81
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Time OutKeith UhlichTime OutKeith UhlichThe journey is often challenging, but the rewards—heady, emotional, provocative and invigorating—are endless.
- 90Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonVillage VoiceMichael AtkinsonPossibly the Iranian new wave's last meta-man, Panahi is in an ideal position to make the unique methodology of his filmmaking merge with its substance. But he's always been fascinated by how a film's bell-jar bubble can be punctured, leaving a viscous interface between real and cinematic.
- 88Slant MagazineJesse CataldoSlant MagazineJesse CataldoThe next step in Jafar Panahi's personal cinema of captivity, a fully fictionalized, wildly bewildering work which imagines a man at war with his own creative impulse.
- 80The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottOn one level, the film (or nonfilm; it was shot on digital video and partly with smartphone cameras) is a mischievous, Pirandellian entertainment. It is also an allegory, dark but not despairing, of the creative spirit under political pressure, and of the ways the imagination can be both a refuge and a place of confinement.
- If the dominant mood of "This Is Not a Film" was defiant, the main feeling here is melancholic. In implicitly confessing to suicidal impulses (as his mentor Abbas Kiarostami did in "Taste of Cherry"), Panahi shows how low his confinement has brought him.
- 70The DissolveScott TobiasThe DissolveScott TobiasThe two halves of Closed Curtain complement each other, but the first is more compelling than the second, partly because the mysteries of construction trump the grind of deconstruction, and partly because Panahi channeled his anguish more directly and affectingly with This Is Not A Film.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungThe Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungClosed Curtain is a moody, intellectually complex film that requires good will and brainwork on the part of the viewer to penetrate and enjoy.
- 70VarietyJay WeissbergVarietyJay WeissbergLess satisfying than his previous pic, yet still a bold, melancholy statement.
- 67The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyClosed Curtain is a spotty meta movie that might leave a viewer wishing Panahi could go back to making films that aren’t about himself—which seems to be the point.