Cerrar los ojos (Víctor Erice, 2023)

[Cremildo]

Víctor Erice will be returning to the director's chair after three decades with Close Your Eyes.

[L.A.]

Víctor Erice to make his first feature in 30 years

[What A Disgrace]

I guess Criterion will have to delay their "The Complete Films of Victor Erice" box (which is surely a real thing that is happening, right, guys? Right? ...guys?) in order to either change the name of incorporate the new film.

[swo17]

Bracing myself for a Malickian comeback

[knives]

You mean being worse than before?

[swo17]

And ten times more prolific!

[DarkImbecile]

How dare you both

[therewillbeblus]

I thought we were all in agreement that Malick's script for The Dion Brothers was the best work he's ever done

[beamish14]

I thought we were all in agreement that Malick's script for The Dion Brothers was the best work he's ever done

A toss-up between that and Deadhead Miles

[therewillbeblus]

Just as long as it's not Pocket Money, which is the worst thing he's ever done after A Hidden Life

[Stefan Andersson]

Víctor Erice will be returning to the director's chair after three decades with Close Your Eyes.

News:
https://www.fotogramas.es/noticias-cine ... -los-ojos/
https://www.20minutos.es/cinemania/noti ... 3-5083780/


Off-topic but interesting for Erice aficionados -- texts about Erice´s screenplay "La promesa de Shanghai", written in the late Nineties, based on the novel Shanghai Nights by Juan Marsé; the project was abandoned:
http://braidednarrative.com/wp-content/ ... -essay.pdf
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/vie ... ontext=etd
https://www.revistadelibros.com/la-prom ... tor-erice/
https://riunet.upv.es/bitstream/handle/ ... sequence=4

Erice published the screenplay in Spanish in 2001: La promesa de Shanghai, Plaza & Janés (Areté), Barcelona, 398 p.

[Stefan Andersson]

Erice on his new film Cerrar los ojos:
https://www.cahiersducinema.com/actuali ... -los-ojos/

[yoloswegmaster]

A 1080p WEBRIP of Close Your Eyes is now available on the "dark web", sadly no English subs yet.

[spectre]

I found a listing for an English-subtitled Blu-ray of Close Your Eyes from New Wave Films for 26 June: https://imusic.co/movies/5055159201544/ ... es-blu-ray

There's nothing on the New Wave Films website about the home video release as of yet, but they are bringing the film out theatrically in the UK from April: http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/view-film ... sting=MjY5

[Ribs]

Close Your Eyes will recieve a US theatrical release from Film Movement

[denti alligator]

Anyone seen the new film?

[John Cope]

Victor Erice's return to feature filmmaking (after a thirty year absence) is a triumph of the quietest and most studied kind. The elaborative running time has actually been the cause for the complaints of some who find it too indulgent and over extended. But I disagree completely. For me at least the length and pacing is the point. It provides the meditative space other films sorely lack. And it also is a fundamental part of Erice's entire project here of reflection upon cinematic art which is quite cohesive and integrated. So the numerous references to his other films that are folded in are far from arbitrary (e.g. the director's unfinished feature which shares that status with Erice's own El Sur, the box of relics from that same film, allusions to another entirely unmade film Erice had been preparing, the moments in which Ana Torrent repeats her name as she did in Spirit of the Beehive, etc.). None of these references are tritely self-congratulatory, cloying or hackneyed but rather function almost as elegantly deployed ornaments festooning the surface of that elaborate mediation on cinema as art or small but significant expressions of it; and if anyone deserves to draw from their own work for such a project it's Erice.

Certainly this film is all about lives devoted to cinema, to the recognition of its transformative power and meaning, its all encompassing expansiveness. And that idea of recognition is key and fundamental. It reflects both an experience of self-recognition in the narrative and the larger sense of recognition attached to cinema and art for us all, its great accomplishment as a far reaching medium of expression, the sometimes subdued and sometimes startling recognition of a reality we may not have recognized before. And so the film concentrates upon the look, the gaze; it is right there from the beginning in the film-within-the-film as one character states that his whole goal is for his long lost daughter to see him and for him to see her (the specifically personal or intimate is thus set elusively within the scope of an acknowledged artifice). Erice goes on to chart how memory affects that and on a metaphoric or metaphysical level as well. So there is a concentration too upon the disappointments of age, loss, and an art that is not seen or shared (here the director's selling of the film rights is an analogy tantamount to the seriousness of that kind of loss). It's all very particular but universal, wrapped in the cinematic gaze.

There are not just specific references to details in Erice's previous films but also a drawing upon and development of specific techniques and ideas. The film is far more full of extended dialogues than in his earlier work but it is by no means as anomalous as some might suggest; it's actually a furthering of a similar structure in The Quince Tree Sun, which also featured multiple extended dialogue scenes. And, as perhaps befits the documentary nature of that film, the extension of that technique here also suggests the blurring of the same lines as were blurred there between documentary realism and cinematic artifice. Signature Erice fade outs also are a vital part of this film's construction, transitioning us from scene to scene, and bestowing a light touch or reminder of that artifice upon the long central section which may be the most prosaic work Erice has done. But the prose is never without poetry and here it's in those fades or the lingering close-ups so particular to Erice or simply in the careful but understated compositions. The noting here too of how names are conventionally accepted forms of artifice is another example. But names are also about affixing (or fixing) notions of identity and that carries us back to those blurred boundary lines.

There is a kind of parallel narrative in the film between the alluded to mystery within that film-within-the-film (significantly titled The Farewell Gaze) and the mystery of the disappearance of an actor from that film which is pursued throughout the rest of this one. And again there is an implicit contrast between the more elaborative artistic strategy on display in the brief clips we see of The Farewell Gaze and the more prosaic, almost even naturalistic style of the rest. But I think part of what makes this so special and appreciated is that the long central section functions too as a kind of space for and appreciation of not just our own reflective process but, more explicitly, that of scholarly and expository film studies; it functions then as a tribute to such studies as a noble and worthwhile pursuit, maybe even a necessarily intrinsic part of cinema as art. Ultimately, and in culmination, Erice's triumph is in the extent of his accomplishment and in his handling of fragile and heightened states; a melodrama without the melodramatic.

[denti alligator]

Thank you, John. Can’t wait to see it.

[Red Screamer]

I loved it too, even without being familiar with Erice’s other films. The careful thematic and emotional build worked wonders for me. Glad it’s finally getting a proper release.

[spectre]

Best film of the year, easily.

[hearthesilence]

Still looking forward to seeing this, but Richard Brody tweeted a pretty harsh take:

I hate to say it, but Close Your Eyes isn't very good: a movie about movies but lacking original ideas about movies; the images are anonymous, the acting style is conventional, the text is literal. Lots of feeling went into it but far less comes out. Good intentions don't matter.

[John Cope]

This wonderful new interview with Erice may address some of Brody's issues (or it may not). You should be warned though that spoliers lie herein.

[Fiery Angel]

Still looking forward to seeing this, but Richard Brody tweeted a pretty harsh take:

I hate to say it, but Close Your Eyes isn't very good: a movie about movies but lacking original ideas about movies; the images are anonymous, the acting style is conventional, the text is literal. Lots of feeling went into it but far less comes out. Good intentions don't matter.

I usually disagree with Brody but he's pretty spot on here, sadly. The film is a big disappointment.