151 replies to this topic

[Nick Olson]

So does anyone know whether my ordered copy of Certified Copy (Region ABC) on blu ray from Artificial Eye will play on my Playstation 3?? I hope so!

[Overstreet]

Here's my review of Certified Copy, so I thought I'd put it in a thread called The Certified Copy.

[J.A.A. Purves]

Overstreet, on 11 October 2011 - 02:56 PM, said:

Here's my review of Certified Copy, so I thought I'd put it in a thread called The Certified Copy.

Quote

... This movie isn’t really about “Are they or aren’t they married?” It’s about which reality we would prefer, and why. The movie puts us through vigorous intellectual exercises in order to expose our own priorities, personalities, and perspectives.

Nice. Now that I think about it, that is precisely what makes it so good. For a number of other directors, it would be about merely teasing the audience over the answer to that question.

[Nick Olson]

Yeah that extra "the" in the thread title is a tad annoying.

Jeffrey: I love your piece. You really nailed what makes the film so intriguing and endlessly re-watchable. I have in mind an essayish review of the film that takes Charles Taylor's The Ethics of Authenticity as a frame of reference. Now if only my shipped-from-Australia blu ray would arrive!

[Nathan Douglas]

Watched it again recently and confirmed that it's still my #1 for this year. Besides all of the film's well-documented strengths, I love love love that Kiarostami avoids my most OCD movie nitpick that every other film messes up: when the film opens and a man steps up to a PA mic, there's no feedback that suddenly happens and then quiets down, just to tell us that it's actually a mic. Just clean, rich sound with a bit of high-end echo as the speaker gets closer. Like in real life, with real technicians who knew what they were doing.

It's a little thing, but it's the sort of little thing that hints at an integrity that is deeply moving. The sense of affection that comes through every choice Kiarostami makes is just luminous.

[Tyler]

There's never going to be a US DVD of this, is there?

[J.A.A. Purves]

Tyler, on 18 November 2011 - 05:42 PM, said:

There's never going to be a US DVD of this, is there?

You're best bet is probably this one -

N.W. Douglas, on 18 August 2011 - 12:06 PM, said:

The Canadian R1 will be released Sept. 6, FWIW.

That's what I used and it works just like any other DVD.

[Tyler]

I got the Canadian DVD for Christmas. How many more times will I need to watch it before the movie makes sense?

[Tyler]

Certified Copy is now streaming on Netflix.

BTW, William Shimell, who plays James, only has a few other acting credits; he's mainly an opera singer.


After thinking about the movie for a few days (I've still only watched it once), I think

Spoiler

we can't know definitively if Elle and James are/were "really" married--there's enough evidence for either side of the argument, but the evidence is so contradictory it's not possible to figure out which is "true" and which isn't (let me know if I'm missing something here). And that's the point. Kiarostami is saying that imagined relationships can have just as much power over us as real ones, and the more we live with those copies of life in our heads, the harder it is to disentangle what actually happened from the narrative we tell ourselves.

[M. Leary]

Tyler, on 27 December 2011 - 09:48 AM, said:

I got the Canadian DVD for Christmas. How many more times will I need to watch it before the movie makes sense?

We posted much on this film at Filmwell, but I found Mike Hertenstein's essay really riveting. Given your last comment, I think you may really connect with it. Which is good, because CC is all about connections, real or otherwise.

[Overstreet]

Far and away my favorite film of those released in the U.S. in 2011. Nothing comes close to competing with it.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Tyler wrote:
: Certified Copy is now streaming on Netflix.

But only in the U.S.

So only you guys get it on the internet, but only we get it on DVD?

[M. Leary]

Seems fitting for this film that even though multiple forms of it exist, in reality we each only have access to one of these forms.

[Scholar's Parrot]

I don't know if it's been this cheap for a while and everyone else has seen it, but the UK region free bluray is 13.71 USD shipped. It takes 7-10 days to ship and 7-10 days after that for arrival, but I'm willing to wait for it at that price.

Boom.

[Buckeye Jones]

As I watched this the other day, I remember thinking about a third of the way into this film that this Binoche character is really unhinged. She's got no filter, no ability to interact with this author. If I was the author, I'd be looking to cut this trip short. But as the film progressed, I was taken up in the whole experience of their relationship, real or improvised. I am still unclear as to which it is, but I'm not quite ready to say its unimportant. There's a creative aspect in the nature of the original that, in my mind, puts the lie to the argument in James' book. The original is better than the copy because of the initial burst of creativity associated with it--a copy can be as aesthetically pleasing and of equivalent craftsmanship, but the creative spark for the original is, to me, extra, the bona fide of primacy. So, even if the author and the gallery owner are just play acting the intimacies of a long marriage, testing out the theory of a certified copy, the fact that they can appear to achieve such a high degree of realism does not provide equivalency to a marriage relationship of fifteen years. So, I'm unconvinced, like Binoche, in J-j-james' argument. And I am convinced, that the real, the original, is worth valuing and celebrating, and if they are indeed married, making every effort to save.

Another thing, I see a lot of high, high praise for Certified Copy. It was excellent, but I don't know that it's the best film I saw this year, or decade. What is it about it that is drawing such love from folks?

[Overstreet]

Buckeye Jones, on 04 January 2012 - 11:46 AM, said:

What is it about it that is drawing such love from folks?

Well, I wrote a love letter to the film at Good Letters a few months ago. Do you need me to say more than that? Did you read Mike Hertenstein's review at Filmwell? Or Michael Sicinski's at Mubi?

The way it's about marriage, faith, art. The frightful folly of the woman's "unhinged" love and willingness to sacrifice and commit and idealize, contrasted with the frightful emptiness of the man's aloofness, his detachment, his cerebral filtering of everything, his avoidance of responsibility, his need to dominate any subject or anything he encounters, his alarming forgetfulness, his fear of mystery, his contradictions.

The mirrors. Mirrors everywhere. But then some of them turn out to be doorways or windows instead of mirrors. Which highlights the difference between art as "a thing" and art as "a way."

The way there are originals and copies, in one sense or another, in almost every shot.

The reflections on the glass of the car window as they're driving.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop there for now.

Edited by Overstreet, 04 January 2012 - 12:36 PM.

[Overstreet]

Oh, and this... and this. (I'm pulling all of these links from earlier in the thread, but they're still well worth revisiting.)

Edited by Overstreet, 04 January 2012 - 12:51 PM.

[Anders]

Overstreet, on 04 January 2012 - 12:23 PM, said:

Or Michael Sicinski's at Mubi?

Wow, somehow I had missed Sicinski's piece. Thanks! It really helps me clarify a lot of what I love about this film and makes my impatient to experience a second viewing.

[Tyler]

Anders, on 04 January 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

Overstreet, on 04 January 2012 - 12:23 PM, said:

Or Michael Sicinski's at Mubi?

Wow, somehow I had missed Sicinski's piece. Thanks! It really helps me clarify a lot of what I love about this film and makes my impatient to experience a second viewing.

Which reminds me: Sicinski says Binoche's character is unnamed, but other places (IMDB, for example) say her name is Elle. Is her name actually given in the film?

[Buckeye Jones]

Thanks for Sicinski's piece, I'd read the others. To be completely honest, I kept looking for a reflection of the camera in the scene with the car's windshield reflection. I wonder how they did that.