Tweet
Certified Copy (2011)
Juliette Binoche, William Shimell. Directed by Abbas Kiarostami.
Certified Copy, starring Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, and directed by Abbas Kiarostami, is a mystery of a film, one of those rare movies whose presentation of the mystery is so excellent that it outweighs the need for a satisfaction of some kind of solution.
When the film begins, the characters seem not to know each other. He is an art lecturer; she runs an antique shop. They meet, go for a drive, and are suddenly a married couple. Were they pretending earlier not to know each other, or are they pretending now to be married?
That the film doesn't really answer the question or provide evidence for the audience to decide one way or the other might drive viewers mad, a response I might agree with if the film weren't so interesting and well done. Roger Ebert writes, "We assume there's more going on here than meets the eye, but maybe what meets the eye is all that's going on, and there is no complete, objective reality." I agree with him: whatever the reality is, if in fact there is one, isn't as important in this film as the way the mystery is offered, with (mostly) interesting dialogue, good acting, and interesting movement and counter-movement by the actors.
I don't adopt Ebert's "take it at face value" approach in this movie mostly because some of the clues seem to point to these people at least knowing each other before the events in the first scene, but I'm not so beholden to that interpretation that I find the opposite preposterous. It works for me with its inconsistencies and unanswered questions because the whole doesn't have to add up to anything if its parts are honest and real, and the film is made up of some very real in-the-now moments. There is one scene near the end, where Binoche rests on an outdoor stair, that I wish I could have frozen and painted. Does the moment give us any clues about the whole picture? I had the feeling that it did, but even if it did not, it was strikingly real then, and that was good enough for me.
Which pretty much sums up my feelings about the whole movie.
7/10 (IMDb rating)
74/100 (Criticker rating)
Juliette Binoche, William Shimell. Directed by Abbas Kiarostami.
Certified Copy, starring Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, and directed by Abbas Kiarostami, is a mystery of a film, one of those rare movies whose presentation of the mystery is so excellent that it outweighs the need for a satisfaction of some kind of solution.
When the film begins, the characters seem not to know each other. He is an art lecturer; she runs an antique shop. They meet, go for a drive, and are suddenly a married couple. Were they pretending earlier not to know each other, or are they pretending now to be married?
That the film doesn't really answer the question or provide evidence for the audience to decide one way or the other might drive viewers mad, a response I might agree with if the film weren't so interesting and well done. Roger Ebert writes, "We assume there's more going on here than meets the eye, but maybe what meets the eye is all that's going on, and there is no complete, objective reality." I agree with him: whatever the reality is, if in fact there is one, isn't as important in this film as the way the mystery is offered, with (mostly) interesting dialogue, good acting, and interesting movement and counter-movement by the actors.
I don't adopt Ebert's "take it at face value" approach in this movie mostly because some of the clues seem to point to these people at least knowing each other before the events in the first scene, but I'm not so beholden to that interpretation that I find the opposite preposterous. It works for me with its inconsistencies and unanswered questions because the whole doesn't have to add up to anything if its parts are honest and real, and the film is made up of some very real in-the-now moments. There is one scene near the end, where Binoche rests on an outdoor stair, that I wish I could have frozen and painted. Does the moment give us any clues about the whole picture? I had the feeling that it did, but even if it did not, it was strikingly real then, and that was good enough for me.
Which pretty much sums up my feelings about the whole movie.
7/10 (IMDb rating)
74/100 (Criticker rating)