“After an absence of several years in the world of cinema, an octogenarian legend resurfaces with a work of art that seems to be a summary of his career,” reads the text with which film critic Justin Chang describes the film he occupies. first place in the list of the best films of 2024 by the prestigious American magazine The New Yorker. “¿Megalopolisby Francis Ford Coppola?” asks the critic when faced with the description. Then, he answers himself: “Well, yes. But the description applies more strongly to close your eyesthe first new feature film in more than three decades by Spanish auteur Víctor Erice.” The magazine chooses the Spanish film, the long-awaited return of an indispensable author in the history of cinema – with only four feature films – and who passed without pain or glory at the Goya awards in February 2024, to lead a list that moves away of public popularity, completed by mostly independent films such as Don't expect too much from the end of the world, evil does not existo Nickel Boys (one of the films that is considered for the Oscars).
“It begins as a film-loving detective story, in which a retired filmmaker (Manolo Solo) sets out to solve a long-ago disappearance, and then transforms into an ironic drama hawksiano of friendship and discovery. In its transcendent final passages, the film acquires the disturbingly consoling silence of a seance, as if it were confronting us with the very spirit of cinema,” concludes Chang, winner of the Pulitzer in the criticism section. The feature film by the author of The spirit of the hive —his debut feature, released in 1973—represented his solo return to the big screen after The quince sunwhich premiered in 1992. It arrived in American theaters in August 2024, almost a year after its premiere in Spain, in September 2023.
Chang's opinion on Erice's film aligns with that of the majority of national and international critics. In fact, Babelia's list of the best films of 2023 included it. “Now no one narrates or films or tells like that. Film from another time, and this is praise, unrelated to any trend or academy, close your eyes it breathes in a different way and that sublime particularity must be celebrated,” says the text of the EL PAÍS supplement. But the good criticism was never reflected with awards, nor in the dissemination and collection of the film. Of the 11 nominations he received for last year's Goya Awards, he only got one, best supporting actor, for the performance of José Coronado. About the absence of recognition then, Javier Ocaña wrote in this newspaper after the ceremony: “A questionable mistake, in a gala that for the second consecutive year—coincidence or not, since Fernando Méndez-Leite directed the Academy—was exemplary in all the senses. But voters have opted for the spectacle, rather than the look.” He also scored a blank in the Forqué and Feroz awards.
The snow societythe highest grosser of the year and the most awarded of those Goya awards—with 12, including Best Film and Best Director—also won the race to represent Spain at the Oscars. Juan Antonio Bayona's film, which was much more widely distributed, achieved 80 million euros in revenue, compared to less than half a million close your eyes. An equally abysmal difference in the budget of each title —60 million for The snow society, and only three for Erice's work.
In the list of The New Yorker Most of the selected ones premiered at film festivals before hitting theaters in the United States for a few weeks — the longest. There are titles like The light we imaginePayal Kapadia's Indian film, grossing less than a million; Musicby Sia, which barely exceeds half a million; either No other landwhich did not reach 100,000 euros. In fact, of the first ten that Chang presents, only one, The chimera —position number six—, by Alice Rohrwacher, grossed more than two million euros at the box office, one of the few independent film success stories of the year.
“It's easy to sink into existential melancholy about movies, to succumb to anxiety over declining box office receipts, shrinking theatrical release windows, and the increasing fickleness of post-pandemic audiences. Of course, every once in a while they get excited and head to the multiplex to see a trendy sequel like Inside out 2, Dune: Part 2 o Gladiator 2”says Chang. Its list, led by the latest film by the octogenarian Spanish director, is based on the success of the public, increasingly linked to awards, and is betting, this time, on the look more than on the spectacle.
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