This dystopia rarely generates any sparks.

Based on the true story of the men trapped for over three months in a Chilean mine, the film is a solid rescue thriller as well as a real-life variation on an ensemble picture.

There’s a puzzle in Certified Copy that writer/director Abbas Kiarostami doesn’t want you to solve. This isn’t like Inception, where you have a sense that Christopher Nolan knows exactly what happens in the world of the film after the credits have rolled, even if he refuses to spell it out for us. Nor is it like Mulholland Drive, with David Lynch laying out every piece of information needed to solve his riddle and daring us to figure it out. Kiarostami, aware of and fascinated by the inherent artificiality of film, embraces that artificiality to create an impossible scenario, as an avenue to explore aesthetics and emotion.