Dream of Light (1992) User Reviews

Truly beautiful and unique film

[zetes · 9/10 · 22 January 2002]

If you can find this film, and can take slow-moving cinema, definitely pick it up. I came to it via Spirit of the Beehive, Victor Erice's first film, made in 1973. This film was his third, made nearly twenty years later. It's somewhat sad that such a marvelous artist as Erice has only produced three films in almost thirty years now, but I think Quince Tree of the Sun works in one way as a forgiveness for that fact. This film teaches nothing if not patience, not only in the viewer, but in the artist. It is a documentary about a painter who spends September through December painting a quince tree. Not a picture of one, mind you, or even one he has memorized. He sets up an elaborate system so that he can paint the tree as it exists before him. We see him working well at first, with the sun hitting the tree and its fruit exactly how the painter wishes. But then the weather becomes uncooperative for a long period of time. It's cloudy or rainy, and the sun is not working the way that it's supposed to. By the time it becomes sunny again, the Earth has moved, and all hope of painting it in the way he originally intedended is squandered. Of course he can't just wait until the next year. The fruit and leaves will be different.

During the film, there are several discussions about art and life. All are interesting. Too bad the subtitles on the Facets video are kind of hard to read at times. There is a lot to get out of it, surely more than I did in one viewing. A second viewing is definitely in order if I have time before I have to return the video. It is one of those films that suggests that there is a ton more under the surface that will take just a tiny bit of digging. Of course, this film would bore the socks off of 99% or more of the population. I definitely suggest it to fans of Spirit of the Beehive. Also, fans of Andrei Tarkovsky should check it out, this and Spirit of the Beehive. I generally think of Tarkovsky as the most original of all film artists, but Erice may be the most similar. He's a very good auteur for Tarkovsky fans because he is similar, but he has a remarkable essence all his own. Perhaps I would consider him above Tarkovsky, if only Erice would make more films. But, as this film has delicately taught me, an artist must work at his own pace. 9/10.

Difficult but interesting documentary

[ctosangel-2 · 8/10 · 26 July 2001]

Film documentary about Spanish painter Antonio Lopez artistic creation process. It is a rare, difficult ant very interesting movie. It takes some time for the spectator to came in. When you get it you will capable of enjoy the film and the painter, his friends, wife and way of painting. You will love the sun and the quince too. And I am sure you finally will become a Lopez and director Victor Erice fan.

But El sol del membrillo is not at all a commercial movie. This original film won one of the awards at Cannes Festival of Cinema. Erice was lucky to direct this picture. Because the only think that impede him make more often movies is find an adequate producer. And he did it hear. He made three movies in 20 years. Something similar that occurs with Terrence Malick.

Erice is the Spanish pair of masterpieces fortunate author El espíritu de la colmena (1973) and El Sur (1983). His work way, so distant of current fashions, and his thoroughly were the Spanish Academy of Cinema causes to prefer send to the Oscar Award'1983 another easier movie El Sur instead. At last the Oscar to the best foreign film went to Bergman' Fanny and Alexander.

In the mind of the Painter

[dmtls · 9/10 · 24 November 2004]

El sol de membrillo is a documentary that looks like a movie,a documentary shot like a movie.El sol de membrillo tells the story of a painting that was never finished,tells the story of what is going on in this painter's mind,tells the story of what is going on in every painter's,every artist's in general head,who is obsessed with Beauty and accuracy.It's a relaxing (in a good way) film that in spite of its rather long running time (almost two and a half hours)is not at least boring.That calmness derives from the director himself who looks like a never-angry ever-happy (not in the silly way) man who has a concrete philosophy on life and much thought in his background.That's all I can tell about this man who made an introduction to and a presentation of this work of his before the screening begun.Do not skip this movie, it can change the way you see things.

A gem of a movie

[howard.schumann · 10/10 · 14 September 2000]

This is a gem of a movie and much better than the few reviews I've read. I was prepared for some semi-documentary about the techniques of painting. What I saw was a film filled with warmth, humor, love, and a deep appreciation of nature and the mysterious beauty of the world. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a tree or a piece of fruit (or anything in nature for that matter) in quite the same way. This film put me in touch with the things that are truly meaningful in life, somewhat akin to Wim Wenders film `Wings of Desire'. It is simple, yet glowing and sensual, filled with gorgeous cinematography and beautiful music. One of the best films I've ever seen.

The Truth in Seeing?

[shaffarullah · 31 May 2001]

Caution: Some spoiler content.

This film feels like a documentary--no highs and no lows-but is executed like a fiction. At the end of the film, for example, the director somewhat blurred the line between documentary (reality) and fiction. The tone of the movie is very flat and very monochromatic but I like the way it captures the creative process and struggle of the artist. The artist's philosophy of doing painting is very technical and rigidly methodical. The dialogue is mundane, uncoached, and true to real life but I think this films works because the formal compactness and control of the subject matter.

The artist is committed to capture the reality of the quince tree under the sun although the weather is not always at his side. His method of painting is somewhat "different" from other painters, as pointed out by one visitor (the Chinese lady) where she tells him that many painters paint their objects from photo. To this, the artist replies that he feels closer to the tree when done that way, that is by drawing the tree from the real source.

As time goes by, the artist is realising no way can he captures the "truth" about the quince tree in the way he wants it to be. In fact, we are shown some of difficulties faced by the artist. For example, we are being shown the windy day thus distorting the stable and rigid position of the leaves. The final blow comes when he sees in one morning the dead quince on the ground.

The artist gives up in his mission at the end and to my surprise, he let himself to become the object of art. This time with him laying on the bed and the film shows the almost finished painting, which is presumably done by his wife. In one scene, the painting and his actual lying on the bed is somewhat close to each other in reality that there is a sense that there's no difference between reality and the created objects. The artist falls asleep when his wife is making some final touch on the painting or (is he dead?). Realising this, the wife leaves him. I got the impression that the artist has given up his work and his life, too.

This film is particularly good at portraying the artist at work without pushing the ups and the downs of the artistic process. There are few memorable scenes; for example, when his old friend visits him and they sing together while the old friend is trying to keep the leave stable and the artist draws it. One scene is good, too, where the Chinese lady and the interpreter discuss with the artist about his work. All these scenes--in fact almost all the scenes-are done with no ups and downs of human life found in narrative-driven films.

Because of the style of Erice's presentation of the subject matter, this film is open to many interpretations. I think Erice seems to suggest that we love to capture everything into what we call art but we can never capture the "truth" of the stuff. The film also suggests filmmaking is also working under the same principal with painting and hence, is defeated in the same manner. To illustrate, it shows film camera, with no operator but replacing the artist's standing point, "capturing" the quince tree at night with the helps of artificial lighting. This is very interesting. We are being shown the artists in the artistic process. Then, we are shown (although somewhat suggestively) the filmmakers in similar process. It's like saying making films and making a drawing is voyeuristic in nature.

Two things happen simultaneously although the film focuses more on the artist. Erice is very restrained and reserved about making clear about the two events that they almost go unnoticed (although I think this is justifiable.) The effect is not something that calls for itself. Neither it is self-conscious. It is very low-key. It is like nothing happens during my viewing of the film. I realised something only when I was done with the film.

Consider some of these things:

The processes: 1. The artist is working on the painting on the quince tree. The film actually shows in quite detail some of the process. 2. At the same time, three workers are renovating the artist's house. The film shows they are doing it in the passing.

The first results: 1. The artist didn't finish the work. 2. The three workers managed to finish their works.

The second results: 1. When the artist decides to stop drawing the quince tree, he plucks the quinces and keeps three of them in his studio, together with the two unfinished stuff (a drawing and a painting of the quince tree) 2. After the workers are finished with the work, one of them plucks the quince and together they eat the quince.

What are these "facts" about if they have meaning at all in the film? What the heck is Erice trying to suggest? Is Erice saying that artist's work is always unfinished or to be finished. Or is Erice saying the artists and the non-artists have different ideas what the objects are supposed to mean in real world? Or whatever he means, is Erice saying we cannot take it very seriously because he just wants to show that the way it is?

I think Erice wants to make a distinction between seeing and looking at. Two differences between seeing and looking away. (1) Seeing (e.g. artists, philosophers, etc): seeing the world in order to know what it is out there and seeing things as they are in reality. Seeing is like penetrating to extract the truth about the objects seen. By contrast, (2) Looking away (e.g. ordinary people): Looking away from the world and things no matter how beautiful and however real or true they are, if any different at all. The quince, for example, can be self-useful to people like the workers and the artist's wife because the quince can be used for many purposes like eating, making into jam, etc. I think the artist belongs to the former while the workers the latter.

This film recalls a natural comparison to Rivette's La Belle Nouseise, another story about the artist's struggle to finish his artistic work. Both rely on a very low-key presentation. Both shows in detail the artistic process. In Rivette's film, the artist is struggling to capture "the essence" of the human body. Erice's film shows the artist trying to contain the truth about natural objects. The ending is somewhat different, though. The artist in Rivette's film decides not to show the finished work to anyone and this is almost anti-climatic (in a good sense, of course) because all the materials point to his desire to finish his once-abandoned masterpiece. In Erice's world, the artist does not finish his work and we know that the artist feels somewhat "upset" about this. Another disturbing thing about El Sol del Membrillo is that his wife and his children know in the passing that the artist does not finish the painting and the drawing but Erice is not concerned to show any dramatic revelation about this thing as though there's no big deal about it.

El Sol del Membrillo is one of 1990s' most underrated films. Highly recommended.

time's incessant march

[baseballandjazz · 10/10 · 18 December 2006]

The few people I know who have seen this film decry it's slow pace and its representation of art as a staid, dull, mechanical process, seemingly devoid of lateral thinking and inspiration. Where is the spectacle, the excitement, the redemption in this painters seeming failure? I, on the other hand, found it very moving because it is, for me, not about ideas of art and genius at all, but concerns more basic human values and experiences, such as love, affection and loss.

Possible SPOILER ahead:

This production is no salutary celebration of art or of the work of López himself. It progresses in a linear fashion as it follows the creation of a single artistic project, a painter's attempt to capture the autumn light on the quince tree in his back garden.

Part written by Erice and the painter López, it is not a documentary in the strictest sense, but a revelatory meditation on looking, representation, memory and the passage of time. The reason it feels so demanding to the film viewer is because it requires of them to slow their way of looking to that of the painter, a profession which is often laborious and banal, despite its associations of glamour.

At this pace we begin to notice the subtleties of the natural environment; here the play of light on a fruit tree. The impossibility and futility of freezing a moment of pleasure as a representation is the overriding theme in what is a very gentle kind of tragedy.

Lopez's endeavours, thwarted by changes in seasons, weather and light, are only symptomatic of the very basic human need to stop time, to carry mementos of happiness and to be close to the objects of our affection. If the viewer is alive to the films undercurrents, you can see this sense appear in almost every scene.

With repeated viewings, the film's humour and real humanism become apparent. Unique and highly recommended.

Portrait of the Artist at the End of His Life

[Polaris_DiB · 10/10 · 17 September 2010]

This movie is the exact type of extremely difficult to review because its content and subject exists on such an ephemeral and visual production of engagement that words are ill-fit for describing or justifying its non-linguistic elements. This is a story of an artist at the end of his life, but is neither biography nor a retroactive of his artwork, but focuses more on the process of the artist and what is lost when his life comes to an end and his work becomes unfinished.

The artist is Spanish painter Antonio Lopez Garcia, and the director Victor Erice. Garcia's paintings, at least portrayed in this movie (I am unfortunately unfamiliar with the wider body of Garcia's work), are formal still-lifes that Garcia approaches by careful and involving breaking down of natural elements into immaculately structured space, while he agonizes over shifting natural light. Erice I'm more familiar with, due to his other two movies, El Sur and The Spirit of the Beehive, all movies he's currently made being rigorously composed and ephemerally lit, which makes him the perfect director to take this subject on. The two artists seem, though one is on screen and one is invisible, in perfect and transcendent dialog throughout the entire movie. It's very hard to explain how a movie that is essentially about a man standing in place and painting, giving up, restarting, failing, restarting, almost finishing, and then noticing that the tree he's painting has changed completely as winter bears down and he starts to lose hope can be so immediate, beautiful, and interesting for two and a half hours. It's the exact type of movie you want to run out to the streets and tell everyone to see, but when asked what it's about are stopped short by trying to figure out how to explain how awesome it is to almost literally watch paint dry for two hours. But believe me when I say it's awesome.

It's not that inactive and static. Other characters come and talk to the artist about his work, one of the most important ones being a contemporary who at times helps and at times criticizes Garcia's work. The photography and the camera movements in this movie are amazing and expertly draw the eye to a beautiful and well-lit world struggling with the idea of beauty and light. Garcia's work style is fascinating and the way Erice presents it even more so. The best part is that Erice keeps close to Garcia in most situations and observes his movements and style from afar, then cuts to insert shots of the details that make it so appealing; but then, upon showing those details, the camera detaches and starts roving around the area, far from the artists habitude and into the world itself. It's like Garcia's small details send Erice spinning, searching for similar examples of beauty in the wider world. Erice has this thing about trains that I'm not exactly sure what the exact fascination is (though cinema and trains have a very close Industrial era relationship quite often presented in cinema), and at the height of each of Erice's excitements features a train rolling by.

The movie starts to get suspenseful, too, as the quinces start falling. This is, after all, the story of a man at the end of his life--set in fall, racing against the coming winter, musing on memories of his life and wondering what it all comes to, realizing the wisdom he's gained, etc. It becomes tragic as the man who you observe building every piece of his art from scratch (including the canvas) with a strict and ordered craftsmanship developed over years of practice and career finally finds himself unfit to do it all as the world starts moving faster than he can, including the everchanging weight of the quinces on the trees. Erice, on the other hand, has more alacrity and resourcefulness in his artistic craft, and where the previous artist eventually fails to complete his painting, Erice sets up lights and a camera (on screen, mind you, making the movie self-aware) and uses it to describe not only the artist, but his untapped dreams.

--PolarisDiB

Art at a Different Level and Beyond Reach

[kengchoo-amir · 9/10 · 19 April 2010]

This is one of the two simple films about art that made deep impact on me since their releases even after all these years.

Victor Erice's "The Quince Tree Sun" is probably the most boring film you'll ever watch, but just as the artist finds it impossible to capture the shifting sunlight, we realize it is no longer important to finish a piece of painting, if at all it is possible, as art is in the process not the result. We consciously experience the passing of time while watching the film! Brilliant.

Patricia Rozema's "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing" deals with the subjectivity of art which is always relevant in any context. The master's childish art is readily being celebrated and consumed like fast food while the amateur's masterpiece is undiscovered but remain sacred. It reminds us to keep true art away from the corruption of consumerism.

Both films allow art to be taken to a different level, beyond the reaches of physicality and commercialism.

The Artist and the Quince Tree

[valadas · 6/10 · 4 February 2019]

During several weeks a panter and draughtsman tries obsessively to capture the sunlight through the leaves of a quince tree he is depicting, following in the least details the tree evolution and its fructification in the course of authmn and winter. Everything goes on calmly and quietly, showing us all the artist's movements and also the conversations he has with other people mainly with a long time friend who is also an artist, discussing all the painting technical details. As in other Erice's films everything goes on calmly and quietly and with some monotony, Everything goes like if we were watching a documentary instead of a fiction movie. As a matter of fact the actors and actresses represent themeselves in person and not any fiction characters. And the movie ends up in a somewhat odd way with the artist having a dream about memories of his past life. It is a movie that in its kind has neither action nor drama or comedy. Not so bad but only just that,

It must have been good.

[michael-monaghan · 10/10 · 25 December 2007]

I have walked out of two movies in my life 'Sol del membrillo, El' was the first and 'The Beach' was the next. Keep reading..because I said 10/10.

The Beach I have never thought about again. However, fifteen years on I often think of Quince tree Sun. It must have had something, I am still thinking about it 15 years on.

I can recall the place, day and my mood when I went to see the movie. Glasgow, cold and wet, mood BAD.

These days I have my own enclosed garden with fruit trees. Often when I am watering the garden, the movie comes to mind.

My rating is 10/10 because it did what movies can do, accompanied me for many years.

I am sure that now I am older and more patient I will one day see the rest of the movie.

A Must

[bradfordbell96 · 10/10 · 11 October 2014]

As other viewers have stated this is a MUST SEE for directors, writers, editors. So much done with so little makes this a perfect example of how a good movie is something which cannot be expressed in a song or in a book or in a painting. This story can only be expressed as a movie. You may never watch it again which is fine, you only need to watch it once. You don't even have to like it but it is a great asset to any aspiring film-maker. It will widen your understanding of what is unique to a film and what film has inherently which no other art-form has. A bonus is that it gives you a nice example of how a full feature length movie can be made with a tiny budget and one location.

The Definition of Banality

[amonkeyinmypocket · 2/10 · 10 February 2006]

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 López 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. López 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 an incomplete 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 incompletion 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 López made art seem more like a rigid set of imperialistic rules than about expression, escapism or even (gasp!) enjoyment. As soon as 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.

If you are an artist, watch this!

[vcouwenb · 10 November 1999]

Victor Erice made three films in his life. His first, The Spirit of the Beehive, is considered among the most important Spanish film in the last fourty years, his second, El Sur, is coming close to it, and his third, this film, is equally impressive. The film is following a painter who is trying to paint a tree. The great thing about the film is that you see the artist's struggle trying to capture the image of that tree and transform it into ART. If you like painting, if you think you will become an artist, if you ever saw movie's like ALain Resnais 'Van Gogh', or Derek Jarman's 'Carrevagio', go and see this brilliant film.

An essay in idleness

[Baceseras · 10/10 · 21 March 2017]

A documentary of a painter, painting, "Dream of Light" is at the same time a work of fiction. That's how it seems to go whenever a documentary takes narrative form: even the most straightforward story can only come about by shaping; and where you have shaping, fiction will get in, like dust – you can't keep it out. You might as well welcome it (fiction, that is, not dust so much); consider it a feature, not a bug.

As you watch the artist in Victor Erice's film set up his painting apparatus, you may wonder where all his meticulousness is to lead. He is painting en plein air, but no Impressionist he; he carries Academic studio practice out of doors, and the lengths he goes to might give even some Academicians the quivers. The more you see of his method, the more there is to question; but given no explanation all you can do is watch and wait.

The time is summer, the subject is a quince tree in the garden. The painter, an elderly gent, goes about his work without hesitation or hurry: his confidence is palpable; it seems he knows what he's doing. The garden where he sets up is tiny, cramped between the wall to the street and the wall of his house. He starts by constructing a box- like frame around his tree. He puts dabs of white paint, then more and more of them, on branch and twig, leaf and fruit: a constellation of dots. A taut white string traverses and segments his field of vision, and a plumb-line, defining the vertical, segments it again. He locks and marks the position of his easel's legs, and the height of the rail on which his canvas rests. When he takes up his stance to paint, he drives nails into the ground marking where his feet go. His purpose, with all this marking and measuring, is to find his place, over the course of the work – each day to find the exact place where he left off the previous day, despite all the changes brought on by weather, accident, or growth of the tree. He's in it for the long haul: you can almost hear him saying, I mean to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.

Given the artist's structural, architectural set-up, you might think when he finally addressed himself to his canvas he'd first reach to the structure of his subject: that his brush in a stroke or two would find the spine in the quince's mottled trunk, or the essential geometry in its tangle of limbs. Or alternatively that he'd lay on areas of color, or of light and dark, to establish his picture's space, then work to refine it toward completion. What you wouldn't guess is that he'd begin, as he does, with cautious, abruptly punctuated strokes, to draw, in ghost gray, a short segment of a branch, as it presents itself to him near front and center of his tree – with a stubby bit of twig extending up from it; and a forlorn little leaf, half-folded back upon itself. More like something from the margin of a sketchbook, this botanical detail floats, alone, in the middle of his blank white canvas: floats there for days it seems, as he works at an inchworm crawl, with rubbing and corrections, to get the bark ridges just right, the texture. This is drawing; and please, sir, when will we have painting?

Are we even supposed to ask? Whether the artist ever used this method before, and whether it proved successful, we can't know. Has he set himself up to fail? Erice quiets us with the sensual calm that holds the scene and all in it. And the very definiteness of the old man's activity wants to persuade us that all will be well. So does his whole demeanor: he wears such a lived-in face; and is too absorbed in what he's doing to put on a show for us. Visitors drop by; conversation is desultory, a bit of reminiscence mixed in; the tip-tap of workers' hammers somewhere off. Summer seems endless, though it's passing away. The camera, like a patient naturalist, observes, does not interrogate – and the artist-subject, being asked no questions, answers none, but simply goes about his business.

The Quince Tree Get on With It

[DjangoBlack · 1/10 · 19 February 2013]

However tempting it may be to recite praise upon ones favourite film or television program, I found myself inexplicably drawn towards something altogether far more insidious. Something dark and twisted, that only the most pompous of critics could ever heap praise upon (and when I say heap, I mean heap).

The film I speak of, correction the abomination I speak of is The Quince Tree Sun by Victor Erice. What! I sense you thinking. "I've never heard of that film." To which I reply "Thank heaven for small mercies, for those of you who have been spared the 138 minutes of sheer boredom, are the lucky ones."

Yet I also sense a murmuring of ticking cogs which grind out the thought "But didn't he make The Spirit of the Beehive?" And the answer is "Yes……he did." So how does one man create a masterpiece, only to tear it down at his next venture?

The answer is simple. Victor Erice is actually kinda crap.

No doubt the original concept was to explore the pains of creating art, and painful it is. Watching the movie's main protagonist Antonio Lopez Garcia playing himself, slave away over light positions, angles, colouration's, and any other banal necessity that goes into painting a tree, is soul destroying. Yeah, you heard that right, this ain't the Sistine Chapel, although Michelangelo does get a name check, emphasising the depths of pretension Evrice is willing to fathom.

The guy's painting a tree. A tree he repaints every year in the hope he'll be able to capture one moment of perfect beauty. Do you know what that is? Madness, pure and simple. Was it not Einstein that said " Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?"

So there you have it. The Quince Tree Sun is not the pure homage to creating art that Evrice would have us believe. It is something far worse, something far more horrific than any slasher movie, or thriller could concoct. It's a devilish portrayal of a man spiralling out of control into madness. This is The Shining times ten, This is King, Barker, Lovecraft and Poe all mixed together to create a stunning shade of 'is it over yet?' that's smeared across the screen like Garcia smears his paint over canvas. With every masterstroke another victory for tedium.

Obviously there are some truly abhorrent films out there such as Humanoids from the deep, with it's misogynistic ideology and Salmon People. Or the depravity of A Serbian Film, and maybe it seems harsh to judge The Quince Tree Sun with such disdain. But in many ways it's crimes upon humanity outweigh those of any lowbrow nonsense. In my opinion The Quince Tree Sun's greatest crime isn't it's snails pace or lack of dynamics, but to praise itself as a love affair with art, about art, by artists………..And I can't help feeling……What a load of rubbish.

Disingenuous

[federovsky · 30 April 2008]

Highly-regarded semi-documentary about an artist's efforts to paint a quince tree in his garden over several months. He sets up a plumb line and a horizontal wire as guides, puts nails in the mud against which to position his toes, paints a 'grid' of little marks on individual leaves all over the tree, and tries to meticulously capture every tiny detail in his picture. At one point he has an assistant holding a long pole to nudge a particular leaf into position. You are beginning to suspect that he is the world's most obsessive (and slowest) painter when, after an hour (about six weeks in real time), with the picture only half-way finished, he scraps the whole canvas during a rainstorm. Here the illusion of authenticity is destroyed: the rain is clearly artificial, hosed over the garden in ridiculously excessive swathes. What a disappointment. You suddenly realise the whole thing is a set-up and you watch much more cynically as he spends the next hour (another six weeks) on a pencil drawing of the tree. This is equally ineffectual, but it doesn't matter because you realise it's all been a metaphor, and a rather facile one: the effort to distill something essential from life in your advancing years before it is too late. The intention was clearly existential, to slow right down and reflect and absorb and try to grasp something of life's fading richness – an original idea and very laudable, but unfortunately the images were not interesting enough, the sentiments not deep enough, and the execution not honest enough. Ceylan's "Clouds of May" attempted something similar much more successfully. It's art alright, but like the picture the artist creates, fairly weak art.