Spanish auteur Victor Erice’s fourth feature film, Close Your Eyes, is a textural character study and examination of cinematic history through a unique and profoundly personal lens. A film about how human beings sometimes don’t have control over the things they choose to remember and moments they wish to forget, Close Your Eyes methodically and emotionally allows its characters to take stock of their lives and careers in totality and without contrivance. It’s a film about confronting questions that refuse to go away, and what it takes to move forward if those answers aren’t favourable to those doing the asking.
The year is 2012, and novelist and filmmaker Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo) has been contacted by the producers of a true crime television series to talk about what happened on the set of his second, unfinished, and subsequently final feature. While shooting The Farewell Gaze in 1990, leading man and Miguel’s longtime friend Julio Arenas (Jose Coronado) disappeared without a trace. No body was ever found, leading many to speculate that Julio was either murdered, committed suicide, or suffered a terrible accident. Sparked by renewed interest in the case and asked by the producers of the show to try and contact others with knowledge of the disappearance, Miguel begins a journey for answers that lead to some startling revelations and reignites his passion for the creative process.
Erice, in what might be his final film given his advanced age and lengthy time between projects, has stated that Close Your Eyes is inspired in part by a close personal friend in a difficult situation. What that situation is exactly would spoil the big reveal that shifts the direction of Erice’s narrative in the film’s second half, but suffice to say Close Your Eyes is closely attuned to the way that all cinema is documentary in nature, even when it’s fictional. Anything that’s committed to film (or as Mario Pardo’s grizzled, cynical cinematographer begrudgingly acknowledges, digital video) is only truly lost if we collectively choose to forget it ever existed. The mystery surrounding Arenas’ lost final performance ensures that his legacy will never vanish, and Miguel is a huge part of making sure that flame never goes out, even though by the time the viewer meets him, he has long since stopped doing anything with the footage or the project.
Close Your Eyes carries with it a sadness and sense of tragedy, both historic and personal, but Erice (El Sur, Dreams of Light) shifts the tone with ease towards something a bit more hopeful in the second half. History refuses to resolve itself in its most stubborn moments, but movies and written works can help people make sense of all the chaos. While those immersed in the arts can sometimes find the dazzling and beautiful elements of art mundane after awhile, the characters in Close Your Eyes are always able to see layers in their work they never saw before through the benefit of hindsight. Miguel uncovers details in his own work and life that help to unravel stubborn knots in his own timeline, and while the answers he finds aren’t the best or happiest resolutions, there’s catharsis in being able to have closure.
Close Your Eyes is a slow, unassuming looking film, but it’s certainly not unsubstantial. The edits themselves could stand to be a little tighter and less awkward, but in terms of the actual narrative of Erice’s story, there’s nothing here that warrants cutting or tweaking. Much of the action is dialogue driven, so Erice allows his performers to slowly coax the answers and emotional beats out of each other, giving Close Your Eyes a lived in quality that few films revolving around what’s essentially a mystery never usually attain.
If this proves to be Erice’s swan song, Close Your Eyes is an assured, thoughtful note to go out on. And true to its own subject matter, this is a film that already strikes as the sort of work that will only grow in the estimation of viewers over time. It’s a plea for preservation, not only of cinema or history, but of the little details in our lives that we too often take for granted.
Close Your Eyes opens at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto on Friday, August 23, 2024.
