Close Your Eyes Explores Past Connections with Captivating Lived-In Anguish

Victor Erice’s 1973 masterpiece The Spirit of the Beehive centers on a young girl, Ana (Ana Torrent), who becomes fascinated by the movie Frankenstein in 1940. Despite her sister’s insistence that the movie is fictional, Ana’s imagination is captivated by Frankenstein’s creation. In the turmoil of post-Spanish Civil War life and a difficult home environment, Ana finds solace in a monster that doesn’t exist. Erice and co-writer Ángel Fernández Santos’ screenplay for Beehive delves into the catharsis found within cinematic images, showing how fiction helps us process aspects of reality and our emotions.

After a 40-year break, Erice returns with another feature film, Close Your Eyes, exploring similar themes from an older perspective. Co-written with Michel Gaztambide, the script begins in 2012, two decades after actor Julio Arenas (José Coronado) mysteriously disappeared, leaving his final film, The Farewell Gaze, unfinished. This disappearance haunts Gaze’s director and Arenas’ friend, Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo), who is now in his 70s and has come to terms with never knowing what happened to the actor who once defined so much of his life.

As the story unfolds, Garay and others close to Arenas are drawn into a TV show documenting the actor’s disappearance. This project forces them to confront the past, reflecting Garay’s constant brushes with memories—whether it’s his regular meetings with editor friend Max (Mario Pardo), a lunch with Arenas’ daughter Ana (Ana Torrent), or a reunion with former lover Lola (Soledad Villamil). Nostalgia and unresolved emotions take a quiet but heavy toll on Garay, who leads a solitary life by the sea. This film emphasizes that our past never truly leaves us, as seen in Garay and his friends’ ongoing speculation about Arenas’ fate.

Close Your Eyes highlights how humans accumulate physical reminders of significant events. Trinkets from vacations, scars from injuries, and cherished photographs are tangible ways the past lingers. These tokens become vivid reminders of memories to the characters in the film. One poignant scene takes place in Max’s apartment, where Garay finds an old caricature of his deceased son, a memento Max has kept because it was the last time he saw Garay’s son before his tragic motorcycle accident.

Victor Erice’s film emphasizes the importance of such objects. Garay and other characters often find comfort in seemingly trivial items. For instance, a caricatured portrait in Max’s possession symbolizes the last connection to Garay’s son. Despite the years, the emotional weight of these items remains, illustrating the saying, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” To Max, those mementos are the precious threads linking him to loved ones lost too soon.

Through interactions with old postcards and keepsakes, Close Your Eyes weaves melancholy into its story. It’s a tale of people existing within uncontrollable circumstances—time tirelessly marching on, regardless of their desires. The characters, including Garay, Max, and Ana, all face the inevitability of aging and the pressures of life under capitalism. For Ana, a mundane museum guide job is a necessity to support her child, underscoring their powerlessness against larger societal forces.

The film paints its characters as painfully aware of their plight. Even the suggestions to cope with their struggles offer little solace, as Max’s advice to face aging “without fear or hope” illustrates. This understated approach magnifies the characters’ turmoil, making their resigned interactions deeply compelling. Garay and his friends have no energy left to rage against the harsh realities they face; they can only be there for each other in their quiet suffering.

The actors deliver powerful performances infused with decades of bottled-up pain. Manolo Solo, in particular, conveys Garay’s internal torment through subtle expressions and gestures. This collective emotional depth breathes life into the film’s dialogue-heavy scenes, transforming a potential weakness into a significant strength.

The technical elements, such as the score by Federico Jusid, often giving way to silence during crucial conversations, enhance the film’s impact. This absence of music allows the raw pain to resonate. Similarly, the cinematography by Valentín Álvarez supports the performances without overshadowing them, capturing poignant moments with restraint.

Close Your Eyes captures the chaotic and incomprehensible nature of life, suggesting that in the face of such tumult, we find solace in memories and objects from our past. Like Ana’s fixation on Frankenstein in The Spirit of the Beehive, the characters cling to their mementos. Max, an archiver of film reels, preserves old movies even as the world moves on to digital formats. Through these reels, the past remains alive, offering a refuge in an ever-changing world.

In a deeply moving scene, clips from The Farewell Gaze allow Julio Arenas to exist once more. Though missing, he lives on within the film’s dailies and the tokens held dear by his loved ones. Through exquisite filmmaking and heartfelt performances, Close Your Eyes celebrates the objects that help us endure and the past that shapes us.

Source: Culturess