Soft Epiphanies
The Multilayered Narratives in Abbas Kiarostami's Film Close-Up (1990)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9978194 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Agnès Devictor (0009-0005-8789-5170, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Amélie Neuve-Eglise (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Pages | 1-16 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Iranian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-0862 • E-ISSN: 1475-4819 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/irn.2023.42 |
| OpenAlex | W4385764112 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
As part of the collective endeavor to explore the modalities and challenges of the narrative in the Persianate world, this article reconsiders Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up (1990), a film characterized by a special cinematographic feature. While accounting for what appears to be a story of swindling and identity theft, Kiarostami keeps the viewer in a state of uncertainty about the nature of what he sees, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, truth and lie, through particular narrative and cinematographic choices. Previous scholarship has focused mainly on the aesthetic implications of the staging and its effects on the viewer. The present study proposes a different type of analysis by discussing specific narrative devices from the perspective of cultural anthropology, with particular attention to the recurrence of the zāher / bāten paradigm, suggested as a cipher by Kiarostami himself early on in the film. The examination of the discursive and aesthetic mobilization of these notions brings to light a subtle game of back-and-forth between the desire to disclose deeper meanings and the will to preserve ambiguity and intimacy, allowing for “soft epiphanies” to arise
Aesthetics · Ambiguity · Art · Identity (music · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Perspective (graphical · Scholarship · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy · Turkey's Politics and Society
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |