Miracles haven't existed in movies since Dreyer.
So says a gruff film editor to his aged director friend in Víctor Erice's first feature in three decades, a work brilliant enough to make a lie of that line. Well, it was miraculous to me, though there must be some dissenters out there. Folks like Thierry Frémaux who infamously conned Erice into opening the flick at Cannes under the assumption it would play in competition. Only, Close Your Eyes didn't get to vie for the Palme d'Or, getting shafted into the newborn Premiere section. At this point, that farrago must be water under the bridge, though one presumes a big Cannes victory would have helped Close Your Eyes get to theaters sooner. For American audiences, it only now made it to screens, enjoying a limited release courtesy of Film Movement…
Moving on from the Croisette controversy, let's return to that bit on movie miracles. Erice's characters speak of Dreyer in general, though it's the Dutch master's late works with which Close Your Eyes seems to be conversing. Think of the loves and remembrances of Gertrud, its notions of regret or the very antithesis of it in the face of a life lived according to one's truth. More importantly, think of the structure and spiritual magic of Ordet, as close to cinematic perfection as any feature made since the dawn of the camera. At the end of that minimalist masterpiece, the impossible manifests within a world that shouldn't accommodate it, producing a miracle of such simplicity you can't help but be overwhelmed.
That surrender to the sublime feels closely connected to Dreyer's audiovisual languages, the idioms of economy and starkness that dominate his most immortal works. In Ordet, the kinds of shots afforded feel limited to a small pool, charging every directorial choice with an intentionality so evident you can practically taste it in the air. And so, when the miracle happens, it feels as tied to the device of cinema as it does to the great beyond. It's not so much a case of the director as the divine, an equation between the filmmaker and the maker of all. Instead, cinema itself becomes a higher power capable of wonders without end. A cut can twist time, lighting bends reality, a camera movement defies death and wins out.
;)
It takes a virtuoso filmmaker to unlock the potential of moving pictures. Someone like Dreyer or, indeed, Erice. Though never falling to the level of pastiche, Close Your Eyes recovers the classicism of cinema's past, invoking the feel of Ordet and Gertrud without quoting them. Moreover, there's another sort of look back happening in the narrative, through the narrative. It's Erice considering his own yesterday as a person and an artist, reflecting upon the form to which he's dedicated his life and how that same creation almost seems to stare at its creator. Close Your Eyes and envision the Spirit of the Beehive, El Sur, and Dream of Light – it's all here. 'What was' is crystalized in the recorded image and can become 'what is.' Death to life, for the duration of the frame.
Cinema preserves memory, but it goes further still.
In Close Your Eyes, Erice tells the story of Miguel, a director whose last film ended in unfinished disgrace. His leading man, Julio, vanished into thin air, and twenty years later he's still missing. The mystery persists, getting the filmmaker into the TV studio for some sensationalist mess of a talk show, where the footage of yesteryear rekindles public interest, revives the case. Some want to transcend the enigma and accept the loss – Julio's daughter, for example - but the filmmaker follows the path images set out for him. How could he not? It takes him to a friend lost, then found, yet still lost - an amnesiac, mayhaps Julio or maybe not. One wonders if, in the absence of memory, a person is still themselves, or something else altogether.
Julio and Miguel, man who can't remember and an artisan whose craft is to preserve the memory of the world in material record. What a pair they make, and what a glorious thing it is to see Erice consider their fates within his camera's range. The classicism with which he sees them underlines the film's considerations on cinema. To quote my TIFF coverage, "what starts as a detective story through celluloid archeology becomes a study in memory, whether it's the fragility of the human mind or the particularities of film as moments frozen beyond death." Taking the seventh art in his hands, Erice and Miguel are within reach of giving a man back his memories and, thus, his self. It's Dreyer's resurrection adapted to a more meta-cinematic purpose.
All these ramblings may sound confusing, but Close Your Eyes is a straightforward affair. In the end, it all snaps into place and hits like a punch.
Even the film's notions of material memory can be something as simple as a box of trinkets or a message left in a book. The mysteries reside in the nooks and crannies, in the underlying revelations of its story. A shallow pool it may seem, but there's a bottomless well for those willing to experience the emotional totality of Erice's work. Which, mind you, is no mere love letter imbibed with nostalgia like one could expect from a movie on movies. Lucidity surmounts sentimentality, though it doesn't eliminate sorrow. Close Your Eyes glimpses the shining promise of hope by its end, sure enough, but that will not erase the loss. Even the miracle of cinema has its limits. Somehow, that makes it more special in my eyes, just like Ordet's disciplined construction, Gertrud's restraint, and the Spaniard's dreams of light, time, movement... cinema.
Please watch Close Your Eyes on the big screen if you can. Writing it, I tried not to be too forthcoming about details because everyone deserves to discover Víctor Erice's latest on their own and surrender to the screen.