The New York Times - USA (2020-08-07)

C10 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020

THE IRANIAN DIRECTORAbbas Kiarostami
is widely regarded as one of the great mod-
ern filmmakers, but if you discovered him at
a particular peak of his international recog-
nition — when he shared the top prize at the
Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for “Taste of
Cherry” — you might have been baffled.
“Taste of Cherry” follows an enigmatic
driver who picks up passengers on the out-
skirts of Tehran. He plans to commit sui-
cide, he says, and needs someone to bury
him. For viewers unfamiliar with
Kiarostami, watching more than an hour of
such conversations was perplexing, even
tedious.
Not all of the films of Kiarostami, who
died in 2016, were so determinedly minimal-
ist. Still, to follow him over that next decade
was to wonder whether he thought all it
took to make a movie was a car and a cam-
era. “Ten” (2002) consisted of 10 cab rides.
“Five” (2004) had only five apparent shots.
Even Roger Ebert, normally one of the most
generous critics when it came to introduc-
ing readers to international filmmakers,
would claim that “Kiarostami is a limited,
arid, uninteresting director who inspires re-
views much more interesting than his
films.”
But with Kiarostami, appearances de-
ceive. In “Five,” something as simple as a
shot of waves lapping driftwood invites
speculation about whether it was staged.
His best work calls attention to the illusion

of movies even as he stealthily perpetuates
it. And one way to approach his films —
which frequently mingle fiction and docu-
mentary elements, use nonprofessional ac-
tors and gently rap on the fourth wall — is to
continually question how they were made.
Is this performer simply being or acting for
the camera? Was that scene shot extempo-
raneously, or was it planned in advance?
“Certified Copy” (released in the United
States in 2011) is an excellent place to start,
despite being — on the surface — unusual
for the director. A French-Italian-Belgian
production, it features a marquee star (Ju-
liette Binoche) and was shot outside Iran, in
Tuscany. This time, Kiarostami’s careful
framings and lush use of light dispel any no-
tion that he is a minimalist. What’s more,
the movie brings his recurring interests to
the foreground. Whether the characters are

acting is a crucial question, and the drama

pivots on the delicate interplay between the

director’s obfuscations and the audience’s

willingness to accept them.

The film concerns an author named

James Miller (the British opera singer

William Shimell) who argues that fakes and

forgeries are in their own way valuable —

they certify the worth of the original.

Shortly before a book event, a woman (Bi-

noche, whose character is never named)

gets James to autograph a copy. The wom-

an, who is with her son, is impudent enough

to grab a reserved seat, and the boy won’t

settle down — odd behavior for guests. And

they leave while James is still lecturing. The

son thinks his mother is interested in James

romantically.

The woman meets James again. They

spend the day together, seemingly still

strangers, though their rapport cuts oddly

deep at times. Then magic happens: While

James takes a call outside a cafe, the server,

talking to Binoche’s character, mistakes

them for husband and wife. And that mis-

perception, or perhaps the influence of the

numerous weddings around town, or the

pull of the romantic Italian scenery, or the

audience’s own conviction that the two sim-

ply looklike a married couple appears to

lead them to behave as if they were.

Could they have been married all along?

When I first saw the film, I wandered into a

repeat screening almost immediately, con-

vinced I must have missed something.

Kiarostami’s sleight of hand is nearly invisi-

ble. He signals his debt to the Surrealists by

casting Jean-Claude Carrière, a longtime

screenwriter for Luis Buñuel, as an older

husband who gives James advice. And the

basic premise is itself a sort of copy, evoking

such teetering-couples-on-holiday films as

Roberto Rossellini’s “Journey to Italy.”

By the logic of “Certified Copy,” such allu-

sions just affirm the originals’ value. But

while the film certainly shows Kiarostami

as a worthy peer of those master directors,

the themes are fully his own. To see why,

look to “Close-Up,” first shown in 1990,

which, perhaps even more than “Certified

Copy,” asks to what degree audiences are

willing to be seduced by a filmmaker’s tech-

nique.

The plot itself concerns being taken in. A

blend of dramatization and (seeming) docu-

mentary, “Close-Up” centers on a real-life

case involving a man named Hossein

Sabzian. We are told Sabzian was passing

himself off as Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a re-

nowned Iranian filmmaker like Kiarostami.

Sabzian and the family he duped — he pre-

tended to be interested in their house as a

movie location — appear as themselves.

But “Close-Up” unfolds in at least three

overlapping modes, all suspect to some de-

gree. At first it appears to be a dramatized

account: It opens with a magazine journal-

ist accompanying the police to Sabzian’s ar-

rest, leading the audience to believe the

movie will be about the journalist’s report-

ing. Then, after the opening credits, “Close-

Up” turns into a documentary, with

Kiarostami himself interviewing the hood-

winked family and meeting with Sabzian,

who is awaiting trial in prison. Then there is

Sabzian’s trial, shot on a grainy film stock

that distinguishes it from the other docu-

mentary parts.

Sabzian, whose remorse may also be

acted, says in court that he impersonated

Makhmalbaf because he liked the respect

that came with being famous; as a poor

worker in a print shop, he wasn’t used to

having people do what he asked. But it

seems that Kiarostami inspires a similar ac-

quiescence in his camera subjects. Before

the trial, Kiarostami has a chance to “di-

rect” Sabzian as if they were on a film set:

He tells him where the cameras will be and

adds, “If there’s anything needing special

attention, or that you find questionable, ex-

plain it to this camera.”

Kiarostami cuts between dramatized and

documentary elements. A flashback reveals

that Sabzian’s deception may itself have

stemmed from a reflexive judgment (like

that of the server in “Certified Copy”). The

arrest is shown again from a different per-

spective. Kiarostami effectively becomes a

co-conspirator with Sabzian; he even incor-

porates one of his fake movie ideas into the

coda. The audience, on some level, shares

the family’s willingness to be deceived.

Are we actually seeing a repentant crimi-

nal or a married couple — or are we simply

eager to perceive them in that light?

Kiarostami’s surfaces may seem puzzlingly

plain, but there’s nothing straightforward

about his films.

BEN KENIGSBERG GATEWAY FILMS

An introduction to the films of

Abbas Kiarostami teaches that

appearances can be deceptive.

Above, William Shimell and

Juliette Binoche in “Certified

Copy,” directed by Abbas

Kiarostami. Left, in “Close-Up,”

the filmmaker Mohsen

Makhmalbaf, driving, and the

would-be director Hossain

Sabzian play themselves.

PHOTOGRAPHS VIA CRITERION COLLECTION

Prepare to Be Seduced by a Master

Certified Copy

Stream on the Criterion

Channel; rent or buy it on

Amazon, Google Play and

iTunes.

Close-Up

Stream on the Criterion

Channel or Kanopy; rent or buy

it on Amazon or iTunes.

FILM REVIEWS

The stark sight of a western-style

military outpost in the middle of a

whole lot of desert nothingness,

where “Waiting for the Barbar-

ians” begins, may remind

cinephiles of the 1976 Valerio

Zurlini film “The Desert of the

Tartars.” It’s unclear whether the

director of this picture, Ciro

Guerra, meant the scene as a

homage to Zurlini’s film, but he

didn’t even need to. As it happens,

J. M. Coetzee, whose novel of the

same name inspired this film, was

most likely influenced by Dino

Buzzati’s book “The Tartar

Steppe,” the source for “Tartars.”

In an unnamed territory with

Asian and Middle-Eastern char-

acteristics (this is a fable, you

see), the impeccable Mark Ry-

lance as a Western magistrate

keeps benign watch on a local

multiethnic population. From the

magistrate’s European homeland

comes Colonel Joll, a fussy au-

thoritarian played by a quirky

Johnny Depp, who makes a show

out of pretending to be under-

stated and seems under the im-

pression that he’s still working

with Tim Burton.

Despite the magistrate’s pro-

testations that no barbarian en-

croachment is in the offing, Joll is

determined to crack down, which

means the imprisonment and

torture of innocents, just for

starters. Later, Robert Pattinson,

as a cruel Joll underling, joins the

evildoing, kicking in a few car-

toon-imperialist sneers and sa-

distic laughs.

The magistrate is not posited as

a potential white savior. But he’s

also not meaningfully aware of

how, as a functionary of colonial-

ism, he’s part of the problem. The

movie’s disinclination to dig into

this circumstance deprives it of

potential dramatic depth.

“Barbarians” instead aspires to

hook an anti-colonialist mentality

to an old-school Orientalist narra-

tive style. Guerra aestheticizes

everything to an extreme — for

instance, showing one prisoner’s

open torture wounds illuminated

by Old-Masters firelight.

GLENN KENNY

WAITING FOR

THE BARBARIANS

Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 52

minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes,

Google Play and other streaming

platforms and pay-TV operators.

. ...................................................................

Johnny Depp, front, and Mark Rylance in “Waiting for the Barbarians.”

FABRIZIO DI GIULIO/SAMUEL GOLDWYN FILMS

Adapted from the highly ac-

claimed 2003 novel by Per Petter-

son, “Out Stealing Horses,” writ-

ten and directed by Hans Petter

Moland, is an ambitious film that

examines memory and con-

sciousness through the perspec-

tive of an older man who’s deter-

mined to escape from memory

and to constrict his lived experi-

ence.

Stellan Skarsgard plays Trond,

a Swede who has moved to a

remote section of Norway after

his wife of 38 years died in an

auto accident. “All my life I have

longed to be alone in a place like

this,” he says in voice-over, be-

fore announcing that he intends

to spend the coming evening

“fittingly drunk.”

Out walking on a snowy night,

Trond encounters another man,

albeit a slightly younger one,

walking his dog. They fall into

conversation. Trond recognizes

the man, named Lars (Bjorn

Floberg): as a small child, he

was Trond’s neighbor in a rural

area where, as a teenager, Trond

spent time. And so Trond’s boat

is borne back into the current of

the past.

Via flashbacks, the narrative

bounces about significant points

of the 1940s, including the Nazi

occupation of Norway. Charac-

ters experience traumas war-

related and family-related.

The title refers to a literal

activity young Trond (Jon

Ranes) engaged in with his close

friend and Lar’s older brother,

Jon (Sjur Vatne Brean), while

roaming farm and forest. But it

also refers to general trouble-

making, sometimes in opposition

to Germans.

The high-toned beauty of the

cinematography, by Thomas

Hardmeier and Rasmus Vide-

baek, imposes a stateliness on

this serious-minded movie that

sometimes puts it at odds with

the galvanic events it depicts. As

is not unusual in contemporary

art cinema, this quality blunts

emotional impact. But the overall

integrity of the effort is impres-

sive.

GLENN KENNY

OUT STEALING

HORSES

Not rated. In Norwegian and

Swedish, with subtitles. Running

time: 2 hours 3 minutes. Rent or buy

on Google Play and other streaming

platforms and pay-TV operators.

...................................................................

In a year defined by surprise, the
predictability of “The Secret
Garden” — a new film adaptation
of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s
beloved 1911 novel — proves more

charming than tedious.
Mary Lennox (Dixie Egerickx),
a headstrong and emotionally
neglected 10-year-old, moves to
her uncle’s estate in Yorkshire,
England, after her parents die
from cholera in India. Her uncle
Archibald Craven, played by Colin

Firth, is a hypochondriac too
haunted by the death of his wife
to pay real attention to Mary. She
struggles to adjust and finds
solace in exploring the grounds of
her new home. On one of her
adventures, she finds a hidden
garden (which her uncle locked
after her aunt died there) that
leads her to uncover the history

of her family.
Directed by Marc Munden
(“National Treasure”) from a
script by Jack Thorne (who
adapted “His Dark Materials” for
TV), the movie follows Mary’s
perspective and blurs the line
between childhood imagination

and reality. The garden, where
she spends most of her time,
becomes a character too, reflect-
ing Mary’s moods and nurturing
her as she grows softer and more
kind.
Friendship — between Mary,
her sickly cousin Colin (Edan

Hayhurst) and Dickon (Amir
Wilson), the adventurous younger
brother of an estate worker —

anchors this story about grief and

redemption. As the motley crew

work together to unlock the

magic of the garden, they display

tender moments of vulnerability

and joy that can teach even the

most cynical among us a lesson or

two.

LOVIA GYARKYE

THE SECRET GARDEN

Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 39
minutes. Rent or buy on Google Play
and other streaming platforms and
pay-TV operators.

. ...................................................................

Dixie Egerickx as the neglected Mary Lennox in “The Secret Garden.”

STXFILMS