Customer Reviews

Dream of Light [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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

A movie where so little happens and where everything is stunning. I keep trying to tell my friends what is so marvelous about this film and I always fail. A man wants to paint a tree and he talks to his friends... Out of this comes a profound analysis of art and life. It is a movie I want to see many times so that as I grow and age and hopefully gain wisdom I will see more and more within it. If you love art, film, light through leaves, talking with your friends, pondering life, then this film was made for you - although I thought the director made it just for me.

Antonio Lopez Garcia -a famed Spanish painter- intends to paint a Quincy tree, and the set of dynamic factors around it. The essence of the light, and the febrile but calm intensity that will nourish this simple fact, will arouse an intense and brilliant allegory of life and bliss. Hardly you will be able to find previous artistic traces in the past. Autumnal reminiscences, the warmth friendship of his colleagues and that epic commitment will convey us to one of the most inspired and superb Spanish masterworks of this peculiar Spanish filmmaker.

Absolutely rewarding!

This film took me in immediately! I am not an art lover and before watching this film, I was only vaguely familiar with Antonio Lopez Garcia. This film is amazing! I became absorbed in the entire process from beginning to end. I have never seen anything like this film. It's very unique. I only wish it was available on DVD.

Victor Erice's El Sol Del Membrillo is without a doubt one of the most mind-numbingly arid films I've had the displeasure of experiencing. It seemed to be created with one purpose in mind: to make art so completely monotonous that it sucks every last trace of enjoyment out of it and discourages anyone who watches it from ever considering art as either a profession or a hobby.

To be honest, I was at first intrigued. Antonio Lopez went about the familiar task of assembling a frame and stretching a canvas during the opening credits. My mind was open and cynicism was not my objective. Lopez continued about his business setting up his canvas and location to paint. My interest was still relatively high as he set up a plumb-bob and started graphing lines onto his canvas...it began to seem more as though he was getting ready to graph a geometry problem than create a painting. Finally, after installing foot place-markers and marking the places of all the leaves and pieces of fruit with paint he was finished setting up his scene and was ready to begin painting. I chalked these idiosyncrasies up to the fact that all artists have quirks.

My mind was still open and I was ready to see what this man could produce. About a month later in the documentary (and a seemingly endless amount of time in reality) he had created a half-ass painting, which he decided to give up on. He then decided to use the same scene to create a drawing. Another month later, upon reaching a similar level of half-assedness this too was shelved and he decided to turn to filming the rotting fruit that had fallen from the tree onto the ground. This was probably his most successful endeavor, although I'm assuming that watching the footage of the fruit might possibly be even more innocuous than the documentary itself, but not by a very great margin. The fruit eventually rotted, but not before my brain began to chew its way through my skull.

Altogether Lopez made art seem more like a rigid set of imperialistic rules than about expression, escapism or even (gasp!) enjoyment. As soon as something went wrong, or his subject lost data (the sun no longer being in the right position, or a piece of fruit falling from the tree or shifting position) he would alter the painting to record this new set of data. This made no sense at all, because if he were, by some miracle, able to "finish" his painting, it would continue to lose data and therefore his painting would technically have to be updated. He could have literally spent the rest of his life painting the same fruit tree.

If art is simply about recording every minute detail of reality, why should one bother at all? If you end up with a painting of a fruit tree that looks identical to the one standing in your yard, why bother painting it? You might as well walk outside and see the real thing.

As far as I see it, I've lost a little more than two hours of my life that I will never be able to regain. For this I blame Victor Erice.