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Copie Conforme (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
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Wonderful review. Movie is now on my to-see list.
SPOILERS:i feel like you're spending a lot of time fixating on something that really doesn't matter - it didn't matter to me whether i knew or not if they "really" knew each other before the day that the film takes place. i was much more interested in the dialectic around men and women and how we meet and how we stay and how we repel and attract. that was where all the real juice resided.
i watched an interview with juliette binoche and she said kiarostami sat her down and told her this story (the story of the film) but he framed it like it was him in italy meeting someone. he asked her if she thought the story was true and she said yes and he said no, it wasn't. she said it doesn't matter - that all films are a kind of fiction - and it doesn't matter if the fiction is true, but it matters if the essence of the story rings true for the viewer - i couldn't agree more with that sentiment.
the beauty of the film is also a huge attraction for me. the way the shots are framed, the way kiarostami pays homage to the great italian baroque painters - backgrounds as important as foregrounds- the perspective of the subject keeps shifting .... brilliant filmmaking by a master filmmaker.
this is my favorite film of 2011 ... i think.
(note: continuing on in the spoiler tradition...)Probably. I guess it's more of a response to the reviews I've seen as much as it is of the movie itself; every review I've come across has been centered on "did they know each other?" and entirely passed over the far more salient question of "what is their relationship to each other?" I think Kiarostami is really digging into relationships, and our perceptions of them, here. He's always been interested in the ways people form relationships, and how those relationships change over time, but he adds the mystery angle in a different way here (in Taste of Cherry, e.g., the mystery angle was "what is this guy up to?" in the first 20 minutes).
It is, absolutely, a gorgeous film, both in its scenery and in the way Kiarostami shoots that scenery--with the added codicil that Boniche/Shimell/Carriere/Natanson/Moore--especially Moore--ARE part of that scenery. I don't think it was in any way coincidental that of all the professions Kiarostami could have chosen for Elle that would have made the setup equally plausible, he came up with antiques dealer.
good god, the details in the writing. I could've gone on about them for days. There are entire threads on IMDB about Kiarostami's use of the passage of time and the church bells in the movie I wanted to declaim on, and ran out of time. Another few paragraphs could have been spent on the Binoche/Shimell mirror-shot parallel and what it means (though that's major spoiler territory, that is). THAT question--what happens right after the final shot?--is a lot more ambiguous. I've heard a lot of strenuous arguments that he stays. (I think they're all hogwash.)
>it doesn't matter if the fiction is true, but it matters if the essence of the story rings true for the viewer - i couldn't agree more with that sentiment.<
As do I, in the sense that, as William Castle used to be fond of saying, "it's only a movie... it's only a movie...". But I'm not so sure that's not another layer of deception on Kiarostami's part. He HAD to know that people were going to be walking out of theaters around the world discussing those questions. (A part of me wonders if the whole thing isn't a half-jab at Roger Ebert. heh.) I'm not sure he gauged the extent accurately to which critics would focus on them, some at the expense of pretty much everything else (viz. Vishnevetsky, and he put it on his top 5 of the year so far even so). I tried to avoid that pitfall, but there are so many people out there, critics included, who just. don't. get. this movie that I kinda felt the need to try and at least point people down the right path, y'know?
The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with it. That, too, seems to be a common trait of Kiarostami's.
nice - i was certainly impressed with it.i didn't read any reviews of the film, so i'm out of the loop with what others have fixated on. i read less and less reviews, unless a film really blows me away, and then i am curious to see how others read that film. when i watched that youtube video interview with binoche, i felt i heard all i needed to hear about it. now i just want to see it again.
agreed, this is an impressive movie. i think it is actually a minor miracle that it works s0000 well. i thought the whole point of this movie was NOT having a definitive answer regarding their relationship. what makes a relationship real? what is 'real' love? when can you say that you 'really' know someone?
Kiarostami explores the questions, and is smart enough to realize there are no absolute answers.
exactly..... i think
Sooz wrote: "agreed, this is an impressive movie. i think it is actually a minor miracle that it works s0000 well. i thought the whole point of this movie was NOT having a definitive answer regarding their..."
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
I agree about it being a "minor miracle" that the film works, but Kiarostami does have the sublime Juliette Binoche in it, as well as the lovely Italian countryside. Of course, he's written a richly complex story, as well.
It can be a confusing film, but it's rich in discussions about what constitutes originality and what is merely a copy--and if it really matters in the end. I loved the discussions about Binoche's character's (Elle) sister and her stammering husband.
I thought it was interesting that Kiarostami depicted the struggles of a mother trying to raise her son mostly single-handedly. Elle is initially very stressed about her son and how he gives her a hard time, which later ties into her resentments toward James and the discussion about having a good time versus thinking about consequences. This seemed supportive of women, who necessarily must think of consequences when their sons/husbands do not, and so cannot be as free.
I initially didn't like Elle; she seemed too critical and difficult, but I later came to admire her for what she had achieved despite having to raise her son alone, and that she could still desire romance and love.
I loved her discussion with James about the sculpture with the female resting her head on the male's shoulder. Elle seemed to get at the sculpture's essence while James was hung up about whether the sculpture was the true original.
Even in the b&b scenes he seems cold and dismissive while Elle is warm and nostalgic. He excuses himself for falling asleep on their anniversary night because he was tired, but that tiredness seems to be indicative of something else.
Whether or not James is/was Elle's husband is left up to the viewer. I'm still wondering about it, as well as wondering about the son's relationship to James.
What I did get from the film was a highly interesting account of a male/female relationship that includes aloofness, curiosity, irritation, rage, intimacy, and disillusionment. All the ingredients of marriage, some would say.
Binoche deservedly won best actress at Cannes.
I agree with Robert:
"Even if you've no idea what's going on, the film is so beautiful, and the characters so intriguing, the movie's worth seeing."
* * *
Copie Conforme (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
Imagine Saw if it had been made by Béla Tarr.
Okay, I know I'm getting even more disbelieving looks than usual here, but let's face it: Copie Conforme is a Big Reveal movie, just as Saw is. Looked at in that regard, the ambiguity that so many people talk about pretty much goes away; there's a mystery to be solved here. The only difference is that it's not the characters who are trying to solve the mystery; they know everything, and because they know everything, they have no reason to explain it to themselves. We, the audience, are trying to work out the relationships here. And Kiarostami is, for most of the film, about as interested as the characters are in helping us work that out; in many of the movie's scenes, in fact, he is consciously obfuscating things, and the way the film is shot makes that all too plain. As to where the Tarr part comes in, aside from Kiarostami's wonderful soundplay and a few shots all to reminiscent of the Hungarian master, Tarr's movies, be they his shorter crime films (e.g., The Man from London) or his longer meditations on the fall of the Soviet Union (e.g., Sàtàntangó), the structure of every Tarr film is the same: languid save one moment of unadulterated violence.
The film opens with a talk at a university. Actually, the film opens with with the audience (both in the cinema and on the screen) waiting for a talk at a university. It is to be given by James Miller (William Shimell is his first big-screen appearance), a cultural historian who has wandered into the art world, according to his own later declamations, seemingly by accident. His book, which has the same name as the film, has won some sort of obscure prize, and he's giving the thank-you speech. Or he will, if he ever gets there. (This is important.) He eventually does show up, and launches into his speech, which he gives in a mixture of English and stumbling Italian (I assume it's meant to be stumbling, but I don't have nearly enough knowledge of what Italian is supposed to sound like despite my giallo fetish). As he's getting started, a woman and her son slip in and find their way to the reserved seating. This, we find out later, is Elle (Juliette Binoche), a local antiques dealer. She is unable to stay for the entire lecture, so she slips James' friend, the university professor who introduced him, her number and takes her son Julian (Im Schwitzkasten's Adrian Moore) for a burger. The two of them have a conversation that seems mundane, but ends up perhaps provoking more thought than anything in the film. In any case, later that morning, Elle presumably gets a call from James, who shows up in her antique shop. She promises to show him something interesting if he's got the time to spare; he replies that he has to be back in time to catch a nine o'clock train. No problem, and they depart Arezzo for Lucignano, which we are told is half an hour away or thereabouts. They see what she has come to show him, but it's after that that things get interesting, as we start to question not the nature of their relationship, but the way Kiarostami has presented their relationship to us.
Not helping the matter is that Kiarostami, who also wrote the script, is involved in constant misdirection as to what the mystery even is (the question I hear most asked, and the one it was easiest to answer by halfway through the film, is “dis these people know each other before the movie started?”). Again, not that he hides this fact from us at all; this is “mystery” in its most existential form, and also again, there's no mystery in the film itself. Everyone there knows what's going on, even the people who have never met these folks before, including the proprietor of a local coffee shop (Tea with Mussolini's Gianna Giachetti) and an older couple Elle ropes into a discussion on a statue in a little square in Lucignano (La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie's Jean-Claude Carriére and Micmacs' Agathe Natanson). In case you haven't noticed, this movie has one hell of a cast, which makes it even more impressive that Shimell, who previously had acted in a few made-for-TV movies, holds his own against them. (Even more impressive is Adrian Moore, whose part is small, but wonderful.) But I digress. Kiarostami is using this to slap us in the face, as it were, with how we simply don't get it. (Don't worry, there's more to this tale than anyone else gets, either.) But the slap, as it did in his wonderful Ta'm e Guilass, comes with a velvet glove. After all, Kiarostami is doing his best to confuse you. Take the beginning of that car ride, while the two of them are still in Arezzo. There's a long, languid conversation, some joking. All the while they're driving through the narrow streets, and you can see the buildings on either side reflected in the windshield. The buildings on either side of the street are different, but constant, colors, so the view of James is always occluded by off-white, whereas the view of Elle is always occluded with a sort of terracotta yellow. (I wish I'd been paying enough attention to be able to make some salient comment on the changes in conversation when they pass into shadow.) This sort of occlusion is present throughout, as we often see the characters through, or in, reflections, both from glass (display cases, picture windows, etc.) and in mirrors. As well, remember I talked about Tarr and soundplay? There are times when we can't hear what James and Elle are saying thanks to the soundplay. The mike will focus on a presenter at a small museum talking about a piece of art, or a traveling accordion player (how Tarr is that?) will pass between the camera and the couple, and we will hear nothing of them, or the people they're talking to.
The mirrors are especially important in a movie where every shot is blocked with importance. While Kiarostami is interested in obfuscation, there's a point where you can't obfuscate any more. Ironically (and meant as such), the two times when our main characters are most naked is a long, stationary shot in a mirror. While I can't say more without spoiling it, the placement of these two shots is perhaps the most important thing in the film for figuring out the mystery (the solution to which is there for all to see in the film's final spoken line, by the way).
The one place it falls just shy of genius is in the conversation Elle has with Julian. Taken on its own, it is an excellent scene, full of the little details that make this movie wonderful. But in the greater context, it serves only to throw confusion onto confusion. It's the one place that Kiarostami's obfuscation becomes manipulation, and the scene—and the film—suffers for it.
Is that a reason not to see it? Of course not. Even Roger Ebert, whose distaste for Kiarostami is legendary (his reaction to Ta'm e Guilass started a friendly rivalry between Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum that continues to this day, and the first sentence of his review of Ten is “I am unable to grasp the greatness of Abbas Kiarostami.”), gave the film three and a half stars, though the text of the review itself strikes me as lukewarm at best (“[f]or me, it is too clever by half, creating full-bodied characters but inserting them into a story that is thin soup.”). This is another way in which Kiarostami reminds me of Tarr: even if you've no idea what's going on, the film is so beautiful, and the characters so intriguing, the movie's worth seeing. But unlike Tarr, whose movies are so often about nothing but the day-to-day life of his characters, Kiarostami does, in fact, have a Big Reveal. It's subtle enough, however, that even people who saw it and half-understood its significance often don't make the (to me obvious) final leap. Give it a shot and see if you hit the bullseye. *** ½