“The first person to cry can stay.”
Occasionally, I will go against my own rules to cover a film too interesting to ignore. While I only speak English, Hello Cinema examines the craft of movie acting and the desire for stardom in a unique way. Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf put an ad in the papers asking for actors for his next film. Thousands showed up and the film covers the audition process with Makhmalbaf asking sometimes cruel questions to discover why people want to be in movies.
To give an example, Makhmalbaf brings two women on stage, immediately gives the part to one and says if she has any humanity she’ll walk out and let the other girl have the part. When the girl refuses to leave, the director says he doesn’t want to work with her because she lacks humanity. Makhmalbaf isn’t doing trickery for his own pleasure. These moments lead to deeper examinations of why a person would want to be in a movie.
Cinematically it’s very simple and in truth he’d already cast his leads, though they appear here as part of the auditioning crowd. The blend of documentary and fiction examines the nature of truth and cinema more directly than any other film. When a person says they’ll do “anything” to be in a movie the American approach is to ask what they mean by “anything.” This film examines why someone would be so willing. For anyone interested in Iranian film, this is the perfect companion piece to Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up.
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