William Shimell and Juliette Binoche in “Certified Copy.” credit: ropeofsilicon.com
There are a number of films that work on a number of different levels, but are equally enjoyable regardless of which level you find yourself on. For instance, you might find ‘Animal Farm’ to be a dark and interesting adult fantasy story. George Orwell, after all, is a helluva writer, and it’s easy to find human parallels in his characterizations and plot mechanics. That it’s also a fairly detailed allegory of the rise of Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky in the Leninist U.S.S.R. casts another whole perspective, but not knowing that doesn’t necessarily rob you of the initial interest and enjoyment of the ‘fictional’ story. Stuart Rosenberg’s ‘Cool Hand Luke’ is, even now, a wildly popular Paul Newman movie. Would you enjoy it more, or less, if you knew Luke’s separate episodes in the prison paralleled The Passion? Or does it matter either way? Most of us saw, and enjoyed, ‘Forbidden Planet’ as youngsters long before we realized it was a version of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest.’ As literal-mindedly as most of us receive the world, and the stories that we relate to that condense or explain our own experiences of it, there’s also a marvelous capacity in each of us to take things presented to us in the abstract, and still form our own patterns of logic, our own senses of cause-and-effect or realistic context. And not just in cases of direct allegory, but in any series of recognizable events or people. We fill in the gaps and join the loose ends together to construct our own sense of what we’re seeing and experiencing, as long as the writer or filmmaker has given us enough information for us to form our own conclusions.
That’s the beauty of Abbas Kiarostami’s great film, Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) (France and Italy, 2010). We’re introduced to two separate people; a circumstance brings them together, they spend time amiably, discuss and argue things with familiarity, then battle and make-up intimately. Have they been married all along? Are they strangers who have silently agreed to role-play, to challenge deeply private aspects of themselves with each other? Or something in-between? You can practically watch the entire movie thinking ‘they’re really strangers,’ and it works. Then watch it again – ‘They’ve been married all along’ – and it works. Each scene, each discussion, each place they find themselves in, adds certainty here, then ambiguity there. One can even take the whole film as a formal exercise of the director – the settings are real, but the people are placeholders, constructs, for a whole sequence of issues that these two people couldn’t possibly have taken realistic part in, but nonetheless explore together. It seems wholly realistic, even as we feel it couldn’t be, but it’s all absolutely true-to-life.
James Miller (William Shimell) is an essayist and academic who has written a book, Copie Conforme (Certified Copy), subtitled ‘Forget The Original, Just Get A Good Copy’. It questions distinctions of value or authenticity between original works of craft or art and earnestly produced copies and reproductions, and how we subjectively decide whether they’re good or bad, true or inauthentic. Elle (Juliette Binoche) runs a small gallery of artifacts and reproductions in the Tuscan village of Arezzo, where she lives with her son. Attending a presentation about the book, she leaves her number with one of his associates; they meet, and they agree to spend the day in nearby Lucignano, seeing sights and discussing his work before he’s to catch a train out in the evening. And the day they spend together unfurls and expands into a demonstration of how people relate to things and places and each other, and how individual, and collectively shared, histories color our behaviors and perceptions towards all of that.
Juliette Binoche deservedly won the best actress award at Cannes last year for her richly realized character here, and obviously found creative common cause with the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. This is Mr. Kiarostami’s first film outside of Iran (predictably, it’s banned there), but characteristic of his films there is his preference for casting non-professional actors in substantial roles, and here Ms. Binoche’s counterpart is William Shimell, a British opera baritone whom Mr. Kiarostami had directed in Cosi Fan Tutte. It’s his acting debut, and he brings admirable gravity, efficiency, and no little charm to the role.
I love films like this, and could swim around with this for four or five more viewings. That’s certainly not required for you, but it’s a film that should not be missed. It’s been compared to everything from Rossellini’s Journey to Italy to Last Year at Marienbad to Two for the Road to Celine and Julie Go Boating to Before Sunrise. Kiarostami executes faithful reproductions of those films’ important ideas, but places them into his own fascinating and original context. And there’s enough warmth and fun sprinkled through all those bigger ideas to keep whatever level you meet the film on an enjoyable and entertaining place to be.
(2013)
Periscope In The Bathtub 