A Night to Remember (1958)

Forget James Cameron's "Titanic" (1997), that mawkish melodrama, most remembered for the Jack-Rose steamy romance, rather than the colossal tragedy that was supposed to be the ultimate takeaway. Roy Ward Baker's "A Night to Remember" (1958), based on Walter Lord's book of the same name, did a much better job. No needless romanticism, no emotional manipulation, no fictional characters; just fully focused, straight-out chronicling of the final hours of the unsinkable ship, with a number of tiny episodes revolving around tiny characters that linger in your memory long after the final frame.

Just half an hour into the film, after warming us up to the environment and the characters, the ship makes its fatal collision with the dreaded iceberg, and its final one and half hour, as estimated by the ship's designer Andrews (Michael Goodliffe), begins to unfold.

Notable is how the film does not concentrate on the one supposed protagonist, Second officer Lightoller (Kenneth More), but rather on a multitude of other secondary characters as all of them share a disastrous fate, and not to intend any pun, are sailing on the same boat! Although we know the outcome, the Eric Ambler/Roy Baker team of writer/director ensures tautness all the way through. 

As the ship sinks, so do our hearts, when any hope of help arriving on time is thwarted, thanks to the infuriatingly clumsy behavior of the crew of the Californian just ten miles away! The writers seem to have taken real life accounts from survivors. Did it really happen this way? The neglect of such monumental proportions is baffling; help wasn't extended when it was only a stone's throw away. Imagine the number of lives that would've been saved in this completely avoidable catastrophe!

The inevitable eventually happens, as it happened, in the most unimaginably brutal fashion. Pandemonium gradually builds up, and the race for survival begins and ends in a devastating culmination. While we, the viewers watch the horror unfold with bated breaths, from the comfort of our living rooms, one shudders to imagine what the passengers must have actually gone through on that fateful night, as they gave in to the call of death.

The camera work and effects are most astonishing for the 50s, barring the visibly fake iceberg. For instance, the ingenious technique of shifting an entire set by a hydraulic mechanism, to produce a tilting effect, complete with the creaking sounds intact, is a masterstroke. So is the gentle rocking effect of a floating ship that gives you a feeling of actually being a part of the action. Among the many haunting images that are a direct result of these effects, are the ones of the soup/food cart gliding across the dining hall, as does the rocking horse.

No words for the band of musicians and their attempts to "soothe the nerves". That is some hearty courage on display. It is all the more believable though, for music has an unparalleled strength, and it keeps them going.

Some of the faces that stay in memory despite having minuscule roles are:

1. One of the youths from the steerage (perhaps an inspiration for Cameron to extend and write the character of Jack?).

2. The man with three children, who seeks the direct truth from Andrews; and mouths the chilling lines - "I take it you and I may both be in the same boat later".

3. The baker who guzzles scotch: "All roads lead to Rome", and in a quirky turn of events, survives the chilled waters owing to the alcohol content in his body!

4. The old man who takes in a lost child looking for his mom and comforts him 'til the end (most heartbreaking).

5. The recurring image of a man desperately clinging on to two wooden chairs (?) in order to help stay afloat later, but ultimately loses them as the ship makes its final plunge.

6. The snobbish first class passengers who gamble and drink away at a table being blissfully ignorant of the chaos outside; only when the whisky in the glass tilts to a considerable extent, is anything even noticed! "You can't sink this boat, that's certain", exclaims one of them. The unsinkable nature of Titanic is often talked about in the film; and more so coming from this elite class of individuals, perhaps in a way mocking their arrogance and overconfidence about the infallibility of man-made technological advancements against nature's great power.

One wonders though, if in an attempt to keep the melodrama at bay and maintain a mostly objective view of the tragedy, did the filmmaker go overboard with the stoic characterizations of Lightoller and Andrews? It is doubtful if it is an acting fault, and the body language including facial expressions of both these men seem to exhibit that they are strangely unperturbed by the events happening around them. If you are gonna face certain death soon, how could you remain cool and smile on occasion? Granted, one may not necessarily start taking giant panic breaths or go hysterical, but there is such a thing as being too calm!

Andrews does display a silent acceptance of defeat and hopelessness in but one shot. But Lightoller seems to be made of stone all along. Even after the ship finally sinks and he commands the overturned boat, the lines he utters and the way he utters them with a slight frown and nothing more, seems as though he came out of some very mundane episode and not a disaster as mammoth as it really was.

Nonetheless, Baker and team have given us a controlled, thoroughly restrained and what is perhaps the best celluloid depiction of one of the deadliest disasters humankind has ever seen. Wish Cameron had taken a lesson or two about directing from this film, instead of shamelessly replicating some scenes and lines in his bloated blockbuster.

Score: 9/10

Close-up (1990)

They all make films based on real events, don't they? But you can bet your bottom dollar, you haven't seen anything quite like this. It doesn't get more real than Abbas Kiarostami's "Close-Up" (1990), a rare film, very unique in its intent and format that has to be seen to be believed. Not only does it blur the line between fiction and reality, but it literally obliterates any distinction between the two in a manner so seamless, that Kiarostami himself becomes the great deceiver, the kind his protagonist Hossain Sabzian (starring as himself) is.

"Close-Up" is an up, close and personal look at the real life case of Hossain Sabzian, an ordinary man, an ardent lover of art and film who passed himself off as popular filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf to the Ahankhah family. Posing as the director, he expressed interest in using the abode of the Ahankhahs as his next filming location, while also promising their sons roles in the film. Subsequently his game was up and he faced arrest and a trial. 

Now here's the big one. All of the above characters involved in the story are portrayed by their real selves, names unchanged! What's more, Kiarostami appears as himself, films the actual trial and also recreates some of the events prior to Hossain's arrest using these very people as actors! So here is a recreation of real events, that is NOT stylized, that is stripped of all romanticism and is delivered to you in its raw form. Well...almost!

The actual trial filmed is presented in a coarse, grainy camera footage, which initially comes across as a stylistic choice, because the acting itself did not differ from the re-enacted events that are filmed with a crisper, cleaner film quality. But then again, they were not acting after all! Or were they, since they knew the trial was being filmed? So where does the acting end and where does it begin? "Close-up" is a perfect example of meta cinema, yet one in which one can't really tell if its a documentary or a docu-drama or if there's a film within a film or a reality within a film, or a film within a reality, or all of it! But classification of any sort is pointless, really. What we have at hand is a minimalist thriller that's also a complex, layered, existential drama with a very identifiable issue of the human condition at its core.

Not just its protagonist, but essentially everyone involved is trying to make their presence felt, and establish some sort of identity for themselves, for which Sabzian's case provides the perfect opportunity, even for Sabzian himself! The journalist Farazmand, who gets to cover the case thinks that this case could be his career defining, crowning moment, as he explains in the excellent opening scene. He knows that this is the story that could get him his recognition, much like famous journalist Oriana Fallaci whom he idolizes. 

He explains to the cab driver that Fallaci has international recognition for she has the nose for sniffing out stories that nobody else knows about; something of her own, something that distinguishes her from the others. It's all about a quest to become somebody from nobody. Not surprising, that to achieve this, Farazmand goes through a lot of struggle. He has to shell out and even borrow some money from the plaintiffs in order to pay his cab fare, all for the sake of this one sensational news item that could perhaps catapult him to stardom. He even struggles to find a tape recorder, as he requests for it from door to door. This shows how struggle is inherently a huge part of his sorry life.

Even the man at the helm, Kiarostami, apparently left all his current projects when he heard of this case, to film "Close-up", since the subject caught his interest. This was the film that got Kiarostami more attention in the West; his defining film, that made him much more internationally recognized. Thus, both Kiarostami and Farazmand got their watershed moments with "Close-up" and the case at its center. In one scene, we see Kiarostami trying to prepone the trial date to suit his needs! Could it be deliberate on Kiarostami's part to include that bit, to show that in a way, even he was being selfish to some extent?

Mr. Ahankhah is quite right then, when he tells Kiarostami, "Everyone who has become involved in our case so far has tried to use the situation to his own advantage"! But what about the Ahankhahs themselves? Hasn't the case been a blessing in disguise, that they all got to appear in an Abbas Kiarostami film? In a way Hossain Sabzian, while pretending to be a filmmaker and promising them roles, eventually ended up getting them all a role in a real film! It's unimaginable, the compromise it must've taken for these people to meet and act with the man who tricked them! But then again, maybe they were all in it for something. To be famous? For money? For recognition? However, the claim of still being somebody is made, anyway, as one of Ahankhah's sons complains, "He (Farazmand) portrayed us as simple people..but we are not".

A tin can is kicked randomly. It endlessly rolls across the road, and finally stops at some point. But it is in great danger of being kicked again, and it does! The next kick happens when the kicker finds a tape recorder that he desperately needs! This next kick decides its fate. The can keeps getting kicked from place to place, perhaps symbolic of the fate of the strugglers in the film; a never ending journey that may perhaps never attain stability and satisfaction.

Sabzian, at the beginning of his trial is in danger of incarceration. Yet he says he would let Kiarostami film his trial. Why? Because they are his audience! Imprisonment or not, at least via Kiarostami's film, he gets his few minutes of fame that he so aspired for and he can ensure that his voice is heard. This is where the social commentary aspect of "Close-up" sets in. Poverty and desperation drives good men like Sabzian to follow the path of deception, merely to command some respect, morality be damned! Sabzian, however, makes some profound points in his statement. He speaks about a dream of equality across social classes and a lesson in humility. The kind of world he imagines doesn't, and perhaps may never, exist. You cannot have a popular filmmaker mingle with other ordinary beings as equals. 

The icing on the cake is that strange sequence in which the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf comes face to face with Sabzian. Does Kiarostami set up a surprise meet between the director and Sabzian, as a kind gesture for the latter? Or is it to film a juicy climax scene for his own product? One great act (pun intended), two intentions, one rooted in reality, the other in cinema. The audio suddenly goes bad during this time. Perhaps, the microphone on Makhmalbaf's lapel malfunctions, or perhaps the choice of sporadic muted moments was intentional. We may never know. Behold, the deliberately distorted vision and sound in this scene, as the audio feed gets abruptly muted, while the the real and the fake Mohsen are filmed through a cracked windshield!

As a cinematic experience, the film surely sucks you in. Kiarostami knows drama very well and practically owns his audience for those 90 odd minutes. Despite its minimalism, Kiarostami commands your attention in the entire duration of the film, as there is constantly something happening on screen. Although filmed as a raw documentary/docudrama, Kiarostami adds some naturalistic humour to bring a smile to your face. Like for instance when Farazmand exclaims as he approaches the Ahankhah house, "How strange that my best story should take place at a dead end". It is also commendable that despite being non-professionals, all the actors deliver convincing performances, especially Hossain Farazmand as the anxious reporter and of course, Hossain Sabzian in the lead role.

Further interesting bits make for some ironic humour; specially the court judge's confident statement, "...and I don't see anything worth filming"! Bet he had to eat his words upon witnessing the final product. This is Kiarostami's magnum opus; one bold, daring meta film that is his own, as he changes the very definition of cinema. It may not cater to everyone's cinematic taste, but "Close-up" deserves all the accolades it has been receiving from film circles and critics.

Score: 10/10