing film, it is difficult to determine who, precisely, is manipulating who. Has the society, which has not lived up to its promises, forced young dreamers like the Akankhah brothers to desperately seek out any possible “breaks” in the walls of inopportunity that surround them? Is Makhmalbaf, by agreeing to be in Kiarostami’s film, simply taking advantage of a desperate liar, who desired to be someone other than himself? Is Kiarostami, himself, leaping into the fray simply to transform a simple case of identity fraud into a statement about his own narrative concerns? Is there really any future in this world for someone like Hossain Sabzian?

      After a few months of attention, Sabzian was basically forgotten; strangely just before his death at age 52, he had attempted to act in another documentary about his life, but he collapsed in the Metro on his way to the interview, and died a few days later in a coma. Kiarostami, when he saw his own movie again, years later, admitted that he couldn’t sleep for several days, and was disturbed by his own intrusion into Sabzian’s life. This docu-drama remains, however, a forever haunting statement about how film inherently is a necessary space where dreamers cannot separate themselves from the dreams they desire.

 

Los Angeles, April 10, 2017

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2017).

Abbas Kiarostami | خانه دوست کجاست‎‎ (Khane-ye doust kodjast) Where Is the Friend’s Home? / 1987

over there

by Douglas Messerli

 

Abbas Kiarostami (screenwriter and director) خانه دوست کجاست‎‎ (Khane-ye doust kodjast) Where Is the Friend’s Home? / 1987

 

Like many of Abbas Kiarostami works, Where Is the Friend’s Home? (I prefer the translation, Where Is My Friend’s House?) has the slightest of plots. A young boy, Mohamed Reda Nematzadeh (Ahmed Ahmedpour) gets into trouble in school when he shows up for the second time with his homework missing in his notebook. The teacher tells him that next time he will be expelled, and the young child breaks into uncontrollable tears, much to the disconcertion of his fellow classmates, particularly Mohamed’s friend, Ahmed (Babek Ahmedpour).

      Mohamed, from the outlying village of Koker, is often late arriving at school, and we immediately know that in the very isolation of the village he must suffer other difficulties as well.

      Indeed, we gradually perceive, all of these children must take on responsibilities at home that, despite their parents’ insistence that they do their homework, makes it difficult for them to achieve. Even Ahmed, living in a middle-class home, is forced to help with his mother’s new baby, tending to its needs and rocking the child whenever it cries. He also is expected to daily go out to purchase the family’s bread. When he finally settles down to do his homework, he discovers that he has accidentally also taken home his friend’s notebook home, the fact of which he attempts to explain to his parents, who refuse to listen. Accordingly, Ahmed goes on his own journey to faraway Koker to find his friend and return his notebook.

      The significance of this film is his pluck and determination to find Mohamed in a world which seems to have no real streets and in which houses are hidden.

      An early passerby tells the boy that Mohamed lives “over there” in the house with the blue door. But the boy (and the camera that follows him) has no concept of where “over there” might be, as if it might be a Samuel Beckett stage direction; and many of the houses he does find have blue doors.

       Indeed, before film’s end, doors and windows become a kind of subtheme in this work, as Ahmed later meets a door and window maker, who also has difficulty in telling him where his friend’s family lives, despite his declaration that he has made most the doors and windows for the houses in the village.

       When Ahmed finally seems to have found the right house, there is no one home. Another family invites him in to share their dinner, and there he finally does the homework assignment in his friend’s notebook in order to save the boy from being expelled.

       What we perceive is that these children, encouraged as they are to become educated, are being abused by parents who are quick to involve them in adult duties. Certainly, there is no playtime allowed in their world.

        Yet, the children seem obedient and uncomplaining. If nothing else, they are a hardy lot, proven, quite simply, by the long voyage Ahmed undergoes for his friend’s sake. And the caring and loyalty these two boys show for one another gives strong evidence to their moral values. Despite the seeming harshness of their lives, the director suggests, their parents have somehow imbued them with lessons of civic duty and instilled in them a need to be responsible for their acts. Indeed, Ahmed’s late-evening voyage is an act almost of heroism, where he has been willing to enter a strange new land in search of his suffering friend to save him. Without an education, we must remember, there will be no successful future for this village boy.

      In the end, accordingly, we do not feel the necessity of judging either the parents or the two boys, but simply join the boy on his voyage, observing the very different worlds into the film  takes us. Both adults and children live somewhat harsh lives in this isolated section of Iran, which makes it all the more amazing that these children want to learn, even if the method of rote recitation might be questionable as the best method of education.

     Kiarostami obviously became enchanted with the mysterious Koker, where things seem to go up and down rather than spiral out into orderly streets and avenues, and he devoted his next two films, And Live Goes On and Through the Olive Trees to the same northern Iran village, creating what critics have described as his Koker trilogy.

 

Los Angeles, March 21, 2017

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2017).

Piero Messina | L’attesa (The Wait) / 2015, USA 2016

waiting on the dead

by Douglas Messerli

 

Giacomo Bendotti, Ilaria Macchia, Andrea Paolo Massara, and Piero Messina (based on the play La vita che ti diedi by Luigi Pirandello), Piero Messina (director) L’attesa (The Wait) / 2015, USA 2016

 

In the very midst of a funeral for her son, Giuseppe, grieving Anna (Juliette Binoche) receives a telephone message: her son’s girlfriend, Jeanne (Lou de Laâge) has just arrived in Sicily to be with her lover. Instead of sending the poor girl packing, Anna dispatches her servant out to pick her up, while friends and relatives gather in the darkened villa to mourn.

      Arriving in the midst of the gathering, Jeanne seems to have no comprehension as to what might be going on. Straining credulity, director Piero Messina simply provides her a room and the handyman’s explanation that Anna is not feeling well.

      The following morning Anna explains that it was her brother who has died, the first of many lies she tells the innocent girl. But the worst of her lies, which both her sister-in-law and handyman cannot forgive her, is that Giuseppe is simply not there yet, and will probably return in time for Easter celebrations.

      So begins Messina’s beautiful and somewhat haunting film, where, for reasons of her own, Anna keeps the young Jeanne on in her villa, cooking for her and even for two local boys whom Jeanne casually encounters in the nearby lake.

      In part, of course, the truly devastated mother simply must have someone young around her, and by entrapping his son’s girlfriend she clearly, psychologically speaking, believes that she still controls a part of Giuseppe’s life. If her refusal to face the truth is, at first, rather unbelievable, we gradually come to perceive the kind of Oedipal relationship she had with her son, as Binoche stunningly peers off into space, sucks the air out of a small inflated sunbed (presumably her son had blown up the piece with his own breath) and, finally, even has delusions of Giuseppe’s existence in the bathtub and of him joining her for the Easter festivities in the nearby village.

      Some of this, admittedly, seems to be merely confusing for the uninitiated viewer, but, of course, that same confusion washes over Jeanne, who repeatedly describes in her telephone calls, attempting to reach her missing boyfriend, that his mother is “odd.”

     Anna is far more than odd, of course, as, at moments, the film, loosely based on a play by Luigi Pirandello, veers towards the kind of haunted tale wherein the young heroine is being toyed with by a lunatic. Indeed, when Anna attempts to tell Jeanne another half-truth, that her son is not coming back and has gone away permanently, she suggests that the girl herself is responsible, that he has left because of “what happened last summer.” Clearly, Anna has been listening in to her son’s telephonic messages.

      We never do find out what really happened to the couple “last summer,” nor do we ever discover the cause of Giuseppe’s death. But we can conjecture that Jeanne may have been temporarily unfaithful and that Giuseppe, perhaps entrapped in the extremely close relationship with his mother, committed suicide. Obviously such conjectures are beside the point. Messina brilliantly keeps us guessing. But such imaginative explanations might at least explain some of the extreme grief we see in Anna’s lovely face. But at the same time, in slowing down the film to near stasis, we cannot help, like the girl, but become restless and impatience with all the mystery. Even the girl’s daily swims have the languorous look of a drowning instead of a refreshing dive into those lovely waters.

       Through the handyman’s help—he purposely places Anna’s pocket phone within reach of the girl—Jeanne finally does uncover the mother’s own pleas to her son to pick up the phone and respond, presumably after he was already dead.

       Jeanne, predictably, is quite destroyed by the discovery; but as she turns to leave this “odd” woman, she nonetheless forgives her for her behavior with a deep embracement of love. The visit has turned her from an innocent waif into a mature woman, who obviously will behave less casually in the future. Certainly, she will never again make a surprise trip to a future lover’s home.

 

Los Angeles, May 2, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2, 2016).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul | Rak Ti Khon Kaen (Cemetery of Splendor) / 2015, USA limited 2016

the sleeping soldiers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul (screenwriter and director) Rak Ti Khon Kaen (Cemetery of Splendor) / 2015, USA limited 2016

 

Unlike most Hollywood films, Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s works, particularly his most recent, Cemetery of Splendor, is told in something close to layers, each level building up a more and more complex story that finally spills over into mystery and fantasy.

     Cemetery begins quite simply with a totally realist sound and image of a caterpillar tractor digging into the earth before the camera moves indoors nearby where we discover an old school which has been converted into a local and, evidently, badly supplied hospital. We never are actually told why the caterpillar is digging—although it is hinted that there may be an ancient city buried beneath the school yard—and we only gradually discover that this hospital has been filled with soldiers that have contracted some strange sleeping illness from which some only occasionally and temporarily awake.      To help with the doctoring and nursing some locals volunteer their help, the most notable of them being a lame woman, Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas Widner), whose one leg is far shorter than the other and is forced to carry a wooden block and crutches to get around. She picks one young soldier, Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), for whom she cooks and rubs a balm sensuously over his body (in a scene very similar to one she enacted in Weerasethakul’s earlier film, Tropical Malady). Although this outpost facility seemingly has few medicines, it is sent a series of lighting fixtures which change colors throughout the night, evidently—so the Americans claim—helping the sleeping soldiers to be free of bad dreams and supposedly working to heal them. One the most fascinating of images in this often quite static film, in fact, are these glowingly strange penile rods hovering over the sleeping men’s beds.

       The local families of Khon Kaen also occasionally visit their ailing sons, consulting a kind of live-in medium Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), who purportedly calls up the soldier’s previous and current lives to these family members. But she may also be a kind of FBI agent attempting to find more about the soldier’s activities. Clearly the Thai government is puzzled by and afraid of the complications of their sleeping illness.

      Itt has with him a book which he has evidently written, a strange diary filled aphorisms, greetings (“Hello”), and complex drawings, which may or may not represent the secret ancient constructions beneath the surrounding earth. Certainly Keng believes that’s what they are, and channeling Itt, even takes Jenjira on a tour of the palace rooms as they walk across the grounds. Although Weerasethakul never actually shows us this “cemetery of splendor,” he still, amazingly, is able to convince us of its existence.

     And Itt, quite remarkably, does awaken after Jenjira’s loving ministrations, although he soon  falls asleep again at a local movie theater, and later in the midst of lunch with Jenjira. We never are able to discern whether he or any of the others might ever be cured of their illness.

    Perhaps in a world which will not admit to its own brutal and violent pasts, there can be no cure; and clearly this film offers numerous other clues that something is permanently amiss. Although seemingly rationally stable, Jenjira nonetheless does visit a local shrine overseen by two beautiful women manikins, who later appear at the hospital as living beings (Sjittraporn Wongsrikeaw and Bhattaratorn Skenraigul) who thank her for her symbolic gifts and claim to be thousands of years old. Jenjira, we discover in this same scene, is also living with a poor American, who has sold everything to remain in Thailand. Everything is something other than it originally seems.

      Early in the film, we see one of the hospital’s doctors examining a local who is infected with stomach worms; but the hospital has no medicine to cure him. And throughout the movie, local residents seem to behave strangely, gathering at water’s edge to observe the city skyline across, only to impulsively switch seats with one another again and again as if playing musical chairs. At film’s end Jenjira sits, open-eyed, watching young boys playing soccer across the dug-up field that may one day also put them into a state of permanent forgetfulness.

      As in all of this director’s films, Weerasethakul offers no simple answers or solutions. Yet, as Justin Chang has written, to call his pictures “difficult,” is to miss the point. He simply keeps gradually revealing possibilities and truths throughout each movie, as I repeat, layering them with details that keep altering the realities around his figures—much the way life is truly lived. The rational and magic, dream and wide-eyed experience, life and death all co-exist in Weersethakul’s cinematic worlds.

 

Los Angeles, October 2, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2016).

Euros Lyn | Heartstoppers: Meet / 2022 [Season 1, Episode 1]

disenchantment and delight

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alice Oseman (screenwriter), Euros Lyn (director) Heartstoppers “Meet” / 2022 [27 minutes]

[Season 1, Episode 1] 

Returning to Truham Grammar School, Charlie Spring (Joe Locke) is excited to pick up again on his last school year’s romance with Ben Hope (Sebastian Croft), and as he enters the school he rushes immediately to the empty library—which we soon discover has been one of Charlie’s favorite places to hang out. But although Ben as told Charlie to meet him there, he’s a no-show, texting that should meet at the break instead.

    Accordingly, Charlie trudges off to his new classroom with somewhat of a heavy heart. That is, until he assigned a seat next to the very cute Nick Nelson (Kit Connor), one of the most popular boys in the school and the star rugby player of Year 11. Nick, so his teach explains, is a year older than Charlie.

     Charlie begins his walk through the crowded classroom more than a little downhearted. But once he gets a glimpse of the ruddy faced cutey, he literally stops in his tracks, as, for the first time since the film has begun, a smile crosses his face. Both a bit shy, particularly Charley, they share the profound greetings of “Hi.”

     Soon after he finally meets up with Ben, both briefly discussing their Christmas breaks before getting down to business, kisses exchanged. But almost as quickly Ben leaves the music room, Charlie left a bit confused and miffed by their awfully brief encounter.

      Meanwhile, in the school halls, Charlie and Nick continue to run into each other, each time greeting the other with the simple word “Hi.” But the word grows warmer and friendlier each time to say it until, after the 4th instance, they find that they’re both walking down the hall together to the same room. Nick seems to be doing his homework in the process, and Charlie is perfectly ready to tell him the answer. Yet Nick’s replay, “But then I won’t learn,” says something profoundly deep about him already this early in the series. Although he may be a jock, he is serious about his education and is not seeking the easy way out of his lessons.

      Yet a moment or two later they encounter Ben walking the other way, Charlie greeting him. To his astonishment Ben answers: “Why are you talking to me. I don’t even know who you are.”

     Ben, however, speaks to Nick. Charlie asks if he’s friends with Ben, and Nick says that since they’re in the same year they sometimes “hang out” together. But Nick clearly perceives there’s something wrong about the situation.

      At lunch, Charlie hangs out with his friends Tao and Isaac, but Tao is frustrated since yet again, for the second day in a row, he bought another bottle of apple juice for their friend Elle, who’s now attending an all-girl’s school since, apparently having announced the previous school year that “he” was now a “she,” Elle having evidently become transgender. She had been a regular part of their little group of Truham outsiders.

      In the midst of Tao’s complaint that their group has become simply a trio, he notices that Charlie’s eyes are focused on the nearby court in which Nick is heavily engaged with several other boys in a half rugby, half wrestling match. Tao wonders what sitting next Nick, Charlie and he might even talk about, but Charlie enthusiastically proclaims they do talk, recalling a particular event when Nick’s pen exploded blue ink across his own hands and shirt. But Tao warns him against Nick insisting that “He’s exactly like the guys who bullied you last year.” But Charlie declares, “He’s different. He’s nice.” It’s apparent that Tao is also afraid of their dwindling “group” turning into a duo with just him and the overweight, asexual, basically uncommunicative Isaac.

      Tao interrupts the conversation as he finally hears from Elle (Yasmin Finney) at Higgs Girls School, telling her about Charlie’s new infatuation with a rugby player. Elle plays up her new school as being better than Truham, texting to Tao that “everyone is really nice,” but we notice she sits alone, and when Tao asks if she’s made new friends, we realize that she is lonely and lost. Throughout this first episode, we watch Elle finally develop a friend in Tara Jones (Corinna Brown) and her girlfriend Darcy Olsson (Kizzy Edgell), allowing her find her own matching “trio” the outsider boys at Truham.

      But it quickly gets worse for Tao, when, after observing Charlie to be a fast runner in track, Nick invites his new friend to join the rugby team, and after some thought and Tao’s protests, Charlie agrees. Nick has explained that they have enough players for the team, but they’re not allowed to play with a reserve. But joining up with the team, requires Nick to show the basics of rugby to Charlie, and they now spend a great many hours together after school and even in their breaks.

      Tao and Isaac attempt to talk him out of it, but with no success. And Charlie continues, even when he overhears Nick’s fellow rugby players question the wisdom of including a gay boy on the team. “Does he even like sports?”

     Meanwhile, as Charlie discusses his sexual situation with the unnamed Ben with the gay sympathetic art teacher Mr. Ajayi (Fisayo Akinade), it becomes increasingly apparent to him that he needs to breakup with his clandestine boyfriend. Indeed, his decision is made even clearer when he sees Ben with a girl, the two of them holding hands and kissing. That night in bed, he texts Ben, telling him that he wants to break up.

       Now for the first time he and Nick have actual physical contact, as his friend demands he try to tackle him, etc. And gradually Charlie is brought into the rugby huddle, becoming one of the team even if his job remains to stand watching the others play the game. And at the same time, through tosses and tackles, we see Nick warming up in ways he can’t quite explain to Charlie’s presence.

       Ben insists, however, that he and Charlie need to talk after school in the music room, a meeting to which Charlie hesitantly agrees to. Nick happens to watch him enter the music room after classes, and follows out of curiosity.

       When Charlie refuses to let him kiss him, Ben insists that he’s obviously scared of getting caught, which is how he also how explains Charlie’s insistence that they break up. Charlie points out, however, that everyone in school knows he’s gay, and that it’s obviously Ben who’s afraid of being found out. Charlie explains how hurt he was about the hallway incident and that Ben has not even told him about his girlfriend.

       Ben insists that he’s just not yet ready to “come out,” that he’s “figuring out his sexuality.” But Charlie vehemently insists that it’s not that. If it were just matter of figuring things out, he would have been there for him, of all people he’s someone who knows how it feels. What’s hurt Charlie is that Ben has never cared about his feelings. They meet up when Ben wants to, where he wants, when Ben feels like kissing a boy.

        Ben’s answer is the final bullet to the heart: “Well, it’s not like anyone else will want to go out with you, is it?” And despite Charlie’s refusals to be kissed, Ben pushes him against the wall to pour kisses upon him. Suddenly Nick’s hand pulls Ben off of his friend. “He told you to stop. Go on, piss off.”

      When Nick asks Charlie if he’s okay, his friend asks “Did you hear all that?” Yes, Nick admits, most of it. Charlie apologizes, but Nick reassures him that he has nothing to be sorry for. One can see Charlie’s total appreciation, even his admiration registering on his face. But Nick interrupts by telling him “Don’t say it.”

        The two move off in their different directions to their homes. But something has clearly happened between them, a new level in their friendship attained. As they each move off in their own direction, Charlie turns back to look, his now famous smile coming over his face again.

     We see Nick being driven home by his mother, barely responding to her questions about his practice, with obviously something much more serious on his mind.

        At the bus stop, Charlie tries to text Nick to thank him, but can’t quite find the right words.

        Finally, Nick’s phone rings, we reading Charlie’s message over his shoulder: “Thank you x.”

        And there is now a slight grin on Nick’s face as well.

 

Los Angeles, September 28, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).