Do you have any idea?

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2024

#35 :  Cerrar Los Ojos (Close Your Eyes)

The Spirit of the Beehive director Víctor Erice returns after 30 years with an enigmatic tale of a disappeared actor that ruminates on memory, ageing and cinema itself.


Skipping over There's Still Tomorrow (#38) which depicts gruelling domestic abuse, Omen (#37) which is apparently a surrealistic take on Congolese occult practices and Opponent (#36) which follows an Iranian wrestler claiming asylum in Sweden brings us to this, which, if I'm being honest doesn't sound a whole lot more promising, but sometimes enigmatic can be good, can't it?

Hmmm - 160 minutes. Oh joy. 

Well, the good news is that it wasn't 160 minutes of suffering. But the bad news is that I gave up after half an hour because this film was going nowhere very, very slowly. The first ten minutes were a completely random scene from some time in the past involving a man hiring someone to track down his daughter whilst an elderly Asian dude serves them tea - I had absolutely no idea what was going on. And then we switch to a more up-to-date timeframe, which gradually explains that the first scene was actually a film and one of the actors disappeared after it was shot. And nobody knows why. 

Yup, in the 30 minutes I watched, we had quite a few people explain how little they knew about it - apparently they do find out before the end of the film, but I can assure I really didn't care enough to hang around to find out. Roger Ebert described it as "slow cinema" and he really wasn't wrong.

It looks to be acted acceptably (certainly not spectacularly) and filmed adequately (ditto) but it would have to experience quite the uptick to make up for what I experienced - and if it does I have to ask why they decided to write it that way.

This is Victor Erice's third feature film and his first in over thirty years - apparently his debut The Spirit Of The Beehive is considered to be one of the finest Spanish films ever made. I realise I'm not exactly in a position to comment, but I have a strong suspicion this is not.

 #39 - Some slow-burn European indie cinema

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