Don’t Tell Victor Erice He Hasn’t Made a Film in 30 Years

The Spanish director tells us about his first feature since 1992, the mesmerizing Close Your Eyes, and the art he’s made in the time since. Photo: Film Movement

Since his stunning 1973 feature debut, The Spirit of the Beehive (widely acclaimed as one of Spanish cinema’s greatest, most influential titles), Victor Erice has made only four features. The 84-year-old director’s latest, the magnificent Close Your Eyes, premiered at Cannes last year to widespread praise (and some controversy). Now, finally arriving in the U.S., it might be the best film released this year, and it will only enhance Erice’s reputation as a living patron saint of unfinished cinematic projects.

Close Your Eyes follows a director, Miguel Garay (Manolo Soto), who started shooting a movie 30 years ago but then had to abandon it when his lead actor and best friend, Julio Arenas (Jose Coronado), walked off the set and disappeared. Miguel, we learn, abandoned the industry to go live in a shack by the sea, but his search for Julio is revived after an appearance on a tabloid-y TV show about unsolved mysteries. But the mystery is not just narrative; it’s also part of the questioning, evocative nature of the film. As Close Your Eyes approaches its enormously moving final scenes, we might find ourselves asking if Miguel’s search for Julio is in fact an attempt to try and reclaim his own identity. “They’re the only person who can look at me differently,” a character says in the film. “This is what I want from them: a final look before I die — nothing more.”

Actually, the character who says these words is Mr. Levy (Josep Maria Pou), a character in Garay’s unfinished film-within-the-film, The Farewell Gaze. Those familiar with Erice’s career might see in this fictional movie similarities to the director’s second feature, El Sur (1983), a remarkable work whose production was famously cut short before Erice could shoot an all-important final act that would have justified the aesthetic and narrative decisions made in the picture’s earlier scenes. That the movie is a mystery without a solution only adds to its deliciously enigmatic nature, but it also feels like a crime that Erice wasn’t allowed to complete his film. (The Criterion Collection release of El Sur has a number of excellent extras that go into detail about what happened with the movie, including an extended interview with the often press-shy Erice.) The Farewell Gaze also carries echoes of The Shanghai Spell, an ambitious project that the director was preparing to shoot back in the 1990s before the producer pulled the plug on it.

But in truth, the film of Erice’s that perhaps most speaks to these concerns is one he did complete. In 1992, he released A Dream of Light (also known as The Quince-Tree Sun, a direct translation of its original title, El Sol del Membrillo), a documentary following the artist Antonio López Garcia’s efforts to paint a quince tree growing in his backyard. This gently riveting, award-winning picture (which Erice describes as “undoubtedly my riskiest” and which turned out to be the last feature he’d release before Close Your Eyes) opens with an extended depiction of Garcia’s methodical and precise preparation: pulling and pinning strings across the tree, painting dotted lines through the quinces and the leaves so as to position them accurately within the canvas. Without any kind of script, Erice shot pretty much every day as the artist went about his business. Soon, however, nature took its course. Rain and clouds shut out the sun; the quinces grew; the leaves changed. Partway through the film, after days of intense rain, Garcia is forced to abandon the painting and winds up trying to do a drawing instead, only to give that up as well. The quinces grow and fall, are eaten or left to rot. The tree goes through its cycles. The painter’s attempts to capture reality — so exacting, so careful, so prepared — end in what looks like failure.

Thanks to Erice’s camera and sensibility, however, A Dream of Light is one of the most inspiring documentaries ever made, in part because it suggests that art is as much about the pursuit and the process as it is about the finished work, and that the artist’s work is itself part of a natural cycle of growth, death, and rebirth. And now, Close Your Eyes, despite its magical re-creations of an unfinished movie and the melancholy human toll its abandonment took, carries a powerful current of hope — in the way it asks us to think about life as it’s lived as a force of awesome, incomprehensible beauty.

How long did it take for Close Your Eyes to come together as a project? When did you start working on it?
The financing was gathered in about five months, which is a very short time, at least in Spain. The screenwriter, Michel Gaztambide, and I started working together in July 2021. The original plot already existed, written by me several years earlier.

The unfinished film within Close Your Eyes has certain parallels to The Shanghai Spell, the movie you were supposed to make in the 1990s. One might also remember what you went through with El Sur. And some viewers may think there are spiritual similarities between Julio, the great actor who disappeared, and Victor Erice, the great director who “hasn’t been heard from” since 1992. How aware were you of some of these echoes?
Almost all the films I have managed to direct have been related to my life experience. When thinking about the characters in the story of Close Your Eyes, it was inevitable to fall into certain types of associations. But they were not like the ones described in your question. It is not true that I have not made films in 30 years. My short and medium-length films, made from the year 2000 onward, are also films. They have been seen in international festivals, in retrospectives, projected on a screen, even broadcast on video. They have not circulated through major distribution channels, and they are not many, certainly. But I could also include my works for museums, video installations, which have been more the practice of a filmmaker than a video artist.

You began making films in the 1960s and made your first feature in 1973. Many of us feel that the style of cinema has changed quite a bit since then. You’ve been making commercials and teaching and writing over the years, but did you find yourself modifying your style at all for contemporary viewers?
I usually think about the viewers when the film is finished, at the time of its premiere. It seems undeniable that viewers have changed a lot. But, I will add one thing, without pretending to discover anything new: What has changed substantially in these last 60 years is the entire world. Cinema no longer occupies the space in society that it did in the past. Films are made and consumed in a very different way. Their images are digitized to be broadcast on television, computers, tablets, and mobile phones. This favors a type of reception that increasingly approaches the notion of consumption. It is not strange that users and viewers are talked about so much. I can perhaps respect them, but their tastes are not the guide for my work.

At one point, we see Miguel typing out a sentence about an artist who decided that his masterpiece would not be his work, but his life. What does this mean, in your eyes?
An echo of the old debate between cinema and life. Better yet: between art and life. There are people who, in their quest for survival, in their search for freedom, make their life an art. Garay, upon retiring from the social stage of the film industry, seems to have finally chosen life, a certain form of life — though it is very precarious, even provisional.

The memory of Julio’s former life is meaningless to him. It’s Miguel who needs Julio to come back, not so much the other way around — just as Mr. Levy, the fictional character in The Farewell Gaze, needs his daughter to recognize him again before he dies. The film is about the reclamation of a man’s identity, but maybe it’s not the man we think. Is it Miguel, not Julio, whose life needs to be reclaimed?
Miguel and Julio are the two faces (like Janus) of the same identity. The former cannot escape his past, carrying the burden of memory; the latter, touched by the merciful hand of fate, has freed himself from that weight. Julio Arenas is now Gardel, a pseudonym. He seems to be content with his destiny. He has no memory, but does he have consciousness, awareness of the other? In the nursing home where he ended up, he seems integrated, but we never see him helping an elderly person … “Consciousness is as important as memory,” the character of Dr. Benavides tells Garay this in the film. And what you point out regarding the question of identity is very true.

Photo: Film Movement

What is the significance of names in the film? Miguel goes by different names at different points. Julio becomes Gardel. And in the fictional film, Mr. Levy’s daughter, Qiao Shu, is also Judith. Mr. Levy talks about all the different names he’s used as well. 
In the opening scene of Close Your Eyes, two themes come into play that will accompany the entire narrative: that of the gaze and that of the name. The former appears very prominently. The latter is perhaps a little hidden, though there are constant examples. Garay is Miguel, but also Mike in Marina Rincón. Julio Arenas, who once was Mario Guardione, is Gardel in the nursing home. Levy has used up to four different names in his life. His daughter is Judith and Qiao Shu. Dr. Benavides is pleased to finally learn Gardel’s true name. And then Garay asks him what a name is. In his poem “A Compass,” Jorge Luis Borges wrote: “Behind the name is what is not named.”

Tell me about including “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me,” a cowboy song originally sung in Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo, in the film. Miguel sings it at night to his companions in the Marina Rincón, the little cluster of shacks by the sea where he lives — a living arrangement that we’re told will soon come to an end. It’s a delightful scene, but also, I felt, a very sad one. The way it’s sung in the film, it seems to almost become a song about death. Was this in the script? How did you decide on this song?
That song was not planned in the script. I improvised it with the actors on set. For me, it is a scene not at all sad, quite the opposite. And it is also important because it reveals a facet of Garay’s character different from what we perceive in his time in Madrid. Unlike Gardel, he is leading a provisional existence in Marina Rincón, where he lives by the sea, and he has his people, his small family. I believe that the song “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me,” shared and celebrated, expresses that character where friendship is what matters most.

The film seems to have several different styles. There are the scenes from The Farewell Gaze, which are shot on film and have a very textured, old-fashioned feel to them. There are many straightforward two-person dialogue scenes as Miguel searches for Julio. Then there is the final section of the film, which feels increasingly wordless and intuitive, culminating in that remarkable sequence inside the theater. Can you tell me a little bit about how you approached the film from a formal standpoint?
I do not think I have more than two different styles. One is that of The Farewell Gaze, the unfinished work. Its two sequences, which open and close Close Your Eyes, I shot on 16mm and photochemical support. The rest of the film, which narrates Garay’s life experience in the present, I shot on digital video … But I would prefer to talk about differences in tone rather than style. There is an epic dimension in the two sequences of The Farewell Gaze, which may recall that of classic cinema. It is characteristic of legendary tales whose endings aroused redemption in the viewer’s conscience. Think, for example, of the ending of City Lights by Chaplin or of Ordet by Dreyer.

In the end of Close Your Eyes, there is a redeeming gaze. It emerges from the screen of an old, condemned movie theater, and it is embodied by a girl, Judith-Qiao Shu, first recognizing her father just on the brink of death. She is facing the camera, through her tears, and then her gaze is joined by the actor who was once Gardel. The two of them look out at us, at all of us — spectators who have no possible symbolic redemption.

What was the response to Close Your Eyes like in Spain? Were you pleased with it?
The commercial response was quite good, despite being released in a bad time for movie theaters, with the added handicap of its long run time, which did not make it easy for the exhibitor to program a conventional number of showings.

Even though you’ve only made four features over the past 50 years, you’ve made lots of shorts. Has it been frustrating for you that you haven’t made more features? And what are the main reasons you haven’t made more? Is it mostly to do with financing? Or have there been other reasons?
There have been reasons of all kinds. Some may be the ones you mention. But there are more, different ones.

I was struck by the series of video letters you exchanged with the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami in the 2000s. What were the origins of that correspondence? How did it start, and how did it develop?
I first met Abbas Kiarostami in Sicily in July 1997, during the Taormina Film Festival. Abbas saw A Dream of Light there. He liked it a lot. I believe it was that film that truly brought us together. In 2005, the Contemporary Culture Center of Barcelona (CCCB) proposed that Abbas and I prepare a joint exhibition: films, photography, painting, and video installations. I thought that a way to establish an audiovisual relationship between us could be through video letters. Abbas liked the idea very much. And so, between April 2005 and May 2007, we exchanged ten video letters. They gave rise to the title of the exhibition: “Correspondences: Erice-Kiarostami.”

I know you’ve done a lot of commercial work. I haven’t seen any of your commercials, so I’m very curious about them. How would you characterize this work? Are you able to bring any of your cinematic sensibility to these ads?
Like Kiarostami, it’s curious. I worked as a director of commercial films in the 1970s and ’80s. I did it intermittently as a freelancer. I learned a lot, because in Spain, commercial films gave the director the possibility to use the latest technical advances: cameras, lenses, emulsions, and lighting systems. But I recognize that this kind of work was, above all, a way for me to earn the money necessary to survive. When directing The Spirit of the Beehive in 1973, I had to completely forget the visual style of advertising.

Your 1992 film, A Dream of Light, methodically shows the artist Antonio López Garcia as he very carefully and precisely tries to paint a quince tree. It becomes a film about the impossible nature of art. Did you have an idea that Antonio’s efforts would go in this direction before you started shooting?
I had accompanied Antonio in his work when he painted large urban panoramas. But I had never seen him painting a tree. So when I started shooting A Dream of Light, I did not know what was going to happen. It was a real adventure for me. And what you say is true: Nature remains indifferent to the painter’s purpose. Ultimately, as a filmmaker, in this film I did nothing but reflect something of the eternal conflict between man and nature. The artist’s model was a living being, a tree whose fruits evolved over time.

Behind his daily effort in painting the quince tree, the spectator may perceive (that has always been my hope) the sign of a different, essential temporality. Not the clock-coded time that rules our daily lives — our work, our leisure — but the time of origins. The one that is inscribed simultaneously in the skin of the quinces and in the face of the painter.