El sol del membrillo

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.