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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Charming and Haunting Portrait of the Artist, July 21, 2003
This review is from: Dream of Light [VHS] (VHS Tape)
It is very difficult to capture on film what a painting is about. You cannot really show what goes through a painters mind while he paints all you can really show is the physical act itself and so movies about painters at work are largely unsatisfying. What makes this film watchable is a couple of very simple things: the painter Antonio Lopez Garcia's personality, and Victor Erice's camera which finds poetry in every thing it looks at. Antonio Garcia Lopez comes across as a master craftsman, an utter perfectionist who would like to paint a Quince tree in his backyard but its not just the tree itself that fascinates him but rather the way the light hits it at a certain time of early afternoon. He begins painting in October and the weather quickly turns foul and the light that he so desires to capture vanishes with the seasons before he can finish so after weeks of work he abandons the idea of capturing that elusive light. He then begins again this time concentrating not on the light which is too unreliable but the tree which he draws with a pencil in painstaking detail going so far as to have a painter friend hold single leaves in place while he draws them. It is interesting to see Antonio Lopez Garcia work but what really gives the film a charm is the various people who stop by and the casual chat we hear between painter and friend, between painter and admirers, between painter and family. Also as he works on the painting a group of remodelers are doing some work on the interior of the house and Erice follows their progress as well. The films charms are modest really but there is something magical that builds and by films end you cannot take your eyes away from it. One particularly striking scene calls attention to the fact that this film is a work of art about a work of art: at night we see the shadow of a movie camera on its tripod against a wall as it films some Quinces that have fallen to the earth and begun rotting. The painter has attempted to capture the tree at its most beautiful and failed and yet Erice finds his beauty and poetry in the solitary and perhaps futile attempt to capture or preserve anything from the inevitable decay of time. I think the painter and the film maker have very different kinds of sensibilities and yet that is what gives the film its interest. It is not a mere documentary recording of a painter at work but a film maker commenting in his own signature way about artistic and natural processes(and all of his signature touches are here, Spirit of the Beehive fans will recognize this as the same haunting sensibilty that made that great film). So there is charm and there is depth here. One of the most memorable scenes has the painter lying down and holding a favorite object, a crystal, which he turns and marvels at as it catches the light, that most elusive and magical of all things to a painter, in different ways. He is lying down so that his wife, also a painter, can paint him. Antonio Lopez Garcia comments that perhaps after so much time working on this painting she should start again even though the painting looks nearly finished. His own frustrations and feelings of futility perhaps surfacing. After a while he falls asleep and the crystal drops from his hand and rolls over to his wife at her easel. He seems to exist in his own world, so too his wife in hers. They are each equally meticulous and equally immersed in their own work. Each life Erice seems to silently say with his camera is a separate entity and narrative immersed in its own mystery.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
masterful portrait of a master artist, April 17, 2001
This review is from: Dream of Light [VHS] (VHS Tape)
To put this simply, this is the best video portrait of an artist either contemporary or past. The film follows the great contempoary Spanish painter Antonio Lopez-Garcia as he paints a Quince tree in his studio backyard. No frills, no acting. This film is absolutely absorbing. The director has wisely done away with background music and other distracting frills - only the distant city sounds of Madrid in the background. The film explores Lopez-Garcia's legendary intricate working methods as well as his conversations with family, friends and admirers. Required viewing for any painter, especially. Very highly recommended.
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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
slow down poetry see deep soul (or how to lose your marble), November 10, 2003
This review is from: Dream of Light [VHS] (VHS Tape)
if the artist this film follows wasn't my favorite living artist i am not sure i would be as enamored by it perhaps not, but then i loved Erice's "spirit of the beehive" as well and the way this thing floats into poetic revery is completely compelling my friends fell asleep, but i've seen it numerous times and it keeps growing
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