WHO is he?
Spanish scenarist, film critic and filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a few more short films since the early 1960s. That he is recognised as one of the supreme poets of modern cinema despite such a lean filmography speaks much about the artistic worth of his output. He won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his third feature, The Quince Tree Sun (1992).
WHAT are his films about?
Themes
Though Erice’s films are enrapturing primarily for their poetic, reflective nature, they are in constant dialogue with the political milieus the narratives are set in. Spectres of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime loom large in these films and act as threatening counterpoints to the innocence and the coming-of-age of their protagonists. These films explore the constant diffusion between art and life, wherein each one feeds into the other.
Style
Erice’s style of filmmaking throws into relief the fact that film is neither simply a visual nor a narrative medium (though it can serve those ends), but a temporal one. Consequently, time becomes the central element of both construction and reflection in these films: both the subject and the object. Shots are considerably long and capture the change of light over time. Artificial light, if any, gives an ethereal texture to the images recalling the deep colour contrasts of Baroque painting. A keen sense of time and place pervades all the films, lending them a lived-in quality.
WHY is he of interest?
In a way, Erice could be seen as one of the forefathers of the Slow Cinema movement which took shape in the 1990s and flourished in the first decade of the 21st century. His measured, meditative cinema probes into how film embodies the passage of time. There is also something deeply human in how it brings to surface the transient nature of life, be it a human being or a quince fruit.
WHERE to discover him?
His most frequently seen and discussed film, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) centres on Ana, a six-year-old tremendously affected by a viewing of the Hollywood film Frankenstein , who tries to make sense of the political tumult around her. Intelligent and incredibly beautiful, the film is a heartbreaking description of the way children psychologically structure their universe and the price they have to pay for the follies of adults.
