Nathan Douglas’s review published on Letterboxd:
Wrote on this as part of a long, wide-ranging Substack essay about my personal formation as a cinephile. Excerpt:
"During the 1980s and 1990s, the film theorist Paul Willemen found himself returning again and again to an aspect of cinephilia which he couldn’t shake: epiphanic moments. He noticed that cinephiles, beginning with the French impressionist filmmakers and critics of the 1920s, and continuing through the postwar Parisian scene of the 1940s and 50s, showed a remarkable tendency to fixate on singular moments in films. For the idealists of the 1920s, a fascination with the indescribable presence of things captured on film was so strong that they invented a term, photogénie, to define the shiver of existence they found in watching films. A generation later, the cinephiles of Cahiers du Cinema did not revive the doctrine of photogénie, but as part of their theory of auteurism, they seized upon the importance of certain moments which revealed to them, inadvertently, the presence of a director’s personality.
These moments were not celebrated for their significatory power or for their integration as part of a whole - they were celebrated for their own sake. In Willemen’s formulation, these moments revealed something beyond themselves, and beyond whatever the filmmakers intended:
'What is being looked for is a moment or, given that a moment is too unitary, a dimension of a moment which triggers for the viewer either the realisation or the illusion of a realisation that what is being seen is in excess of what is being shown. Consequently you see something that is revelatory. It reveals an aspect or a dimension of a person, whether it’s the actor or the director, which is not choreographed for you to see. It is produced en plus, in excess or in addition, almost involuntarily.'
In early 2011, while studying at film school in Vancouver, I found myself at the cinema for Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy. It was one of the most unforgettable screenings of my life.
The film follows a man and a woman who meet in Tuscany, go on an afternoon date, and partway through, are mistaken for a married couple by a bystander. They run with the game and begin fully inhabiting the roles of a middle-aged marriage such that, by the end, it’s impossible to tell if they really were married all along (and we are actually witnessing their reunion) or if they are experiencing a psychotic break with reality. The film ends in a hotel room with a profoundly intimate, nearly silent exchange. They are trying to decide whether to stay together or to part ways so the man can catch his train. The “husband,” played by William Shimell, goes into the bathroom to shave, stops, and then leaves the frame, leaving us with a view of the town through an open window. The film ends with this view as a chorus of bells peal out across the rooftops and the gentle sounds of a Tuscan evening filter in. We never find out whether they stay together or not.
I was still hearing those bells as I rode the escalator down from the theater. To this day, I can’t ride that escalator without thinking of Certified Copy, and the feeling of repose that washed over me as the film ended. Those bells remained with me for weeks and months afterwards. What kind of wonder was this?
What is the meaning of the bells? I could not tell you. All I can tell you is that they were and that I loved them. In the final analysis, it’s not simply about the bells, but about the entirety of that last scene’s soundscape: the ambience of an Italian village winding down for the day, and of being far enough above the street that only a few sounds filter into a quiet room. It’s not simply about the sound, but about the end point of a carefully constructed narrative which, after so many turns, ends in mystery. It’s about the bottling of a singular moment with all of the powers which cinema affords: of the way that late daylight plays into a small room, of the winding down of a day between intimates, of the silence which descends naturally after so much talk, and this silence is filled with possibility - and then it is filled with the sounds of life, and the sound of bells.
Some no doubt associate the bells with the idea of marriage, with the union or reunion taking place in the story. Some read them as a sly underscoring of a personal epiphany the male character seems to be undergoing in his final moments onscreen. Such readings are valid; the moment is not exhausted by them - but even the most cursory knowledge of the director’s previous work discourages symbolic readings. Like many of his films, he leaves us in a moment which does not have an explicit or even an implicit meaning, but is charged with potential. In this moment, I sense something wondrous but do not know what it is; it is obscured from my rational powers. And this is precisely what we are chasing in the third type of cinephilic wonder: A momentary wonder which is obscurely grasped.
“That which is in excess of what is being shown.” I can’t think of a simpler or more beautiful description of the moment when the bells began to ring. Somehow, this moment of Certified Copy is in excess of what it is showing. This kind of epiphany, this momentary wonder, is the most hidden and most desired treasure of cinephilia."
6000 more words here: vocationofcinema.substack.com/p/the-making-of-a-cinephile