“The solar is sinking within the West / The cattle go right down to the stream / The redwing settles in her nest / It’s time for a cowboy to dream.”
These immortal lyrics from Paul Francis Webster kick off one of many loveliest scenes in film historical past, from one of many best Westerns of all time: When Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson sing “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” in “Rio Bravo” — a wonderful second when the plot of the film kind of involves a halt and also you simply spend a while hanging out with these characters and the extraordinary skills inhabiting them. In spite of everything, cinematic artistry expresses itself by so very far more than simply plot. And the pleasures of cinema a lot extra than simply the sum of “what advances the story.”
Victor Erice clearly feels the identical approach and pays magnificent tribute to this “Rio Bravo” second by staging his personal model in “Shut Your Eyes,” his newest masterwork, and one of many best motion pictures of 2024. There’s an plain pleasure in discovering this second for your self should you’re already a “Rio Bravo” fan, nevertheless it’s very potential that many who love “Rio Bravo” and this track gained’t even know that there’s a brand new movie that pays tribute to it in such a wealthy approach. Now that the movie is on the market on demand on all the main platforms (Apple, Prime Video, Fandango), it’s all of the extra value firing up this lovely reverie of a film.
One of many many “love letter to cinema” motion pictures lately — although one which’s utterly in contrast to some other — “Shut Your Eyes” follows Spanish movie director Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo) as he searches as soon as extra for the lead actor of his final film, who disappeared from the set 30 years in the past and was by no means seen once more. Was there foul play? Did he have a medical episode? Or did he simply select to stroll away? Regardless, his star’s disappearance meant that Miguel was unable to complete that movie, and all of it however ended his filmmaking profession.
However at the same time as his direct participation in making motion pictures isn’t any extra, Miguel nonetheless finds himself haunted by cinema, and that’s the place Erice most distinguishes “Shut Your Eyes” from all different “love letter to cinema” motion pictures. It’s not concerning the energy of being in a theater and gazing upon a giant display. It’s about how motion pictures hang-out you lengthy after you’ve seen them — as concepts, as pictures that linger with you even if you shut your eyes. As a result of pictures can have energy even if you’re not taking a look at them, simply as essentially the most highly effective issues will be the issues we don’t see.
As he journeys residence from Madrid, Miguel performs with a flipbook model of “The Arrival of a Prepare at La Ciotat,” and he’s beforehand scoured an archive of celluloid prints. And should you have been to ask David Ehrlich, who reviewed “Shut Your Eyes” for IndieWire, that “Shut Your Eyes” is shot digitally is a commentary on the hole between the luminous great thing about movie (definitely of Erice’s beloved “Spirit of the Beehive”) and the dreary digital second we discover ourselves dwelling in. “Set on the daybreak of the streaming age and shot with the funereal sterility that got here with it, ‘Shut Your Eyes’ overtly laments the lack of a extra tactile movie expertise (the sort that included precise movie), however solely in order that it might probably honor the way in which sure pictures take root inside us when seen beneath the best circumstances, as inextricable from our being as a soul from its physique,” Ehrlich wrote.
One other approach of placing it: Are essentially the most highly effective cinematic pictures on this streaming age nonetheless these from the pre-streaming previous? Is cinephilia at its most potent now when trying backward?
When the “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” scene happens roughly 85 minutes into “Shut Your Eyes,” Erice makes an emphatic assertion about cinema’s enduring present-tense energy. Miguel and some of his mates are hanging out — very similar to Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, John Wayne, and Walter Brennan in that scene in “Rio Bravo” — within the beachside hippie commune in Spain he seems to have referred to as residence for a while. Sitting round a dinner desk, they speak about what to call the soon-to-be-born daughter of one among their mates, and why a few of them obtained the nicknames they’ve. Miguel notes his good friend is strumming on a guitar in vaguely classical approach. Then, his good friend asks Miguel to sing the track he loves “from the film.” And he launches into “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me,” which, just like the “Rio Bravo” authentic track, turns into a call-and-response duet.
They’re utilizing a 65-year-old film to attach within the current. Identical to all cinema that got here earlier than, in a approach, lives within the current. Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson have all been useless for many years, however they nonetheless dwell in these pictures, whether or not we watch them on a giant display or small. Something you recognize about their lives outdoors of these pictures fades away: Once you’re watching their film or recalling these pictures in your head, they exist purely as these pictures and as these characters.
Anybody right now who’s ever been drawn to Grace Kelly or Cary Grant watching one among their motion pictures has felt that everlasting current. Who cares that in “actual life” they’ve been gone for ages? Motion pictures at all times have an effect on us within the now. Erice reveals with this scene that, with motion pictures, you by no means actually must look again, at the same time as a lot as nostalgia is the continuing theme of our second. You simply must lookup — or inside.