압바스 키아로스타미의〈클로즈업〉과 영화적 (재)구성의 시학

Abstract

Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-up (1990), which was made into a film an event actually happened, shows a unique production aspect: rather than professional actors, the parties involved in the event directly re-enact the past event in their own words and actions, where the event actually took place. The court scenes in this case are also captured on camera. Therefore, in this film, the event, characters, backgrounds, lines, and actions are all authentic. However, a close look at the way these materials are dealt with reveals that they are the product of elaborate construction, especially in the first sequence, the arrest scene in the middle of the movie, and the last sequence. Therefore, Close-up provides a good opportunity to see, beyond the simple dichotomy of fiction and documentary, what the poetics of a film that respects reality can be. In Close-up, when presenting events that occur simultaneously with film production, such as a trial scene, Kiarostami adds devices to prevent the spectator from not forgetting that these are anyway mediated by the film, by showing the shooting equipments or the staff working on the shooting, or by manipulating the sound. On the other hand, when reconstituting past events, he places moments where nothing happens without being immersed in the development of the story, just staring at an empty spray can for a long time the very moment where a dramatic event takes place. In short, in Close-up, starting from the deepest part of reality, the effort to present real images and real voices as much as possible, is revealed without any omissions or rewrites, but at the same time, these efforts appear delicately combined with rigorous mental construction work, which always requires the active participation of the spectator.