Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami) [215 points/20 votes]
"On the one hand, it's understandable that a thriving consensus has formed around Certified Copy. It is undeniably a masterpiece, a film whose appeal is broad and deep. On the other hand, this phenomenon is somewhat odd, given the difficulty imagining a consensus of any kind forming around what is actually occurring in the film. I can thus recognize that many love the film as much as I do, but I'm not altogether sure if we all love it for the same reasons, because the film is something of a mirage, an ever-turning Möbius strip of narrative that eludes any and all attempts to pin it down. What these oblique metaphorical references indicate, then, is that Certified Copy is a film that exists wholly in the act of perception and in our relationship to it. It's the rare film that feels like it absolutely requires our participation, involvement and sensitivity in order for it to complete itself.
In Certified Copy, we watch a British writer (opera singer William Shimell) and a French antiques dealer (Juliette Binoche, in a virtuoso performance) spend a great deal of time talking with one another and wandering around Tuscany. At first, they seem like strangers, but by the end, they interact as if they were a married couple. It's not the case that the "true" nature of their relationship is progressively revealed to us, superseding previous iterations. Rather, every face their relationship presents to us feels equally "real." It's rather fitting that the plot of Certified Copy revolves around a relationship, a bond that only exists between two individuals, with one foot planted in each person's subjectivity. No one half of a couple can unilaterally claim ownership of the relationship -- relationships exist only in the space between people. The experience of Certified Copy exists only in the space between the phenomena and images of the film and our ever-fluctuating perception of and response to them.
Many films purport to tell the "story of a relationship," often using various techniques to fracture their narratives in order to convey something of the complexity we all feel to be fundamental to relationships. But these films often fail because of their need to come down, finally, and make some sort of definitive statement about the relationship, usually either naively hopeful or nihilistically cynical. These films cause us to become invested in relationships as plots and dramatic narratives, as though we were watching diplomatic negotiations between states: "Will they or won't they...?" We are denied this in Certified Copy: we cannot hope for any specific outcome to Shimell and Binoche's relationship because we cannot with any precision say what the nature of this relationship actually is.
This mystery of the central relationship in Certified Copy is the culmination of a seemingly minor but absolutely central theme in Kiarostami's work: the incessant wandering, drifting, or searching of his characters, often by foot or in a car. Foregrounding this seemingly innocuous activity to such a great extent, his films require that we interpret this aspect as a consistent, central motif. These wanderings can take on a political edge (as in the Koker trilogy) and they can even hint at a poetic, almost mystical religiosity, as in The Wind Will Carry Us. Rootlessness reaches its peak in Certified Copy, directed by an Iranian, filmed in Italy and co-starring a British non-actor and a French actress.
From this film's unique premise, a number of potential themes spiral out. Do the characters' progressive acknowledgement of their supposed relationship hint at our responsibility as human beings, the need not to disavow our connection to each other? Or is Certified Copy a statement about our own disconnect from history, our aimless drifting an expression of the desire to escape our roles as historical subjects? Might it also be that despite the film's seemingly apolitical nature, the film's oblique yet persistent rejection of our social isolation should, in fact, be the starting point to all political action?
As I said, it's difficult to tell if the film's numerous other fans see in it the same things that I do. More than most films, it's difficult to talk about Certified Copy because it seems to be speaking a language all its own, one in which none of us are exactly fluent. We can start by saying that the film is sublimely beautiful in a way that few films are, though "mere" beauty can seem inadequate for some. But it also affirms the need for beauty, and isn't the creation of a work of art so wholly beautiful as Certified Copy itself the most adequate response to a world that is often ugly?
But what I find most personally meaningful about the film is the way each twist and turn somehow engages us deeper and deeper without us ever knowing exactly why. It restores our faith in art, in particular reminding us of the power of narrative art, storytelling. For all its experimentalism, Certified Copy is a profoundly traditional work of storytelling. Even though we modify our understanding of this couple from moment to moment, each metamorphosis feels as real as what preceded it. The characters' arguments and counter-arguments become refracted through our own personal experiences. We latch onto every twist in the narrative as if it's potentially about us and something we've experienced. The characters speak in ways that hint at countless other implied meanings, the way poetry finds its significance between the words. Certified Copy shouldn't work, because it undermines our belief in the reality of what we see, but it absolutely does, revealing that we can become caught up even in what we simultaneously understand to be entirely fictive. In the end, I'm most grateful of this feeling, of being "caught up" and involved. At a time when we doubt the veracity of the stories we tell each other, whether in films or in real life, here is a film as blatantly "unreal" as can be imagined, yet it nevertheless reaffirms the value of narrative art, the way it can miraculously and alchemically transform the fictional into something undeniably real." - Trevor Link
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