Close Your Eyes

"There are no miracles in movies since Dreyer died", yes, but here Erice slowly conjures up the closest challenge we have seen since then. If he failed -and I'm not sure he did- we at least got one of the greatest endings in movie history. And a beautiful, detailed movie, full of inner life, sense of purpose and small pleasures. If not a masterwork, clearly the work of a master. And a movie lover.

A love letter to cinema and moving images, to memory and its material carriers, a dedication to both their anamnestic and enchanting magic, and (significantly and noticeably so for Erice, it seems) their irreducible impenetrability and unavoidable imperfection, and through all these, a tragic contemplation of the default (of origin), incalculability and mystery of human life, and of how we can take care of each other as memory perpetually draws us close and stretches us apart at the same time.

It aims nothing but simplicity and sensibility, yet achieves deep meditative imagery. So many arresting moments here, from Miguel singing and playing the song from Rio Bravo to his own cinematic, dreamy depiction of what could've happened to his best friend. But finale is the real deal: people from Julio's past and present watching his final scenes as actor on the screen of a dead theater, closing their eyes as images fade -- fuck memory or the lack of it, what matters is what we see and listen.

Against the standards of Erice's previous work it feels less hypnotic and iconic, closer to a lot of Euro-art fare that releases every year. But the story is ingenious, and across the gradual unlayering of this mystery wrapped inside a movie within a movie, the artist's singular poetic vision is apparent.

kurşun gibi izler.. son bakıştaki o gözler, kaldı aklımızda.... victor erice dedenin sinemaya vedası..