Some of the most beautiful and rare gifts of cinema are those that come from filmmakers who may not be the most prolific, but are just as essential to see work their magic at every chance you can. Víctor Erice is one such visionary whose works hold this quiet, incandescent power in every single frame. His new film, Close Your Eyes, is a mystery of sorts about the disappearance of an actor, just as it is about bigger existential questions about life itself. It’s a breathtakingly melancholic film infused with mourning, journeying its way through subtly painful yet often poetic conversations about searching for something lost that may never be found.
Close Your Eyes is a mystery that begins with an extended conversation scene from a film within the film, The Farewell Gaze, that has nearly been all but forgotten. The lead actor, Julio Arena, vanished and was never found, leaving behind an incomplete film and its director, Miguel Garay, who left filmmaking altogether. Years later, Miguel is drawn out of a reclusive existence by a TV investigation that will look into exactly what happened to Julio. As this part of his past comes back into the forefront of his life, he begins to reconnect with this history, uncovering parts of himself and the truths that have long been buried in a past that the world may soon leave behind.
When Miguel goes to talk with his projectionist friend Max, we begin to see this coming into focus. There is a sadness that lingers over the conversation, as Max speaks about the reels and reels of film he has held onto, which are now just gathering dust on shelves, forgotten as if they never even existed. There isn’t animosity about this, but a more quiet acceptance of how the world may no longer care for such things.
Víctor Erice’s ‘Close Your Eyes (Image via Getty)
Close Your Eyes is a film profoundly interested in film just as it is the mundane nature of life outside the often magical worlds created therein. The film is initially populated by extended, patient conversations Miguel shares with those like Max, each deceptively simple yet overflowing with emotion. We soon pivot away to something entirely different, as Miguel begins to share from his imagination about what may have happened to Julio. More than that, it feels like he is almost wishing it into being, which we then see coming to life. It’s like a film Miguel has dreamt up and the cinematographer, Valentín Álvarez, shoots it beautifully, molding his words into a quietly breathtaking scene that sneaks up on you.
Erice grapples with how this life is not like the movies we may make while living it. They aren’t real, no matter how much we want them to be, yet that doesn’t mean they can’t shape our lives all the same. For Erice, the answers in our world end up being much simpler, but that only makes our desire to dream whenever we can that much more critical to existence itself. Close Your Eyes is a film that reminds us how the memories of life’s beautiful mundanities can all too easily slip through our fingers.
