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A Bakhtin Reading of Kiarostami's Film Close-up

Azadeh Saljooghi a
a
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Online Publication Date: 01 June 2008

To cite this Article Saljooghi, Azadeh(2008)'A Bakhtin Reading of Kiarostami's Film Close-up',Critique: Critical Middle Eastern
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 Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies
Vol. 17, No. 2, 189–200, Summer 2008

A Bakhtin Reading of Kiarostami’s Film

Close-up
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AZADEH SALJOOGHI
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

We can never get close to the truth except through lying.

Abbas Kiarostami1

In this article I argue that the 1990 film Close-up2 by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami
is a site to understand and expand on ‘heteroglossia’3, a term coined by Mikhail Bakhtin4
to describe diversity and variety of ‘voices’ in literature. The cinematic discourse of
Kiarostami allows one to apply heteroglossia to the image world and illustrate alternative
possibilities emerging from a fantasy world that otherwise is non-existent.
In the late 1980s, Hossein Sabzian, a divorced and unemployed print-worker, was
arrested in Tehran, Iran, for impersonating Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a renowned film
director. Sabzian convinced the affluent Ahankhah family that he was Makhmalbaf.
Kiarostami, another distinguished Iranian filmmaker and screenwriter, who read the news
in the weekly magazine Soroosh, was fascinated by the story and decided to recreate the
incident in his groundbreaking film Close-up (Nama-ye nazdik). Similar to a ‘close-up’
shot that emphasizes an object or a character’s features in order to provide sympathy or
skepticism, Close-up, too, bestows a symbolic view of post-war Iran. By 1990, two years
had passed since the end of the war between Iran and Iraq,5 a war that had diverted the
constructive efforts of post-revolutionary Iran to the devastation of combat. The long war
made the demonstrations and mass riots of 1978– 79 that toppled the Pahlavi regime and
ended the US presence in Iran seem fruitless, as the hope for basic human rights—

Correspondence Address: Azadeh Saljooghi, Department of Communication, University of Utah, 255 S. Central
Dr., LNCO 2400, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 USA. Email: azadeh.saljooghi@utah.edu
1
Zeitgeist Films (2000). Available at http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com.
2
A docudrama based on a real story (100 minutes). In Abbas Kiarostami, Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa argues that Close-
Up is fundamental in defining kiarostami’s cinematic style and that this film changed the course of Iranian
cinema. See M. Saeed-Vafa & J. Rosenbaum Abbas Kiarostami (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003).
3
For more on Bakhtin’s concepts, theories, and their application to culture, film, and mass media see Robert
Stam, Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press, 1989).
4
1895–1975.
5
1980–88.
ISSN 1066-9922 Print/1473-9666 Online/08/020189-12 q 2008 Editors of Critique
DOI: 10.1080/10669920802172379
 190 A. Saljooghi

employment, health, education, and freedom—became inaccessible dreams. Nonetheless,

as the war dragged on, Iranians still waited for the revolution’s promises to be fulfilled and
continued to fantasize about a different Iran.
For Kiarostami, neither fact nor fiction can portray the entanglement of desire and
reality. Through the inevitable mixture of fact and fiction as they swap location, Close-up
meditates on the inherent complexity of representation. The cinematic forms6 of
documentary and non-documentary, and thus the indistinguishable blend of both blurs the
representation of events, renders the crime of impersonation as devotion to a dream, and
reflects on Iran’s fragile condition and desire for change. To explore the dynamics of the
time, Kiarostami entangles the world of the plebian with the celebrated. He complicates an
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external event by exposing its internal forces, effaces the line between the mundane and
the ideal, and allows reality and fantasy to play equal roles in cinema.
In the cinematic context, particular shots congeal certain aspects of the subject. Specifically,
a ‘close-up’ shot limits its subject while alluding to the coexistence of distinct other
possibilities. This highlights the variety of voices that characterizes heteroglossia. Close-up
opens up a space for heteroglossia: Kiarostami’s way of portraying Sabzian’s imposture of
Makhmalbaf encounters other ways of understanding the social dynamics of Iran. The notion
of dialogue is crucial in understanding heteroglossia. The Merriam Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary defines ‘dialogue’ as ‘a conversation between two or more people;’7 however,
‘dialogue’ is a term that never was used by Bakhtin himself.8 Rather he used ‘heteroglossia,’
which he defined as ‘the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present
and the past’ and the juxtaposition of different ‘points of view on the world’ which
‘supplement,’ ‘contradict,’ or interrelate ‘dialogically’ with one another.9
Close-up artistically ruptures linearity of time and space, transforming the film into a
heteroglossic location by which the fraud may be understood. For instance, the order in
which we experience the events is not exactly the order in which they occurred. First, we
see a re-enactment of Sabzian’s arrest from the exterior of the Ahankhah’s house. At the
end, we see the re-enactment of what happened inside the house prior to Sabzian’s arrest.
In the middle, we see documentary footage of Kiarostami’s search to find preliminary
information about Sabzian, establish connection with the Ahankhah family, and obtain
permission to document the court scene. Then, we see a re-enactment of Sabzian and
Mahrokh Ahankhah’s (Ms. Ahankhah) casual chat in the bus—the moment Sabzian
becomes Makhmalbaf. As such, the instability of the present is transferred to the future via
a vivid representation of Sabzian’s past.
In addition, ‘heteroglossia’ means ‘many-languagedness,’ or multiple voices.10
Similarly, a visual heteroglossia extends the notion of many voices to the multiplicity

6
In an interview with Mehranaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum (2003), Kiarostami says that he ‘can’t
define the difference between a documentary and a narrative film’ (p. 116). He uses Close-Up as an example:
‘a movie that’s based on a true story, with the real characters in the real locations; would seem to qualify as a
documentary. But because it restages everything, it isn’t a documentary, so I don’t know which draw to put it
in’ (p. 117).
7
See tenth edn (Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster, 1993), p. 319.
8
Micheal Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 15.
9
Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), pp. 291– 292.
10
Holquist, Dialogism, p. 1.
 A Bakhtin Reading of Close-up 191

of images in order to accentuate the utterance of unspeakable dialogues, express otherness,

and illustrate the disparity of social roles. The constant interaction between what actually
happened in Tehran’s streets and what is depicted on the screen utters a dialogue between
the previous audience—now actors—and the present audience, us. We are constituted on
both sides of the screen; the spectator is present in the theater as well as acting in the film.
As a result, the audience gains access to multiple voices not available to them prior to their
involvement with the film. This constitutes a compounding effect. Such a dialogism is
central to Bakhtin’s work and stresses the differentiation of voice in any utterance.11
Utterance implies anticipation of response while the subject is in constant construction and
re-definition. Bakhtin’s thinking is rooted in the primacy of voice, which refers to
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expressions that have intentions, attitudes, and desires. Another illustration of visual
heteroglossia is when at different times Makhmalbaf and Kiarostami—famous Iranian
directors—appear in Close-up to visit Sabzian, the imposter. It is the combination of
Makhmalbaf’s persona, Sabzian’s action, and Kiarostami’s direction that creates the
dialogic moment.
‘At any given time, in any given place, there will be a set of conditions—social,
historical, meteorological, physiological—that will have a meaning different than it would
have under any other conditions.’12 Bakhtin gives meaning specific density that is
permeable only within particular contexts. Close-Up expresses the social and historical
conditions of the post revolutionary Iran—a revolution ignited by the public’s desire for a
vigorous society independent of the West. All the while, it reconnects the past to the
questionable and shaky grounds of the present. However, it is important to emphasize that
this film is not a mere reflection of an era. Kiarostami’s heteroglossic lens discovers unique
meaning and utters other versions of social possibilities. Indirectly, the film frames the
impostor’s motivation with Iran’s urgency for reform, reflecting on both individual and
societal need. Momentarily, Kiarostami revisits and revises Sabzian’s past through a
clever cinematic investigation. By rehabilitating a dreamer, he legitimizes hope.
To express the relativity of form, Bakhtin differentiates between novelistic and epic
forms of narrative utterance. The former is ‘dialogue framed by a story’ and the later has ‘no
consciousness of the possible relativity of any past.’13 Kiarostami’s cinema is an instance of
novelistic form where the dynamic process of meaning making and filmmaking are
juxtaposed to refract understanding. Each dialogue is accompanied with the tensions
between the image and the spoken word, creating a combative dialogic, thus novelizing the
cinematic. Through image, Kiarostami constructs and destructs our perception of others and
of self. His casting style—many of the actual participants play themselves—expands the
uncertainties of reality into cinema and allows the promises of the image world to seep into
reality. When Sabzian performs his own capture by the police at the Ahankhah home, we are
convinced he is unaware of his destiny, and his acting is unparalleled.
The Persian phrase bayaneh tasviri, which literally means ‘visually oral,’ is at the center
of Sabzian’s testimony. This phrase is extendable to ‘visual voices’ in order to explore
visual heteroglossia. ‘Fewer and fewer neutral, hard elements (“rock bottom truths”)

11
Mikhail Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, eds Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans Vern
W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 159–170.
12
Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, p. 428.
13
Ibid., pp. 29, 15.
 192 A. Saljooghi

remain that are not drawn into dialogue’ and ‘the novel [in this case the cinema] becomes
subject to an artistic reworking.’14 Close-up forms, deforms, and reforms meaning and
stages it not as certainty but as an ongoing process. By doing so, it stresses the dialogic
nature of knowledge. It visually voices the elusive understanding of the impending self
while the competing visual and verbal discourses are dialogized to eliminate any
overarching conclusions.15 Cinematic dialogue determines the logic of each incident, and
not a previously determined rationalization. Ultimately, we are absorbed by a fictional
world motivated through reality yet not bounded by it.
Contemporary logic dichotomizes subject – object, fact –fiction, real – unreal whereas
they are understood better as continuous and interwoven. Theodore Adorno explains how
epistemology of subject and object was formed out of ‘historical conditionality.’16
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He alludes to an inherent force within subject and object that refuses to be simplified by
being defined:
Defining means that something objective, no matter what it may be in itself, is
subjectively captured by means of a fixed concept. Hence the resistance offered to
defining by subject and object. To determine their meanings takes reflection on the
very thing which definition cuts off for the sake of conceptual flexibility.17
Close-up resists the barrier that simplifies the world into dichotomous variables as
distorted facts bring the invisible truth into focus. It exposes the fabricated duality and
interdependence of subject and object in close relation to fact and fiction and obliterates
the familiar features of factuality. In the beginning, the fraud, a fact, is depicted through
reenactment. Thus, the crime is fictionalized. Although, clapboard may mark non-fictional
footage for synchronizing sound with picture, it most usually establishes the footage as
fiction where the characters are acting. The filming of Sabzian’s actual trial is initiated
with a clapboard that we have not seen used prior to the re-enactments. This reaffirms the
fictional role of the film’s cast. Reality is infected by fantasy. Facts become disputable
statements that are influenced by the fiction that surrounds them. Fantasy bridges the gap
between the poor and the rich. The encounter between Ms. Ahankhah and Sabzian in the
bus treats the victim and the imposter on equal levels. Meaning changes with time and
place as the film’s subject varies: The invisible rim of imagination and reality is
reestablished as the subject of cinema. At the same time, the subject of desire turns into the
object of film.
Although the theme of poverty and economic hardship punctuates Close-up, neither
misfortune nor fantasy is privileged. Kiarostami asks Sabzian, ‘Now that you have been a
director and an actor which one do you prefer to be?’ Sabzian responds, ‘I prefer being an
actor playing as myself,’ rather than an ordinary man acting as a famous director. Again,
he encourages Kiarostami to explore poverty and desire hand in hand. This question and
answer position Sabzian as the actual director and Kiarostami as a mediator; Sabzian
denaturalizes his status as a blue-collar worker and Kiarostami’s role as a director.

14
Ibid., p. 300.
15
Ibid., p. 272.
16
Theodore Adorno, ‘Subject and object’, The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato & Eike
Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 497–511.
17
Ibid., p. 498.
 A Bakhtin Reading of Close-up 193

Bill Nichols explains the conventional solution to social problems in terms of an algebra
of probability that
submits specific facts to formulaic calculation. Behavior, and criminality in
particular, becomes measured by probabilities governing similar people, doing
similar things, in similar situations, with similar motives, goals, and results. Such an
algebra replaces personal knowledge of specific individuals—their family history,
past behavior, typical traits, and established goals.18
In such a world, there is no specificity to any event; based on general knowledge the details
of each case are dismissed to reach a common knowledge. According to Nichols,
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embodied knowledge approximates wisdom and exceeds delimited frames of localized

knowledge, the concrete frames.19 Kiarostami allows us to enter into the moment where
each character’s input to the story is crucial in our ‘general’ understanding of the incident.
He treats the fraud not as a common site to understand human misfortune but attempts to
apprehend the story’s peculiarities and investigates it further than it has been reported.
Close-up provides insight to an ‘embodied knowledge’ known to its beholder beyond any
dualistic realities. The social dynamics that gave birth to the crime depends on the
specificity of circumstances that cannot be separated from the overall life of the imposter.
There is no dividing line between the dreams of an unemployed print-worker and his
infatuation with the ‘movies.’ The similarity between Sabzian’s features and those of
Makhmalbaf facilitates the events that promote Sabzian as a celebrity.
As such, the film develops a concurrent dialogic among the audience, the cast, and the
director, as they alter their locus to experience the other. It creates a spiral of spectators,
directors, and actors who refine their understanding of the other as they gain insight into
themselves; a parody of our own lives as personal motives mitigate our own deception.
Kiarostami himself has multiple roles in the film: director, spectator, observer, motivator,
and at times a visually absent player. This circularity is stressed when Kiarostami asks for
Sabzian’s consent to film him. ‘Yes, you may, you [Kiarostami] are my audience . . . cinema
and art are my passion,’ Sabzian responds. He initiates himself into a system of signification
by posing as who he is not, and reminds Kiarostami that he, too, is a mere audience after all.
The characters’ portrayal constantly varies between the materialization of their dream—
the offering of cinema—and the absence of any visual element about their real lives; i.e.,
any visual representation of Sabzian’s life as an unemployed print-worker. However,
Close-up envelops these differences without attempting to diminish them. Kiarostami
skillfully weaves Sabzian’s different selves in the complex web of facts, fantasies, subjects,
and objects. Sabzian, the subject of the film, is portrayed as an object of his own desire. How
can Sabzian separate his real life from its representation or from his desire? Do we have the
same dilemmas? Is it possible to draw a line between life and its presentation?
As a matter of fact Sabzian’s inclination toward cinematic exploration of his pain and
desire hails Kiarostami’s cinema to display Sabzian’s multiple selves in as many ways as
possible. The following is an approximate list of his portrayals:

18
Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1994), p. 35.
19
Ibid., pp. 2, 35.
 194 A. Saljooghi

. the imposter in the re-enactment sequence where he is arrested;

. himself (does not know that he is being filmed) in the documentary footage of the
first time he meets Kiarostami while in prison;
. acting as himself in the semi-documentary scene of the trial sequence when he
knows that he is in front of the camera;
. the director acting as himself when he was being Makhmalbaf in the re-enactment
scene where for the first time he meets Ms. Ahankhah in the bus and she
mistakenly thinks he is Makhmalbaf;
. the criminal who has repented at the end of the trial sequence and requests
forgiveness;
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. the unemployed print-worker when he meets with Makhmalbaf in the last

sequence of the film.
In all of this, Sabzian is himself at the same time that he is not. None of his roles—i.e., an
unemployed print-worker, a sham director, an actor—can be understood without an insight
into the other aspects of his life. According to Holquist, in ‘dialogism, the very capacity to
have consciousness is based on otherness.’20 Although during each character shift,
Sabzian speaks of his desires and misfortunes, each scene visually extends his utterances
to the audience who are engaged with the dialogue, thus each gains an understanding of the
other. All the while, these many shifts enforce absence while they problematize presence,
i.e., Sabzian is present as an actor yet absent as an audience.
Kiarostami is aware that the lives of his characters are not far from his audience, and he
is fully mindful that his creation depends on them. Eventually, it was as an audience that
Sabzian gained his otherness. As an ordinary person, Sabzian was the other to the cinema
industry. When he becomes a director and an actor—in Close-up—he is othered from the
realm of his ordinary persona. In either scenario, Sabzian is the other through Kiarostami’s
positioning of him.
Close-up works as homage to its audience where the psychoanalytical and sociological
dissection of the audience is pivotal. It is an instance where cinema learns from its fans
through improvisation. Kiarostami’s respect for his audience strengthens the foundation of
filmmaking. This love is reciprocated by cinema-goers. The director jeopardizes his
vocation, risking untested terrain when he urges his audience to partake in the fabric of
filmmaking beyond the one-dimensional aspect of simply watching a movie.21 The actors
are aware of their acting, as we are aware of our viewing. Ultimately we are left with the
obligation to make sense of an event besides the director’s intentions as we ruminate on
the development of the unreal to the real or vise versa.
Dialogism, ‘like relativity, takes it for granted that nothing can be perceived except
against the perspective of something else: dialogism’s master assumption is that there is no
figure without a ground.’22 One of the sequences that illustrates relativity of perspective
and functions as a preliminary view on the fraud is a dialogue, depicted as re-enactment,
between the journalist who broke the story, Hossein Farazmand, and a private cab driver,

20
Holquist, Dialogism, p. 18.
21
Laura Mulvey argues that Kiarostami asks the audience to think thus creating ‘a form of questioning and
interrogative spectatorship’. See Laura Mulvey, Afterward, in: Richard Trapper (ed.) The New Iranian
Cinema: Politics, Representation, and Identity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004).
22
Ibid., pp. 21–22.
 A Bakhtin Reading of Close-up 195

Hooshang Shamaei, as they search for the house of the plaintiff, Ahankhah.23 Below, I will
dissect this sequence in detail in order to illustrate the nuances of Kiarostami’s incisive
method that simultaneously explores, veils, and mocks reality within the context of
cinema.
Farazmand, who is eager to discuss the fraud he is about to unveil, asks the driver if he
knew Makhmalbaf. Shamaei responds, ‘Who is he? Is he a businessman?’ Farazmand
replies, ‘Makhmalbaf is a famous filmmaker and the latest film he directed was Cyclist.’24
Concentrating on his driving and slightly amused, Shamaei says, ‘I don’t have time to go
to [the] movies.’ Farazmand then conveys the importance of exposing Sabzian’s crime by
pointing out the similarity between this crime and the pandemonium caused by the news
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reported by Oriana Fallaci, the controversial Italian journalist. Now, Farazmand wants to
know whether Shamaie knew Fallachi. This time, he replies, ‘No, she must not have been
one of my passengers.’ The driver is preoccupied with his job just as the reporter is with
his breaking story. From here on, the reporter carries on a monologue about the importance
of the event to be uncovered.
Farazmand’s whimsical discourse is coupled with monotonous medium shots of the cab
and its passengers, and the security soldiers who accompany the reporter to arrest the
imposter. Although the desire to be famous enflames the reporter’s excitement, it is not
acknowledged by the driver or his silent passengers. As a matter of fact, the topic of their
brief chat during Farazmand’s absence has nothing to do with cinema. They all share in the
dislocation experience enforced by Iran’s mandatory national military service.
Iranians experienced displacement due to the Iran –Iraq war and economic hardship for
eight years, from 1980 to 1988. While many people were unemployed in the early 1990s,
others had more than one job in order to support their families. The taxi driver, for
instance, is a retired pilot and needs to drive a cab to earn a living. The reporter does not
have enough money to pay the cab fare and has to ask the neighbors for a tape recorder to
tape the story. An unemployed person, the imposter, assumes his dream job of
directorship. These men’s lives are a whimsical reflection on the brutal chain of social life
of Iranians. The opening scene makes clear that even as Sabzian, an ordinary person, is
obsessed with Makhmalbaf’s Cyclist, and cinema in general, other ordinary people have
no interest or knowledge of cinema and its celebrities. The public is more interested in
issues directly influencing their lives, as illustrated in this early questioning of the
importance of fame in Close-up.
While the driver awaits the return of the passengers he drops off at the house, he walks
around aimlessly, looks at a plane flying overhead, gathers discarded flowers, and kicks an
empty spray can. These seemingly irrelevant moments in the logic of the plot typify
Kiarostami’s style of blending the mundane with the epic. What illuminates an ambiguous
idea may be only another obliquely related image. For example, the distance of the driver’s
gaze from a pile of dirt to the jet stream that has marked the sky may illustrate the gap
between a present existence and an ideal one. The haphazard kick of an empty can may

23
We never may know whether this scene resembles the actual conversation between these men or whether
Kiarostami directed them to say these sentences, As I mentioned before Kiarostami acknowledges that
Close-Up is re-staged. Also, he stresses that he does not work from a script, prefers improvisation, and even
forsees ‘the disappearance of direction’ after making Ten in 2002 (Saeed-Vafa and Rosenbaum. p. 124).
24
1987 (Docharkeh Savar).
 196 A. Saljooghi

depict the arbitrariness of fame. However, the meanings of these things are all left open so
the audience can translate them as they want.
All the while, Kiarostami sets up a cinematic heteroglossia embedded with competing
discourses without a certain conclusion. He scrutinizes cinematic genres and composes an
attractive cinema without cinematic devices, i.e., lighting, unusual angles, camera
movements, technical tricks, or glamorous actors. The content speaks for itself, with an
aesthetic austerity, similar to Persian poetry. When Sabzian is about to be captured, he and
Abolfazl Ahankhah (Mr. Ahankhah) recite poetry to reveal their vision of what is about to
happen but which they cannot utter. Mr. Ahankhah is assured that Sabzian is not
Makhmalbaf. Sabzian’s intuition has warned him that he is about to be caught. We are
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inside the house we saw at the beginning of the movie from the outside. Although we know
how the story ends, still we wonder about the outcome of this most melodramatic scene in
the movie as we are about to uncover new usage for the titular close-up shot.
Kiarostami emphasizes the profound nature of Sabzian’s delusion, which is not
manifested on the surface, as he initially depicts the case as a fraud from an outsider’s
point of view, before he ever presents it to us as an allegory for human anguish, desire, and
misconstruction. Ordinarily, a close-up shot gets the viewer closer to an image in order to
provide a better understanding of its subject. Yet, visual obstructions are imposed upon the
close-up shots, posing them as problematic. When Kiarostami visits Sabzian in prison, our
view of Sabzian’ close-up is partially blocked by a pillar. These obstacles emphasize the
complex nature of understanding, and that our contact with reality is always mediated. This is
shown in the film when Makhmalbaf and Sabzian meet for the first time, the sound production
does not allow us to understand what words are exchanged. Kiarostami’s choice to include
scenes with inaudible dialogue and partially obscured images produces an effect similar to
peeping through the camera or eavesdropping on a conversation.
The actual encounter between Kiarostami and Sabzian, filmed in real time, is technically
striking, as it prefigures the closing scene where the real Makhmalbaf and Sabzian meet for the
first time. In both sequences, the directors are aware of their own acting while the eventual
actor is not; Makhmalbaf and Kiarostami know that they are being filmed while Sabzian does
not. Kiarostami, quizzical of his craft, positions the real directors peripheral to the sham
director, a central device to encapsulate allusion. The first time Kiarostami and Sabzian meet
in prison, Sabzian justifies Kiarostami’s interest in the story when he implies that only on the
surface can his actions be condemned. Here, we see only Kiarostami’s famous dark eyeglasses
from the side as he meets with Sabzian, while pillars or windowpanes obstruct their close-ups,
and the audio of their dialogue is fractured.
When the two Makhmalbafs meet in the last sequence, once again the sound is fractured
and images are obstructed. We see the hero and the villain from afar blocked by a vehicle
or a cracked window shield, and we hear snatches of their dialogue. It is interesting to
mention that the malfunctioning sound and image are portrayed as accidental rather than
as a ‘decision’ made by the director; we hear Kiarostami’s frustration about the
microphone’s failure. Is Kiarostami refusing to trivialize this meeting of two unequals by
way of conversation or straightforward shots? Or is he, in a roundabout way, positioning
the two men as equals, privileging neither? These distortions, imposed on us during the
visits of the real directors with the fake one, may be a playful representation of the
director’s cryptic intentions. Eventually, all we can do is watch the screen without the help
of any words, as the broken microphone postpones the film’s ending; the aloofness of
image and its shifting structure, once again, leave us as the film’s final author.
 A Bakhtin Reading of Close-up 197

Close-up flouts the conventions of popular cinema by not following the cause – effect
plot of the Hollywood pattern and by the inclusion of insignificant moments. Kiarostami
spoke about his crafting of films in a subsequent interview about his 1994 movie, Through
the Olive Trees, with the Iranian magazine Film International. When asked why that story
ended ambiguously, Kiarostami’s response was that ‘real and unreal events are quite
mixed up for me.’25 He explained how some scenes are just conjunctions, ‘some means of
connection, needing no meaning at all,’ like the spray can in Close-up.
There was no special idea behind it, so anything they [audience or critic] say would be
possible. I had only thought that was a good chance to roll a can down a slope. That’s all.
You can give any meaning to it as long as it had no connotation of its own. Just like an
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empty can in which you may put anything that it can hold. Here nothing is everything.
Kiarostami likens the functionality of these scenes to an abstract painting or the verses
that hold a poem together. For him, the profound reason for the shots where a spray can
rolls down the street or an airplane is viewed from the ground is ‘nothing’ yet
‘everything.’ Kiarostami places the audience’s construction beyond his intention. Any
scene is interpretable indefinitely. The empty can signifies ‘nothing,’ yet it allows the
viewer to wonder about the logic of ‘the rational.’ The movie’s multitudinous
beginnings and endings are implicated in the crackling sound of the empty can that is
filled with meaning as we watch the story unravel to emphasize the ambiguity of a story
propelled by desire.
The different levels of represented reality that spiral from films within the film also
spring from unfulfilled dreams. The layers of fantasy are peeled away but not diminished.
In particular, the scene where Sabzian first becomes his idol—i.e., the bus episode, a re-
enactment within the trial sequence—has this interweaving of documentary, reenactment,
and fantasy. We are in the court, then in the bus, and back again in the court; the sequence
creates gray locations where relativity rules. Our understanding of the contemporary world
has been complicated as we are removed from direct contact with it. The vast collection of
knowledge, grounded in the image world, creates realities that are anchored in the
production and exhibition of images; thus the notions of image and reality have become
complementary. Susan Sontag poses the image world as the real world: ‘reality has always
been interpreted through the reports given by images.’26 The real has to compete with its
image. Contrary to the image world, where knowledge is dissociated from experience, the
close relation of the film’s cast with the cinematic experience influences their knowledge
about cinema. Thus, the audience gains knowledge through participation rather than pure
observation. This intimate involvement makes them integral to meaning making.
Understanding is owned by both present and previous audiences, and, although we
experience tangible events, we cannot dispute the unobtainable nature of the image.
Nonetheless, Kiarostami resurrects the filmmaker’s fame that he had jeopardized earlier
and brings us the magic of cinema. He believes that his audience should be aware that they
are watching a movie instead of a seamless reality even though he presents cinema as an
actuality; at the same time, he wants his actors to live in the present fully intuitive about
the past. When the plaintiff reads from his prepared notes to the court, Kiarostami

25
‘A debate with Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian Movie Director,’ Film International, 3(1) (1995), pp. 46 –49.
26
Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Anchor Books, 1998), especially ‘The image-world’, pp. 153–180.
 198 A. Saljooghi

commands him to improvise his response instead of reading from a preplanned document.
As the film director, he insists that no one should worry about stuttering, messing up, or
even having the microphone in the frame. No one should act, everyone must be
themselves, he says, simultaneously turning his audience into actors.
All the while, Kiarostami is obliged to fill his cinematic serum with people’s reality as
the lives of his characters are injected with a dose of cinema. Toward the end of the
laborious trial sequence, Sabzian gets a chance to externalize his internal voice.
Kiarostami interrogates Sabzian’s intentions and becomes the immediate audience of his
own audience. He encourages Sabzian to explain the reason behind his actions further:
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Sabzian—Explanation is that being Makhmalbaf was very hard for me.

Kiarostami—What does it mean it was hard? Didn’t you choose it yourself?
Sabzian—It was difficult because wanting to be in his role, play, and they [the
Ahankhah family] accept that I am that exact character.
Kiarostami—That you are what?
Sabzian—I am exactly that same [Makhmalbaf] character. It was hard for me. It was
difficult to play the role of a director, even though I knew it gave me self-confidence.
I was given respect. I was given preeminence. They gave me respect.
Kiarostami—Who?
Sabzian—This family [Ahankhah]. Whatever I wanted, they gave me. For example,
if I asked them to move this heavy dresser, they accepted. They will say that they
will move it. If I asked them to cut that tree they will say that they will cut it. Up to
that point, if I asked anyone even to move an object, I was not acknowledged and
they were uncertain [to comply with my request]. Because of the class I belong to,
they did not buy my word [a Persian expression]. But, I saw here that as soon as
I played in his role [Makhmalbaf] everyone submitted to my word [will], and they
believed [in me]. When I left that place, the same night that I got the money,
I regretted my role. I realized that I am that same Sabzian [long pause, not looking at
the court or Kiarostami], that person who is in need of some money in his pocket,
who cannot even buy some Pofak [similar to puffed-cheese snack food] for my child
when I got home in Serah-e Khavaran [a working class neighborhood in south
Tehran]. I was stuck at how to do it [provide for my family] I had no money. I was
that same poor person in my [social] class. I was back in my own class, I realized that
I am back in my own role, that was why [it was hard]. Sleeping at night and in the
morning going there [the Ahankhah house] to play my role [being Makhmalbaf] for
them, it was very difficult for me, even with my desire for this [being a director].
And in addition [that] they [the Ahankhah family] respected me and helped me in
my role [as a filmmaker] to do my work, I felt like I am a director. I no longer felt
that I am not that director [Makhmalbaf]. And when I had distance from there [the
Ahankhah house], and I got close to my home, I would separate from my role.
Kiarostami—So getting this money helped you stay a director at night too?
Sabzian—Yes [smiling]. Well, a director cannot be without money [repeat].
Shouldn’t a director be able to buy some Pofak for his child . . . go home, sleep, and
 A Bakhtin Reading of Close-up 199

be able to afford breakfast, [or] buy cheese. How [could I] provide it [food for my
family]? It was difficult, but seeing [realizing that] at some other place [the
Ahankhah house] they gave me respect, and their belief in me [that I am a
filmmaker] gave me self-confidence, the belief that I am really a director.
Kiarostami—When they gave you what you wanted, you got self-confidence?
Sabzian—Yes. When I was given the money, I thought that he [Mehrdad Ahankhah
who is one of unemployed Ahankhah’s Sons] believed me that I am a director.
Kiarostami—Well, weren’t you ever going to give him back [the money]?
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Sabzians—Returning it [pause, wondering]? Well, I didn’t think not to pay him

back, but how could I pay him back to make the money. At the same time I was
thinking that he [Mehrdad] cares so much [for cinema] that I wished I had some
capital, the money to make a movie so he can play in it and I won’t be playing with
his feelings.27

The reality of Sabzian’s dream breaks when Kiarostami asks if he would return the money
to the plaintiff. Now, the incident leaves the psychological realm and becomes social; it
illustrates a drama, not a crime, as we experience the intimacy of imagination and reality.
This indubitable confession turns deception into honesty. Sabzian may seem alienated
from the public but not from his soul. Is it fantasy that took over his troubled life or the
other way around? Close-up challenges its audience to utilize cinema as much as cinema
has manipulated them. Kiarostami’s dialogic inquiries help portray Sabzian as a
complicated character who has emerged out of the hazy abyss of possibilities and
limitations, and his illusion as valid. Deception becomes an honest attempt to reach one’s
inaccessible wish. We are exposed to the heart of the crime as we sympathize with the
criminal.
In conclusion, Close-Up destroys documentary norms as fiction interprets fact, real
people are posed as performers, and the audience directs the director. Cinema functions as
a conduit for social commentary, and visual expression speaks without language. Desire is
politicized artistically beyond the confines of censorship. Directors are held responsible
for their inventions. The critical eye turns inward when the audience experiences
the reversal of social hierarchies, revealing social status as arbitrary. New possibilities are
celebrated as alternatives to an antiquated social system. Even if briefly, Sabzian’s desire
to be a cinema star is attained in this film. Although later he loses this privilege, the
experience stays with him. The film creates a cinematic locus for the fantasy to breathe,
while it reveals that social reality, not imagination, prevails; and that certain boundaries,
such as class differences, cannot be effaced through illusion. In addition, it creates a
critical visual discourse in which social events are not set in binary oppositions, either – or
and good – bad. They are portrayed in enigmatic shades of gray. Kiarostami functions as a
curious and patient facilitator who constructs a solid world from cinematic dreams.
Of course, his lens never dissociates desire from reality. If he has to give preference to one,
it is the fantasy world that he allows to rule, albeit with due respect to the real one.
Playfully, Kiarostami elaborates on the constructedness of film in general and reality

27
Author’s translation
 200 A. Saljooghi

in particular; although he instructs Sabzian to talk to the ‘close-up’ camera, we know that
even a close-up shot will not take us close enough to the real. By presenting a con man,
Kiarostami positions himself as one; he shares the private moment of redemption with his
audience, saying we are all actors in one way or another. The film respects the games life
plays with all of us. However, in this case, art tricks life. Close-up communicates through
distorted images and fractured sound what language only can stutter.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Mr. F. Jeff Black and Dr. Gayatri S. Devi for their feedback.
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