Close Your Eyes

Enjoyable picture full of feeling, evocative mood pieces, wonderful images and a sense of wonder thanks to its cinematography and music. Dealing with a Spanish actor (an aging José Coronado) who disappears during the filming of a movie. Although his body is never found, the police conclude that he has suffered an accident on the edge of a cliff. Many years later, the mystery returns to our days. So an old friend of his, a film director and writer (Manolo Solo) begins a tireless search to find out where he is, for which he contacts with his daughter (Ana Torrent).

It is a melancholic, prolix and eminently thoughtful treatise on memory, nostalgia, identity, the passage of time and the power of cinema, recurring themes in Erice's not very prolific work. The film includes numerous allusions to cinema and literature. As well as self-references from Víctor Erice himself and his filmography. Starring Manolo Solo along with José Coronado, the latter won deservedly the Goya 2024 for best supporting actor, both give an extraordinary performance, in addition to other well-known actors, such as Ana Torrent, Petra Martínez, María León, Mario Pardo, Helena Miquel, Josep Maria Pou, Soledad Villamil, and despite his prominence on the billboards, Antonio Dechent and Juan Margallo show up on screen for only a few minutes.

Received with a seven-minute ovation at its premiere at the Cannes festival, it is the return to feature film direction, with full of honors, of Victor Erice, three decades after the premiere of his previous film: ¨El Sol del Membrillo¨. And winning several national and international awards. Being nominated for 11 Goya awards, winning only the best supporting actor for the aforementioned José Coronado.

Closing Your Eyes (2023) features lavish photography by magnificent cameraman Valentín Álvarez, as well as an evocative musical score by Federico Jusid. Being filmed in several Spanish locations, such as: Castell de Ferro, Granada, Aguadulce, Almería, Andalusia, Asturias and Madrid. The film was well directed by Victor Erice, although very slow and somewhat boring due to its long duration -almost three hours- with a lot of silence and excessive dialogue. Víctor is considered to be one of the best Spanish directors, known for El sur (1983), El Espíritu de la Colmena (1973) and El sol del membrillo (1992). 'El Sur' is a sensational film that offers a thought-provoking plot and is deemed one of the best Spanish films, in fact it was voted sixth best Spanish film by professionals and critics in 1996 at the centenary of Spanish cinema, while ¨El Espíritu de la Colmena¨ was voted third best Spanish film. Erice was going to write and direct The Shanghai Haunting (2002), based on a novel written by Juan Marsé. Although Marsé praised Erice's script, producer Andrés Vicente Gómez rejected it. After some rewrites, also rejected by the producer, Erice chose to leave the project and was replaced by Fernando Trueba. Then he decided to abandon the shhoting of pictures until resuming today with this 'Closing your eyes'. Rating Cerrar los ojos (2023) : 6.5/10. Above average, well worth watching.

This late work is the first I've seen by Spanish auteur Victor Erice. (Yes, fellow cineasts, I have reached the age of 48 without EVER watching "Spirit of the Beehive". I know this is deeply sinful and plan to rectify it by- not kidding- the end of the day on which I am writing this review!) From what I have read about Erice's earlier, major works his films usually concern childhood, and tend to be fairly short in duration- under 2 hours. Related to those earlier films, "Close Your Eyes" would seem to be a departure for the 84 year old writer-director. It is almost 3 hours long, and it is concerned with the theme and rhythms of old age.

"Pensive" and "patient" are the two adjectives I would use to describe the film's mood, at least for its first two acts. This is, indeed, a film in 3 acts, and not in the insipid sense meant by Hollywood scribes. The three sections of the narrative, each in a different setting with largely different supporting characters besides the lead, 70-something writer Miguel Garay- played, well, pensively and patiently by Manolo Solo, feel like three different films about the same character.

The cliche about old age is that one realizes how short life is, and even a middle-aged person can attest to a level of truth in this. Less discussed or described is the change in the moment to moment temporality as one gets older, the appreciation and savoring of moments that have come to seem more finite. Erice and his team convey that beautifully in the first two acts, particularly the second which basks in an understated contentedness that cannot last even in the sphere of lived time.

In the first act, two elderly friends discuss the "challenge of old age" and one character defines it as living "fearlessly and without hope". The final section of the film, the one with the closest thing to a conventional story-line, perhaps only lives up to the first half of the first act's declaration. It is filled with an elderly artist's final declaration of devotion to their medium- the cinema- in which the artist maintains a faith in an ability to attest, reveal, and perhaps even heal.

On a personal note, the cinema has been as close as I've had to a religious force in my very atheistic life. Perhaps when/ if I approach Erice's age I will feel a need for such declarations of devotion. As the almost 50 year old who watched "Close Your Eyes", however, I could have done without the metaphysics lesson.

I was watching something on T. V. one day and came across a commercial starring Ryan Reynolds. I was struck by how OLD he looked in it. Not bad, just old, compared to the Ryan Reynolds who started his career on "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place." Ryan is around my age; in fact, he might even be a little younger. I turned to my wife and asked, "God, do WE look that old?" The answer is probably "yes," but the difference is that my wife and I don't have constant reminders of what our younger selves looked like thrown in our faces every day. At the very same time that the Ryan Reynolds commercial was airing, "Blade: Trinity" was on a different station.

That experience got me thinking a lot about how movies and the actors in them capture moments in time and make possible a weird kind of time travel. You can watch Nicole Kidman in "Far and Away" and then immediately hop over to "Babygirl" and literally see the passage of years in her face.

This is just one of the ideas explored in "Close Your Eyes," an evocative slow burn of a movie about aging in general, and aging as an artist specifically. Manolo Solo is my pick for best actor of the year for his performance as Miguel Garay, a former movie director and author who is trying to track down his friend Julio Arenas, an actor who starred in one of Garay's films but disappeared without a trace before the film could be finished. The film turns into a kind of quiet detective story as Garay tracks Julio down through mutual acquaintances, clues left behind, etc. The film is as much about Garay's own psychology as it is about what happened to Julio. Actually, the film is about lots of things, but it's not obviously about any one thing. It's a lot about coming to terms with getting older and saying goodbye to things that you won't ever have again, something that resonates with me very much right now in my life, having just turned 50. But it's not a downer. It's as much about realizing how much there is to enjoy in the later part of life as there is to miss.

You've gotta have patience with this one, as it's slow and ruminative. It's like reading a character-driven novel. It also happens to be one of the best movies released in 2024.

Grade: A.

For someone who is over 80, Victor Erice provides, while very slow-burn story, a memorizing and symbolic story with beautiful camerawork, strong direction, great performances and emotional cores developed throughout. Erice previous works on "El Sur" and "The Spirit of the Beehive" are some of the best Spanish movies of all time as Erice is great with slow-burn cinema. Dream of Light was also pretty good and after many years, Erice still is able to conduct and interesting project.

Throughout, the run-time can be a big turn off but the narrative and themes that are explored within the setting were interesting as emotional and interesting themes were well-explored within the characters and setting as the themes were able to help create an emotional balance and vision of the setting. Many of the camerawork shots, sound designs and color presentation was pretty good. All of the performances are pretty great with good dialogue and realism portrayed throughout.

Erice's direction was perfect as his takes on the themes of memories and losses were handled well and the emotional core helped create a sense of dream-like and symbolic feel throughout. With the run-time being 169 minutes, I do feel that some aspects were dragged a bit too long and there were certain moments that made me test my patiences a little.

Overall, this is a movie that requires patience but it is very good to see Erice making another film and definitely something I would check out again for a second time.

This week is the week of the International Film Festival 013, 013 being the area code of Tilburg (the Netherlands), a city close to my hometown. This year is already the 7th edition of the festival, but it was for the first time that I was aware of it.

I chose two films, who happened to have much in common.

Both are Spanish language films.

Neither had a release in Dutch cinema's up till now.

Both are positioned on top of the "Cahiers du Cinema's" list of best films of 2023 ("Cerrar los ojos" was number 2).

Both are about a disappearing person (in "Cerrar los ojos" an actor disappears in the middle of the shooting of a film).

"Close your eyes" is the most recent film of Victor Erice, 50 years after his debut "The spirit of the beehive" (1973) and 31 years after his last full length feauture "Dream of light" (1992). Apart from his tiny oeuvre (4 films) the preference of Erice for years ending wit a "3" is remarkable, his 4 films being released in 1973, 1983 ("El Sur"), 1992 and 2023.

"Cerrar los ojos" ("Close your eyes") is a film about film. The opening and closing scenes are episodes of an (unfinished) film that director Miquel (Manolo Solo) and actor Julio (José Coronado) have made.

Often films about films are about the production proces, Hollywood about itself, for example "Sunset boulavard" (1950, Billy Wilder). "Close your eyes" however is more about the influence of films than about the making. The influence of films is a theme that recurs in the (smal) oeuvre of Erice. It is also a theme in "The spirit of the beehive". Talking about "The spirit of the beehive", Ana Torrent (still a child when playing in this film) reappears 50 years later in "Close your eyes" as the daughter of the disappeared actor.

After the (film in a film) opening scene the story jumps to the present time. Twenty two years later the disappearance of Julio is a cold case. A television series specialising in cold cases dedicates an episode to the Julio case and invites Miquel as guest. Due to this television series the Julio case becomes actual again, at least for those directly involved.

Strong point of the film is that it not only tells the story of Julio but also of the relationships of those surrounding him.

The opening and closing scenes are outright brilliant. Not only are they both film in a film scenes, emphasizing the symmetry, but there is also a substantive agreement. In the opening scene both the film and the film in a film are about disappearances. In the closing scene both the film and the film in a film are about reappearances (either physical or psychological).

The poster of "Close your eyes" made me think of the poster of "Persona" (1966, Ingmar Bergman). I don't think that is a coincidence. After all also "Perona" is about an actress who in essence disappears (not physically but psychologically).