Review: In ‘Close Your Eyes,’ a Spanish master returns, still obsessed with the power of movies

The first feature that Victor Erice directed, 1973’s “The Spirit of the Beehive,” begins in the 1940s, when a traveling cinema arrives in a small rural town in Spain to project “Frankenstein.” In the crowd of moviegoers, a child with eager eyes stands out, Ana, whose sister will later reassure her that in cinema nobody dies and everything is but a trick. A partial answer does surface halfway through “Close Your Eyes,” but that’s just another door Erice entices us to walk through — not, by any means, a neat resolution. Ana Torrent in the movie “Close Your Eyes.” Obsessed with his actors’ power and symbolism, Erice appears to cast them based on their eyes, more specifically their incandescent expressiveness. In the monumental final frame of “Close Your Eyes,” the most soul-stirring ending of the year, Erice’s camera shuts its eyelids one last time, a humble sign of acceptance.