Sometimes the oddest connections emerge in randomly reading books and watching movies. I read Bel Canto, a novel in which a female opera singer plays a central role, and not long after watched Certified Copy, a movie in which a central character is played by a male opera singer. He does not, however, sing in the movie; rather, he plays a successful author.
Certified Copy
focuses on a married couple of fifteen years whose illusion of love
disintegrates over time. It appears the
husband does not catch on to what love actually is, and for that matter, the
wife, as well, seems childish in her inability to genuinely and patiently care,
especially for the couple’s son.
They seem to talk only to themselves, not to each other, and
miss any opportunity afforded by the attraction to each other and love that they
shared to get outside their conflicts arising from demands on each other. He is away constantly, dedicated to his
career and traveling, thus neglecting her and his mutual responsibility to their son. The failed marriage is a universally
true idea as Abbas Kiarostani attests in an interview attached to the feature
film.
Kiarostani acknowledges that without innovation the story
might fall flat, and so, he plays interestingly with time sequence and movie structure.
The movie is also both well directed and acted. Juliet Binoche succeeds as the exquisitely
beautiful, sometimes bitchy, sometimes alluring middle-aged wife and William
Shimmel convinces as the distanced intellectual who recites abstract diatribes
and throws boyish tantrums. In addition, the language of the dialogue
changes easily among English, French, and Italian, which fascinated me.
The DVD I accessed had supplementary materials, including
Kiarostani’s 1977 movie The Report,
which he made while still living in Iran.
The original was destroyed in the Iranian revolution but a copy was
restored to acceptable condition.
The story carries similar themes, but the movie, in Farsi, is unique in that it reveals much
of the difficulties of a discordant couple living in Tehran in the
1970s. An interesting two for one DVD set.
