Entertainment
What’s on TV Saturday: ‘The Many Saints of Newark’ on HBO
The prime-time TV grid is on hiatus in print. You could find extra TV protection at: latimes.com/whats-on-tv.
SERIES
Nice Chocolate Showdown The highest three bakers confront their hardest problem but: an assortment of showstopping confections to fill their dream Bake Store window. Cynthia Stroud hosts the season finale. 8 p.m. The CW
The Zoo: San Diego Two lanner falcons exhibit their abilities whereas a pair of playful platypuses start a brand new chapter on the zoo. Additionally, koala joeys put together to depart their moms for the very first time on this new episode of the documentary sequence. 8 p.m. Animal Planet
SPECIALS
Sport Time With Boomer Esiason The previous NFL quarterback hosts an evaluation of the NCAA Match. 8 p.m. CBS
World’s Funniest Animals: Nationwide Pet Day Particular Elizabeth Stanton hosts this new particular version of the sequence celebrating cute pups with cute clips. Lissette Rojo, from the Metropolis of Burbank Animal Shelter, is a particular visitor. Brian Cooper, Anna Maria Perez De Tagle, Carmen Hodgson, Noah Matthews, Mikalah Gordon, AJ Gibson, Emile Ennis Jr. and Katherine Murray present commentary. 9 p.m. The CW
SPORTS
Rugby Six Nations Championship: Wales versus Italy. From Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, 7 a.m. CNBC
2022 NCAA Girls’s Basketball Match First Spherical: Kansas State versus Washington State, 8:30 a.m. ESPN2; Mercer visits Connecticut, 10 a.m. ABC; Villanova versus BYU, 10 a.m. ESPNews; Charlotte visits Indiana, 10:30 a.m. ESPN2; Longwood visits NC State, 11 a.m. ESPN; Buffalo visits Tennessee, midday ABC; American visits Michigan, 12:30 p.m. ESPN2; Florida versus UCF, 12:30 p.m. ESPNews; Princeton versus Kentucky, 1 p.m. ESPN; Belmont versus Oregon, 2:30 p.m. ESPN2; Massachusetts versus Notre Dame, 4:30 p.m. ESPN2; Stephen F. Austin State versus North Carolina, 4:30 p.m. ESPNews; UNLV visits Arizona, 7 p.m. ESPN2
2022 NCAA Males’s Basketball Match 9, 11:30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. CBS; 3 and 5:30 p.m. TNT; 4 and 6:30 p.m. TBS
2022 NIT Basketball Match Second Spherical: Oregon visits Texas A&M, 9 a.m. ESPN
Monitor and Subject IAAF World Indoor Championships, 10 a.m. CNBC
Golf PGA Tour: Valspar Championship, Third Spherical, 10 a.m. Golf; Valspar Championship, Third Spherical, midday NBC
Girls’s Faculty Basketball NCAA Division III Championship, 11 a.m. CBSSN
NHL Hockey The Kings go to the Vegas Golden Knights, 1 p.m. BSW; the New York Rangers go to the Tampa Bay Lightning, 5 p.m. ABC
Males’s Faculty Basketball NCAA Division III Championship, 3 p.m. CBSSN
Main League Rugby San Diego Legion at LA Giltinis, 4 p.m. BSW
Faculty Wrestling NCAA Championships, finals, 4 p.m. ESPN
NBA Basketball The Lakers go to the Washington Wizards, 5 p.m. SportsNet
USL Championship Soccer Rio Grande Valley FC Toros at Orange County SC, 7 p.m. BSSC
SATURDAY TALK SHOWS
Good Morning America (N) 7 a.m. KABC
Good Morning America Andrea Boehlke; Diane Macedo. (N) 8 a.m. KABC
CBS Saturday Morning (N) 10 a.m. KCAL
Frank Buckley Interviews Writer Brad Meltzer (“The Lightning Rod”). (N) 11 a.m. KTLA
MOVIES
The Many Saints of Newark Set in 1967, this 2021 prequel to the HBO sequence “The Sopranos” stars Michael Gandolfini as a teenage model of Tony Soprano, the character his late father, James Gandolfini, created. The story opens in one of the tumultuous eras in Newark, N.J., historical past, as rival gangsters problem the highly effective DiMeo crime household. Alessandro Nivola, Leslie Odom Jr., Vera Farmiga, Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll and Ray Liotta co-star. 8 p.m. HBO
Sins within the Suburbs A struggling artist is glad sufficient together with her low-key life in a quiet suburban neighborhood till a handsome single man strikes in subsequent door to her. He appears charming and, based mostly on appearances, fairly profitable. However information of a serial killer within the space units off alarm bells. Monique Sypkens and Brandon Santana star on this new thriller. 8 p.m. Lifetime
Your Boyfriend Is Mine Regardless of the objections of his girlfriend, a person agrees to take a job as a live-in private assistant to a rich businesswoman. He quickly discovers that he has put his girlfriend and himself in hazard by taking the job on this 2022 thriller. Jamie Roy, Eli Jane and Brey Noelle star. 10:03 p.m. Lifetime
Pleasure Trip (2001) 8:18 a.m. Encore
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) 8:30 a.m. Syfy
Invoice & Ted Face the Music (2020) 8:50 a.m. Epix
Spy (2015) 9 a.m. TBS
Lilies of the Subject (1963) 9 a.m. TCM
The Manchurian Candidate (2004) 9:45 a.m. Showtime
First Blood (1982) 10:45 a.m. IFC
Sergeant York (1941) 11 a.m. TCM
Sophie’s Selection (1982) 11 a.m. TMC
Black Rain (1989) 11:50 a.m. Epix
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and techniques (2002) 12:04 p.m. Syfy
Hitch (2005) 12:56 p.m. Bravo
Forrest Gump (1994) 1 and 10 p.m. VH1
The Wedding ceremony Singer (1998) 1:25 and 5:55 p.m. Pop
Gandhi (1982) 1:30 p.m. TCM
Three Days of the Condor (1975) 1:55 p.m. Epix
Friday (1995) 2 and eight p.m. MTV
Let Him Go (2020) 2:22 p.m. Cinemax
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) 2:35 p.m. Freeform
Raiders of the Misplaced Ark (1981) 3 p.m. CMT
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) 3 p.m. Paramount
On line casino (1995) 3 p.m. Sundance
Wedding ceremony Crashers (2005) 3:28 and 10 p.m. Bravo
G.I. Jane (1997) 3:55 p.m. Epix
Foul Play (1978) 4 p.m. KCOP
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) 4 p.m. Syfy
The Founder (2016) 4:02 p.m. KCET
Residence Alone (1990) 4:30 p.m. VH1
Spider-Man: Far From Residence (2019) 5 p.m. FX
Out of Africa (1985) 5 p.m. TCM
Complete Recall (1990) 5:05 p.m. TMC
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) 6 p.m. CMT
Patriot Video games (1992) 6 p.m. Epix
Freaky (2020) 6:16 p.m. Cinemax
Live performance for George (2003) 6:30 p.m. KVCR
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) 6:50 p.m. Paramount
Serenity (2005) 6:59 p.m. Encore
A Easy Favor (2018) 7 p.m. KVEA
Shrek 2 (2004) 7 p.m. Nickelodeon
The Inexperienced Knight (2021) 7 p.m. Showtime
Distress (1990) 7 p.m. TMC
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fireplace (2005) 7:05 p.m. Syfy
Hook (1991) 8 p.m. and 11:18 p.m. BBC America
Cloverfield (2008) 8 p.m. Cinemax
The Many Saints of Newark (2021) 8 p.m. HBO
Sins within the Suburbs (2022) 8 p.m. Lifetime
On Golden Pond (1981) 8 p.m. TCM
The Blind Aspect (2009) 8:15 p.m. Freeform
Indiana Jones and the Final Campaign (1989) 9 p.m. CMT
The Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath (1974) 9 p.m. TMC
American Gangster (2007) 9 p.m. TNT
Skyfall (2012) 9:50 p.m. Epix
At all times (1989) 10 p.m. Ovation
Coaching Day (2001) 10 p.m. Sundance
Locations within the Coronary heart (1984) 10 p.m. TCM
Your Boyfriend Is Mine (2022) 10:03 p.m. Lifetime
Hellboy II: The Golden Military (2008) 10:14 p.m. Starz
Bumblebee (2018) 10:30 p.m. FX
Unbelievable Beasts and The place to Discover Them (2016) 10:35 p.m. Syfy
The Different Guys (2010) 11 p.m. Comedy Central
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 11 p.m. Paramount
TV NEXT WEEK
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Entertainment
With 'Hollywood Black,' Justin Simien wants us to rethink cinema's history and its future
![With 'Hollywood Black,' Justin Simien wants us to rethink cinema's history and its future With 'Hollywood Black,' Justin Simien wants us to rethink cinema's history and its future](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/1823159/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3600x1890+0+255/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbf%2F54%2F5f36579a4594b89ae83bf87f4a8d%2F1471378-et-justin-simien-hollywood-black-26-brv.jpg)
“What is a Black movie?”
It was a question Justin Simien, who first grabbed Hollywood’s attention with his debut feature, 2014’s HBCU comedy “Dear White People,” asked a number of top-tier filmmakers. He did not get a defining answer:
“A movie typically with African Americans in leading roles.”
“A movie inspired by, rooted by, influenced and told by Black people.”
“I know one when I see one.”
Simien’s quest to answer that question is the core of “Hollywood Black,” his exploration of the history of Black cinema, highlighting the triumphs and obstacles faced by Black artists. The four-part MGM+ documentary series premiered in August and concludes Sunday with the episode “Dear Black People,” which focuses on recent successes by Black filmmakers, from “Get Out” to “Black Panther.”
Inspired by historian Donald Bogle’s book “Hollywood Black” and sprinkled with insights from several prominent artists — among those featured are directors Ryan Coogler (“Black Panther”) and Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”) and actor Giancarlo Esposito — the project traces the evolution of Black film from the silent era to the present day. A priority of the project was to honor artists and movies that have been “hidden in plain sight.”
Ryan Coogler, left, and Justin Simien in a scene from the MGM+ docuseries “Hollywood Black,” which is inspired by historian Donald Bogle’s book of the same name.
(MGM+)
“I want everyone to rethink cinema history,” said Simien, who also directed the 2023 reboot of Disney’s “The Haunted Mansion,” in introducing the series. “Because whoever controls cinema controls history.”
Speaking from his Hollywood office, he discussed the challenges of making the documentary, the crushing impact of last year’s Hollywood labor strikes and how there can be more than two film versions of “The Color Purple.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Trying to cover the history of Black cinema in four hours must have been a formidable undertaking.
This entertainment industry is built on top of popular culture that Black people are at the center of. You see it never being in our hands, but you can’t remove us completely because we are the secret sauce in every stage of its development and evolution. So the story is how these people who are so important in the creation of this art form gain and lose and regain control over it. It ends up being a political story, more than anything.
So much of your personal journey was influenced by “The Wiz.” So many people love that film. But it was not a critical or commercial success.
The metrics of success we are all taught on how to value certain films has to go out the window when it comes to Black stuff. It really does, particularly when it comes to something like “The Wiz,” which had a gigantic cultural impact. It’s almost like the Bible, culturally and artistically. That movie has so many accomplishments, not the least of which is bringing Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones together. I would argue it’s one of the earliest representations of ballroom culture in the famous Emerald City sequence. It is one of the most expensive movies ever made with Black people on the screen.
![A black and white image of three people performing onstage.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/220a97d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x2122+0+0/resize/2000x1415!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F86%2F1d%2F10ab7d574c09b968491787bc5f51%2Ftheater-the-wiz-12282.jpg)
The stars of “The Wiz” included Nipsey Russell, left as the Tin Man, Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as Scarecrow. Justin Simien says the film is “almost like the Bible, culturally and artistically.”
(Associated Press)
Another film that Black audiences have mixed feelings about is the 2023 musical version of “The Color Purple,” produced by Oprah Winfrey. Lots of fans of the 1985 film starring Whoopi Goldberg did not embrace it.
I understand it. But on the other hand, I’m glad that Blitz Bazawule, who directed the musical version, got to make his first major feature film. I have an appreciation for the fact that it is extremely rare and an experiment every time a Black filmmaker gets to make a movie. That alone is worthy of our attention. We don’t have the same aggregate of opportunities.
And on a personal level, I long for an adaptation of “The Color Purple” that appropriately elevates the queer message in that text that Alice Walker wrote. If we want to keep making “The Color Purple,” I’m OK. There’s more to be teased out of that text.
I was very struck by the documentary’s focus on artists and films that have not gotten a lot of attention, like Charles Lane, who directed a black-and-white silent film, “Sidewalk Stories.”
The impetus for this project was seeing these movies and being both awestruck and furious, actually enraged. “Sidewalk Stories” came out in 1989. That was a big year for Black cinema — the year of [Spike Lee’s] “Do the Right Thing.” But nobody mentions this other film that happened that did not spawn its own genre of movie that way “Do the Right Thing” did. Part of the reason why is that it didn’t fit in with what was in vogue about Blackness at that time. But it is a masterpiece.
When “The Artist” won the Oscar, I remember liking that movie but was befuddled by its elevation as something important. “Sidewalk Stories” is everything that movie was in terms of using the silent movie aesthetic, particularly in the way Charles is quoting Charlie Chaplin but featuring himself as a dark-skinned Black kid on the streets of New York. He is challenging the viewer, using the same situations, but with a group of people who are Black. Why does it feel different watching the same kinds of relationships on the screen with Black people?
During the first stages of the Hollywood strikes, Black artists feared that they would be severely affected when they ended. There is a lot of pain in Hollywood right now with people being out of work, but has it been worse for Black filmmakers?
Yes. It’s harder than it’s ever been. And it has hit queer artists even harder. I rode that pendulum swing in with “Dear White People” [the film] and felt it swing back out. Then I swung back in by making “Dear White People” into a TV series. I felt it go back and forth during those years, and it is definitely swinging back. It is so difficult.
![A blond-haired woman in a light blue gown holds an Oscar.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a6f2fe9/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6000x4000+0+0/resize/2000x1333!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F14%2F79%2Fdf560d78464890b2306acdc4fead%2F1420667-la-et-oscars-back-stage-07207.jpg)
Da’Vine Joy Randolph backstage at the Oscars in March after she won supporting actress for “The Holdovers.”
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Da’Vine Joy Randolph won an Oscar this year for her performance in “The Holdovers” as Mary Lamb, the head cook at an elite New England boarding school. But her win sparked some controversy, with some observers contending that it continued the decades-long tradition of honoring Black women who play characters subservient to white people or in roles that operate in support of white characters — while honoring them for little else.
That’s an important conversation. But again she is winning an award for her performance. The bottom line is, that the role did not exist for her, for whatever reason, in the hands of a Black filmmaker. What she did with it was phenomenal. For me, that’s what we are rewarding. It’s the same with Hattie McDaniel in “Gone With the Wind.” We’re not rewarding the representation, the caricature or the stereotype. We are rewarding the person inside a pretty not-so-great system that constantly is representing Black people in a very negative way. Inside of that, she was able to do something pretty magnificent and steal the attention from the other white co-stars.
There is so much more that you couldn’t get to explore in “Hollywood Black.” Is there the possibility of more episodes?
I think it would be great. It’s up to MGM and MGM+. You could honestly go over the same periods and talk about completely different artists and still not have enough time. Or you could pick one artist per episode. If someone wants to give me some Ken Burns documentary money, then we can really go.
Movie Reviews
‘Martha’ Review: R.J. Cutler Tries to Get Martha Stewart to Let Down Her Guard in Mixed-Bag Netflix Doc
![‘Martha’ Review: R.J. Cutler Tries to Get Martha Stewart to Let Down Her Guard in Mixed-Bag Netflix Doc ‘Martha’ Review: R.J. Cutler Tries to Get Martha Stewart to Let Down Her Guard in Mixed-Bag Netflix Doc](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Martha_00044009_01191620.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1)
From teenage model to upper-crust caterer to domestic doyenne to media-spanning billionaire to scapegoated convict to octogenarian thirst trap enthusiast and Snoop Dogg chum, Martha Stewart has had a life that defies belief, or at least congruity.
It’s an unlikely journey that has been carried out largely in the public eye, which gives R.J. Cutler a particular challenge with his new Netflix documentary, Martha. Maybe there are young viewers who don’t know what Martha Stewart‘s life was before she hosted dinner parties with Snoop. Perhaps there are older audiences who thought that after spending time at the prison misleadingly known as Camp Cupcake, Martha Stewart slunk off into embarrassed obscurity.
Martha
The Bottom Line Makes for an entertaining but evasive star subject.
Venue: Telluride Film Festival
Distributor: Netflix
Director: R.J. Cutler
1 hour 55 minutes
Those are probably the 115-minute documentary’s target audiences — people impressed enough to be interested in Martha Stewart, but not curious enough to have traced her course actively. It’s a very, very straightforward and linear documentary in which the actual revelations are limited more by your awareness than anything else.
In lieu of revelations, though, what keeps Martha engaging is watching Cutler thrust and parry with his subject. The prolific documentarian has done films on the likes of Anna Wintour and Dick Cheney, so he knows from prickly stars, and in Martha Stewart he has a heroine with enough power and well-earned don’t-give-a-f**k that she’ll only say exactly what she wants to say in the context that she wants to say it. Icy when she wants to be, selectively candid when it suits her purposes, Stewart makes Martha into almost a collaboration: half the story she wants to tell and half the degree to which Cutler buys that story. And the latter, much more than the completely bland biographical trappings and rote formal approach, is entertaining.
Cutler has pushed the spotlight exclusively onto Stewart. Although he’s conducted many new interviews for the documentary, with friends and co-workers and family and even a few adversaries, only Stewart gets the on-screen talking head treatment. Everybody else gets to give their feedback in audio-only conversations that have to take their place behind footage of Martha through the years, as well as the current access Stewart gave production to what seems to have been mostly her lavish Turkey Hill farmhouse.
Those “access” scenes, in which Stewart goes about her business without acknowledging the camera, illustrate her general approach to the documentary, which I could sum up as “I’m prepared to give you my time, but mostly as it’s convenient to me.”
At 83 and still busier than almost any human on the globe, Stewart needs this documentary less than the documentary needs her, and she absolutely knows it. Cutler tries to draw her out and includes himself pushing Stewart on certain points, like the difference between her husband’s affair, which still angers her, and her own contemporaneous infidelity. Whenever possible, Stewart tries to absent herself from being an active part of the stickier conversations by handing off correspondences and her diary from prison, letting Cutler do what he wants with those semi-revealing documents.
“Take it out of the letters,” she instructs him after the dead-ended chat about the end of her marriage, adding that she simply doesn’t revel in self-pity.
And Cutler tries, getting a voiceover actor to read those letters and diary entries and filling in visual gaps with unremarkable still illustrations.
Just as Stewart makes Cutler fill in certain gaps, the director makes viewers read between the lines frequently. In the back-and-forth about their affairs, he mentions speaking with Andy, her ex, but Andy is never heard in the documentary. Take it as you will. And take it as you will that she blames prducer Mark Burnett for not understanding her brand in her post-prison daytime show — which may or may not explain Burnett’s absence, as well as the decision to treat The Martha Stewart Show as a fleeting disaster (it actually ran 1,162 episodes over seven seasons) and to pretend that The Apprentice: Martha Stewart never existed. The gaps and exclusions are particularly visible in the post-prison part of her life, which can be summed up as, “Everything was bad and then she roasted Justin Bieber and everything was good.”
Occasionally, Stewart gives the impression that she’s let her protective veneer slip, like when she says of the New York Post reporter covering her trial: “She’s dead now, thank goodness. Nobody has to put up with that crap that she was writing.” But that’s not letting anything slip. It’s pure and calculated and utterly cutthroat. More frequently when Stewart wants to show contempt, she rolls her eyes or stares in Cutler’s direction waiting for him to move on. That’s evisceration enough.
Stewart isn’t a producer on Martha, and I’m sure there are things here she probably would have preferred not to bother with again at all. But at the same time, you can sense that either she’s steering the theme of the documentary or she’s giving Cutler what he needs for his own clear theme. Throughout the first half, her desire for perfection is mentioned over and over again and, by the end, she pauses and summarizes her life’s course with, “I think imperfection is something that you can deal with.”
Seeing her interact with Cutler and with her staff, there’s no indication that she has set aside her exacting standards. Instead, she’s found a calculatedly imperfect version of herself that people like, and she’s perfected that. It is, as she might put it, a good thing.
Entertainment
Review: In 'Close Your Eyes,' a Spanish master returns, still obsessed with the power of movies
![Review: In 'Close Your Eyes,' a Spanish master returns, still obsessed with the power of movies Review: In 'Close Your Eyes,' a Spanish master returns, still obsessed with the power of movies](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2e74152/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8640x4536+0+0/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F0d%2Ff2%2Fc31e52094e27b9ca82a891b4cbc1%2Fclose-your-eyes-jos-coronado-as-julio-arenas-dsc2754-copy.jpg)
The first feature that Victor Erice directed, 1973’s “The Spirit of the Beehive,” begins in the 1940s, when a traveling cinema arrives in a small rural town in Spain to project “Frankenstein.” In the crowd of moviegoers, a child with eager eyes stands out, Ana (Ana Torrent), whose sister will later reassure her that in cinema nobody dies and everything is but a trick. Still, what Ana sees on screen will slowly seep into her reality, blurring the division between the fate of the misunderstood monster of make-believe, and the actions of those near to her.
In 1983’s “El Sur,” a project never finished to Erice’s liking but released nonetheless, another young girl finds in the movies a crucial piece of information to decipher her father’s unspoken anguish. To opens one’s eyes, Erice suggests, is to come to terms with how little we understand about the pain of others, even those we deeply love. For Erice, a master, cinema works as a revelatory force that can illuminate our truest feelings and yearnings, despite the efforts of some of his characters to escape their torturous pasts.
One gets the sense that Erice, who counts famed directors such as Pedro Almdóvar and Guillermo del Toro among his admirers, has been eulogizing cinema ever since he started making his sporadic but delicately profound movies.
Against all prognostications, Erice has returned three decades after his last effort (a 1992 documentary called “Dream of Light”), as if to have a final say about his own artistic legacy. The themes that have recurrently consumed the 84-year-old — the specter of the Spanish Civil War, daughters estranged from fathers with peculiar histories, the merciless march of time — coalesce into the unhurried, poetically rewarding “Close Your Eyes,” his fourth film in 50 years and likely his last.
Interpreted as the auteur’s confession through surrogate filmmaker character Miguel (Manolo Solo), “Close Your Eyes” acquires a layered, contemplative quality. Can we truly learn about an artist through their work or is creation just another mask? Miguel’s career aspirations died when his best friend and renowned actor Julio Arias (a marvelous José Coronado in a sort of dual role) vanished without a trace while they filmed a period piece titled “The Farewell Gaze,” a movie within the movie about a mysterious idealist entrusted with finding a wealthy man’s long-lost daughter. Only two pivotal scenes from that uncompleted venture were finished, the opening and its poignant ending.
Miguel dives back into that chapter of his life when a television program focused on unresolved cases seeks to unearth whether Julio, a womanizer afraid of getting older, died in an accident or by suicide, or if a mental breakdown allowed him to start over without a single memory of the man he once was. A partial answer does surface halfway through “Close Your Eyes,” but that’s just another door Erice entices us to walk through — not, by any means, a neat resolution.
Using a style of elegant lyricism, which enshrines tiny moments into glisteningly miraculous turning points, Erice lets the exchanges between the people he’s conceived play out without the need to advance the plot. His purpose, if there is one explicitly, is to enrich our minimal comprehension of the lives unfolding in his truthful fictions; a substantial segment in “Close Your Eyes” is dedicated to Miguel’s simple existence by the shore, fishing. We also learn about his own romantic regrets, his enduring friendship with a celluloid-devoted film editor and the unbearable loss of a child.
Ana Torrent in the movie “Close Your Eyes.”
(Film Movement)
Obsessed with his actors’ power and symbolism, Erice appears to cast them based on their eyes, more specifically their incandescent expressiveness. That certainly appears the case with Solo. You will also recognize the inquisitive gaze of the child protagonist from “Beehive” in Torrent, now appearing in “Close Your Eyes” as Julio’s daughter, a woman in her 50s. Torrent is older now than Erice was when they made their first movie, and it serves as a moving reminder both of the years that have passed and how a person’s inherent essence is immutable across time. Cinema holds the frozen memory of Torrent as a kid, but reality has moved on.
That Torrent returned to collaborate with Erice after five decades — again playing a movie lover searching for answers — reads beautifully self-referential. That’s the crux of “Close of Your Eyes,” and of Erice’s concise body of work: Cinema crystallizes something that reality alone can’t, convincing us that perhaps what we need exists somewhere outside of ourselves, somewhere we can only access through the screen. It’s a reflection and an illusion at once.
Though film can trigger a memory-induced epiphany, it’s not the remedy itself, but an invitation to look inward, to close one’s eyes and find what’s inalienable about yourself.
In the monumental final frame of “Close Your Eyes,” the most soul-stirring ending of the year, Erice’s camera shuts its eyelids one last time, a humble sign of acceptance. Even within their limitations, the movies do see us.
‘Close Your Eyes’
Not rated
In Spanish, with English subtitles
Running time: 2 hours, 49 minutes
Playing: Now at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre, West Los Angeles
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