Spanish master Victor Erice stunned the film world with the release of Close Your Eyes in 2022, his first new movie in over 30 years. Known for poetic, haunting works like The Spirit of the Beehive and El Sur that explored the ripple effects of history, Erice had stayed largely quiet since the early 90s. Close Your Eyes sees him diving back in with characteristic subtlety.
The film tells the story of Miguel Garay, a aging director who once knew great success but has since stepped away from filmmaking. We first meet Miguel when he agrees to participate in a TV special examining the unsolved disappearance of his close friend and frequent leading man, Julio Arenas. Flashes back reveal Julio vanished during the shooting of their unfinished movie together in 1990, only a single reel of which remains.
As Miguel embarks on a personal investigation to find answers about his old colleague, it also becomes a journey back through his artistic past. Memories resurface of passionate relationships and career highlights, making Clear Your Eyes every bit as much a rumination on time’s passage as it is a mystery. Vintage Erice touches like the central role of movies and a patient storytelling style keep viewers enthralled as revelations gradually emerge.
Dreams of the Past: Victor Erice’s Cinematic Odyssey
Even among the most acclaimed of international directors, Victor Erice stands out for the sparseness of his filmography. Across five decades he has released just four feature films, yet each one deepens his reputation as a visionary auteur. His debut, The Spirit of the Beehive, arrived in 1973 to wide acclaim for its portrayal of a young girl’s experience with fantasy and fear in Franco’s Spain. Erice crafted the story with subtlety and visionary care, drawing viewers into the child’s point of view with moments both haunting and hopeful.
Nearly a decade passed before Erice’s next work, the incomplete El Sur. Adapted from a novella, it further explored his recurring interests: how personal and national histories intersect through memory and imagination. Both films quieted linger in the mind, their atmospheres and ambiguities inviting reflection. Then another decade before The Quince Tree Sun, as Erice turned his gaze to an aging artist’s attempt to capture fleeting beauty.
This pattern of sparse but splendid output continued. Close Your Eyes arrives after thirty-one years, reuniting Erice with themes of loss and cinema’s power. The film centers on a director returning to an unfinished project and mysterious disappearance. Digging through his memories, he traces how the past shapes our present, and how some stories never quite leave us. With profound empathy, Erice portrays his characters grappling with career regrets and life’s brevity.
Through just four works, each a subtle meditation, Erice has crafted one of international cinema’s most poignant oeuvres. His reflections on memory and the works we leave behind offer timely insight for any seeing a career, or life, approaching its later chapters.
Captured Memories: Revisiting “The Farewell Gaze”
Victor Erice treats us to a tantalizing taste of his signature style with the opening scene of Close Your Eyes. Set in a French country estate circa 1947, it introduces us to a refined yet melancholy world of faded luxury. A wealthy Spanish refugee, seeking solace in exile, tasks another man with trying to reconnect with his long-lost daughter in Shanghai.
Shot on grainy 16mm film, it oozes atmosphere with just a few lingering shots. We feel the weight of the estate’s thick stone walls and get the sense this is a place locked in time. Subtle details like velvet drapes and polished wood add layers of beauty and decay. Without words, we grasp this is a man grappling with his past in his twilight.
Just as we start piecing the scene together, it abruptly cuts off. We learn it’s the only remaining fragment of a film called “The Farewell Gaze,” directed by Miguel Garay and starring his close friend Julio Arenas. Unable to be completed decades ago due to Arenas’ strange disappearance, it represents an artistic endeavor halted midstream.
The scene gives us glimpses of Erice’s signature poetics. But by ending so suddenly, it leaves more questions than answers – mirroring the disrupted and uncertain nature of both the unfinished film within the film and Miguel’s own blocked creativity.
It’s a tantalizing memory from a moment in time now lost, reflecting how both art and lives can be derailed by unexplained absences. In starting with this evocative yet melancholy tease, Erice invites us on a slow, absorbing journey to reexamine the layers of mystery embedded in remembered yet fragmented pieces of the past.
The Return to Unfinished Business
It had been over 20 years since Miguel Garay last directed a film. Now living a quiet life in a small Spanish town, he had all but given up his career in movies. But when Garay is contacted to discuss an old, unsolved case for a TV program, it sets in motion a journey back through his past.
The case in question involves his one-time friend and collaborator, Julio Arenas, who mysteriously vanished during the shooting of their film together in 1990, never to be seen again. With production forced to grind to an abrupt halt, the movie – titled “The Farewell Gaze” – remained incomplete, with Arenas’ fate a lingering mystery.
Agreeing to the interview opens wounds for Garay that have never truly healed. It also prompts questions that have been buried for decades: What really happened to Arenas? And what led to the abandonment of his own filmmaking, just as it seemed he was making his mark?
Driven to find answers, Garay begins tracking down others involved with the ill-fated production. He seeks out old friends and colleagues, hoping someone held a clue that escaped him all this time. More than that, it’s a journey of reconstructing not just Arenas’ final days, but a past life now distant.
In grappling with the disappearance of his friend, Garay must also face his own ghosts – of successes, failures and roads not taken. Only by reopening wounds that have long festered might the truth emerge. And in doing so, Garay may find resolution to more than just Arenas’ unsolved fate.
Jose’s Journey
Miguel Garay reluctantly agrees to revisit his friend Jose Arenas’ disappearance after two decades. He meets with Marta, a singer both he and Jose had loved. Their conversation stirs melancholy over lost opportunities. Miguel’s visit with his old editor Max reveals deep appreciation for the tactile qualities of film now disappearing. They mourn how cinema had validated their lives and storytelling.
Miguel’s journey sees him reflect on his stagnant career since Jose vanished during their unfinished film. Returning to the investigation opens wounds but brings clarity. Discussing the past with past lovers and colleagues illuminates how fully he’d withdrawn. Miguel recognizes parallels in Erice, who now writes after so many years away from filmmaking. Both grapple with aging and what remains to define them.
A telling moment finds Miguel singing joyously with new neighbors, the memory of a film seamlessly inspiring impromptu performance. We see how art endures in casual ways, not just meticulously preserved. Miguel appears reconnecting to life around him as much as the mystery of Jose’s fate. In their final meeting, Marta’s honesty helps Miguel embrace change instead of fearing lost chances. He seems less a man retreating from greatness, more finding simplified pleasures.
Miguel’s investigations mirror Erice’s own reflections on a career and relationships marked by absence. Both age with an artist’s pragmatism, affirmed by smaller acts of human creativity rather than grand accomplishments alone. Miguel’s journey becomes their shared journey – a candid look at getting older without regret, open to everyday beauty.
A Poetic Exploration of Time and Memory
Victor Erice’s latest work shows his masterful command of pacing still intact after thirty years away from filmmaking. Close Your Eyes flows at a leisurely pace, allowing time for reflection between each scene. Space is given for conversation and observation, mimicking the unhurried quality of memory itself.
This relaxed pace creates a hypnotic mood where past and present blend seamlessly. Scenes shift between digital and film cinematography, the former cool and desaturated against the lush warmth of the latter. The film sequences represent memory in their tactile richness, embedded deeply in the characters. The digital imagery reflects the fading of memory over time, growing fuzzier at the edges.
Yet Erice finds beauty even in this transition to a colder medium. A performance of “My Rifle, My Pony and Me” sees cinema’s magic live on in new form, the song carried across generations through a movie. In its closing moments, Close Your Eyes demonstrates memory’s power to breathe life back into what was considered lost. A single reel of film, projected anew, restores missing pieces of the past. Though the medium changes, cinema endures as a vessel for remembering – and for coming to terms with what we lose as the years recede behind us.
Under Erice’s guidance, every technique in Close Your Eyes enhances its exploration of memory’s elusive nature. Generation to generation, moment to moment, the past reshapes around us, but through film it need not fade entirely from view.
Late Adjustments
For much of its runtime, Close Your Eyes mourns what’s been lost to time. Miguel grapples with past regrets as he probes Julio’s disappearance. Their shared passion for film seems but a memory as Miguel recalls friends and lovers, creativity stifled.
Yet halfway through, the film’s tone subtly shifts. Miguel reconnects with neighbors in Almeria, joining their spirited singing of a Western favorite. His lonely ruminations give way to community, performance stirring fond recollections of films past.
Miguel’s investigating also yields results. Discussions with those close to Julio provide clues to the missing man’s fate. Loose story threads start weaving together, mysteries which long lingered showing signs of resolution. Where Miguel was adrift, he now pursues answers with rare focus.
Most impactful is when Miguel screens reels of the unfinished film. Projected large, its imagery lifts spirits of theatergoers gathered. Scenes missing for decades reappear, allowing characters long unseen to emerge from obscurity. For Miguel and friends, joy replaces the sorrow of before. Through film, lost moments find new life, past pains dilute.
After brooding on career crosses and aging’s doubts, Close Your Eyes’ latter stretch brings reprieve. Connections reforged, Miguel rediscovers film’s power to heal old wounds and joy long absent. A work that began with such melancholy ends on a note of hard-earned hope.
Returning to the Screen
The film brings us full circle to where we began. After further revelations about Julio’s disappearance, Miguel decides to arrange a private screening of the lone reel from The Farewell Gaze that was completed decades ago. With Max’s assistance, the long-shuttered local cinema is opened for the occasion. Only a handful turn out on that damp evening, but their response will linger long after in Miguel’s memory.
As the lights dim and the familiar images flicker to life, you can feel the audience lean forward in their seats. Faces from the past emerge from the darkness as though glimpsed through a window left ajar. The old man who commissioned Julio’s character still hopes for a reunion with his long-lost daughter, despite the years separating them. Ana gasps quietly as her father appears on screen, preserved as if by magic in the fluctuating glow. When the reel reaches its abrupt ending, the theater is filled with a mournful silence.
And yet, there is solace to be found too. These flickering scenes survived where all else had faded. They withstood the passage of time so that loves ones could be glimpsed anew, reminding those present of lives once lived and loves once felt, even if only for a moment. As the lights rise, a sense of intimate sharing lingers.
Stories that could have died with their bearers have instead been carried into a new era, finding new ears and eyes via the enduring magic of cinema. In that dark room, the past become present once more, its people and places brought back to life through the ageless power of moving images. Some leave with a slight smile, as if welcomed by an old friend met again after long years away.
Everlasting Images
Victor Erice has long used cinema as a means to grapple with memory and time. Close Your Eyes sees him reflecting on these themes with the wisdom and care of an artist in his ninth decade.
The film travels alongside Miguel as he reconnects with his past, seeking answers about his friend Julio’s disappearance. In the process, both men’s careers and relationships are reconsidered in the light of years passed. Erice shows how memories remain tied to the people and places of our lives, yet shift shape as those anchors drift with time.
More profoundly, Close Your Eyes celebrates the ability of film to challenge time’s passage. Scenes come to life again through the screening of an unfinished work, reminding us that moving images can feel vibrant decades after being committed to celluloid. In these moments, Erice demonstrates a master’s command of the medium and confidence that cinema can convey lasting human truths.
Across its deliberate pace, Close Your Eyes stays thoughtful company. Erice invites us to ponder memory, art and what it means to grow older with the wisdom of someone who’s seen much and tells it all with care. Fans of his works will find it a poignant valediction and a fitting magnum opus for a giant of world cinema. For those newcomer to Erice, it proves a superb place to discover one of film’s most thoughtful voices.
The Review
Close Your Eyes
Close Your Eyes is a meditation on memory and the enduring power of cinema. Crafted with profound care and insight, Erice has delivered both a tribute to film’s ability to capture fleeting moments and a thoughtful reflection on life’s journey. While not for those seeking thrills, the film invites deeper appreciation through patient engagement. In Close Your Eyes, a master filmmaker has crafted a fitting late career highlight.
PROS
- Beautiful cinematography and use of film medium
- Thoughtful exploration of complex themes like memory, aging, and the power of cinema
- Strong performance by Manolo Solo as Miguel Garay
- Poignant and moving climax
- Signature atmospheric and lyrical storytelling style of Erice
CONS
- Very slow pacing may frustrate some viewers
- Minimal plot progression for much of the runtime
- Opens cryptically without context for the unfinished film scenes
- Some ambiguous plot points are never fully resolved
