El sol del membrillo

A documentary of a painter, painting, "Dream of Light" is at the same time a work of fiction. That's how it seems to go whenever a documentary takes narrative form: even the most straightforward story can only come about by shaping; and where you have shaping, fiction will get in, like dust – you can't keep it out. You might as well welcome it (fiction, that is, not dust so much); consider it a feature, not a bug.

As you watch the artist in Victor Erice's film set up his painting apparatus, you may wonder where all his meticulousness is to lead. He is painting en plein air, but no Impressionist he; he carries Academic studio practice out of doors, and the lengths he goes to might give even some Academicians the quivers. The more you see of his method, the more there is to question; but given no explanation all you can do is watch and wait.

The time is summer, the subject is a quince tree in the garden. The painter, an elderly gent, goes about his work without hesitation or hurry: his confidence is palpable; it seems he knows what he's doing. The garden where he sets up is tiny, cramped between the wall to the street and the wall of his house. He starts by constructing a box- like frame around his tree. He puts dabs of white paint, then more and more of them, on branch and twig, leaf and fruit: a constellation of dots. A taut white string traverses and segments his field of vision, and a plumb-line, defining the vertical, segments it again. He locks and marks the position of his easel's legs, and the height of the rail on which his canvas rests. When he takes up his stance to paint, he drives nails into the ground marking where his feet go. His purpose, with all this marking and measuring, is to find his place, over the course of the work – each day to find the exact place where he left off the previous day, despite all the changes brought on by weather, accident, or growth of the tree. He's in it for the long haul: you can almost hear him saying, I mean to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.

Given the artist's structural, architectural set-up, you might think when he finally addressed himself to his canvas he'd first reach to the structure of his subject: that his brush in a stroke or two would find the spine in the quince's mottled trunk, or the essential geometry in its tangle of limbs. Or alternatively that he'd lay on areas of color, or of light and dark, to establish his picture's space, then work to refine it toward completion. What you wouldn't guess is that he'd begin, as he does, with cautious, abruptly punctuated strokes, to draw, in ghost gray, a short segment of a branch, as it presents itself to him near front and center of his tree – with a stubby bit of twig extending up from it; and a forlorn little leaf, half-folded back upon itself. More like something from the margin of a sketchbook, this botanical detail floats, alone, in the middle of his blank white canvas: floats there for days it seems, as he works at an inchworm crawl, with rubbing and corrections, to get the bark ridges just right, the texture. This is drawing; and please, sir, when will we have painting?

Are we even supposed to ask? Whether the artist ever used this method before, and whether it proved successful, we can't know. Has he set himself up to fail? Erice quiets us with the sensual calm that holds the scene and all in it. And the very definiteness of the old man's activity wants to persuade us that all will be well. So does his whole demeanor: he wears such a lived-in face; and is too absorbed in what he's doing to put on a show for us. Visitors drop by; conversation is desultory, a bit of reminiscence mixed in; the tip-tap of workers' hammers somewhere off. Summer seems endless, though it's passing away. The camera, like a patient naturalist, observes, does not interrogate – and the artist-subject, being asked no questions, answers none, but simply goes about his business.

I have walked out of two movies in my life 'Sol del membrillo, El' was the first and 'The Beach' was the next. Keep reading..because I said 10/10.

The Beach I have never thought about again. However, fifteen years on I often think of Quince tree Sun. It must have had something, I am still thinking about it 15 years on.

I can recall the place, day and my mood when I went to see the movie. Glasgow, cold and wet, mood BAD.

These days I have my own enclosed garden with fruit trees. Often when I am watering the garden, the movie comes to mind.

My rating is 10/10 because it did what movies can do, accompanied me for many years.

I am sure that now I am older and more patient I will one day see the rest of the movie.

Highly-regarded semi-documentary about an artist's efforts to paint a quince tree in his garden over several months. He sets up a plumb line and a horizontal wire as guides, puts nails in the mud against which to position his toes, paints a 'grid' of little marks on individual leaves all over the tree, and tries to meticulously capture every tiny detail in his picture. At one point he has an assistant holding a long pole to nudge a particular leaf into position. You are beginning to suspect that he is the world's most obsessive (and slowest) painter when, after an hour (about six weeks in real time), with the picture only half-way finished, he scraps the whole canvas during a rainstorm. Here the illusion of authenticity is destroyed: the rain is clearly artificial, hosed over the garden in ridiculously excessive swathes. What a disappointment. You suddenly realise the whole thing is a set-up and you watch much more cynically as he spends the next hour (another six weeks) on a pencil drawing of the tree. This is equally ineffectual, but it doesn't matter because you realise it's all been a metaphor, and a rather facile one: the effort to distill something essential from life in your advancing years before it is too late. The intention was clearly existential, to slow right down and reflect and absorb and try to grasp something of life's fading richness – an original idea and very laudable, but unfortunately the images were not interesting enough, the sentiments not deep enough, and the execution not honest enough. Ceylan's "Clouds of May" attempted something similar much more successfully. It's art alright, but like the picture the artist creates, fairly weak art.

This is one of the two simple films about art that made deep impact on me since their releases even after all these years.

Victor Erice's "The Quince Tree Sun" is probably the most boring film you'll ever watch, but just as the artist finds it impossible to capture the shifting sunlight, we realize it is no longer important to finish a piece of painting, if at all it is possible, as art is in the process not the result. We consciously experience the passing of time while watching the film! Brilliant.

Patricia Rozema's "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing" deals with the subjectivity of art which is always relevant in any context. The master's childish art is readily being celebrated and consumed like fast food while the amateur's masterpiece is undiscovered but remain sacred. It reminds us to keep true art away from the corruption of consumerism.

Both films allow art to be taken to a different level, beyond the reaches of physicality and commercialism.

If you can find this film, and can take slow-moving cinema, definitely pick it up. I came to it via Spirit of the Beehive, Victor Erice's first film, made in 1973. This film was his third, made nearly twenty years later. It's somewhat sad that such a marvelous artist as Erice has only produced three films in almost thirty years now, but I think Quince Tree of the Sun works in one way as a forgiveness for that fact. This film teaches nothing if not patience, not only in the viewer, but in the artist. It is a documentary about a painter who spends September through December painting a quince tree. Not a picture of one, mind you, or even one he has memorized. He sets up an elaborate system so that he can paint the tree as it exists before him. We see him working well at first, with the sun hitting the tree and its fruit exactly how the painter wishes. But then the weather becomes uncooperative for a long period of time. It's cloudy or rainy, and the sun is not working the way that it's supposed to. By the time it becomes sunny again, the Earth has moved, and all hope of painting it in the way he originally intedended is squandered. Of course he can't just wait until the next year. The fruit and leaves will be different.

During the film, there are several discussions about art and life. All are interesting. Too bad the subtitles on the Facets video are kind of hard to read at times. There is a lot to get out of it, surely more than I did in one viewing. A second viewing is definitely in order if I have time before I have to return the video. It is one of those films that suggests that there is a ton more under the surface that will take just a tiny bit of digging. Of course, this film would bore the socks off of 99% or more of the population. I definitely suggest it to fans of Spirit of the Beehive. Also, fans of Andrei Tarkovsky should check it out, this and Spirit of the Beehive. I generally think of Tarkovsky as the most original of all film artists, but Erice may be the most similar. He's a very good auteur for Tarkovsky fans because he is similar, but he has a remarkable essence all his own. Perhaps I would consider him above Tarkovsky, if only Erice would make more films. But, as this film has delicately taught me, an artist must work at his own pace. 9/10.