Close My Eyes

Close My Eyes was truly one of my favourite films of the 1990's. Partly what made it memorable was the fact I saw it in a special screening on its release at the Cambridge Arts Cinema in the presence of the director Stephen Poliakoff.

OK, the film’s big thing is that its central characters are brother and sister having an erotic affair. This fact seems to polarize completely the opinion of the film. In general most US viewers comments are coloured by the moral degeneracy without punishment angle. Other commentators like it because of the way it is filmed but despite the incest, while others saw it because Alan Rickman was in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

My angle is this – it is really quite irrelevant to the story. In attempting to think of how the writer came up with the incest line, I think this is the only way to have a credible adulterous affair with the husband accepting that the wife and her lover are close without suspecting anything. This does create some interesting dramatic tension and brings the three corners of the affair very close to each other.

In more broad terms, the film is about disturbing change – the long hot greenhouse effect summers, AIDS, the changes in society during the Thatcher years, the stock market and property bubble of the late 1980’s, Docklands, New Money. The affair between the brother and sister is a retreat and a reaction to this change – a retreat from incomprehension of the changes happening in the world into the last taboo. Very mysterious.

The film is really a historical document which deals with that most difficult of subjects, the recent past. Watching it now in 2004, fifteen years after the event, it starts to become comprehensible. Global warming has become more and more real; even if we don’t know what the effects will really be it has become part of everyday life. We have had another stock market bubble rise and burst, perhaps more violently than last time. The property bubble is again near its peak in the UK. Looking at this film is like looking in a mirror of our times.

The film looks absolutely wonderful, even though the DVD transfer is very poor. The filmmakers were very lucky with the long hot summer of 1989, and the Home Counties (Oxfordshire, around Cliveden) look heartbreakingly beautiful, as shot by Witold Stok. As one of the characters says, “I never thought the Home Counties could be so beautiful.” The contrast with the city of London shots if very well done. A gorgeous film to look at. I just checked for Witold Stok’s other work, but there is nothing I have heard of, bar the Comic Strip’s Eat the Rich. The string quartet music by Michael Gibbs really adds a lot of depth to the film – a sad wistful melody threads through the work. Really wonderful haunting stuff. Again he has not done anything else major.

As for the acting, the three stars are all highly proficient and work together very well. Clive Owen looks very young and boyish for those that are used to seeing him in more recent work, such as the great Croupier. My comment on his suitability as the next James Bond is - no he shouldn’t do it. He looks far to vulnerable and he is really far too good an actor to waste on such a meagre rôle. Saskia Reeves does a great job of turning from the ugly Sheffield duckling with a broad accent to the Home Counties wife, sullen but living a perfect life. Alan Rickman exudes strangeness and otherness.

Key images of the film – the first time we see Saskia Reeves’ character in her new life, making a summer pudding – the first real colours of summer and of the film, the bright red of the berries. The static shots of Canary Wharf being constructed. Clive Owen’s character in tears in the Ritz tearoom. Walking barefoot through a London Sunday morning. The Thames in any shot with the parched grass and perfect cottages peeking out from the woods. The great Niall Buggy’s cameo as a rapacious property developer in red braces. The brother and sister returning to the party after their fight with cuts and grazes everywhere and their clothes dirty and torn. So many others.

Still one of my favourite films of the 1990’s after this recent viewing. In the DVD’s accompanying interviews with the cast and directors, Stephen Poliakoff mentions that Richard Curtis said it was one of his favourite British films. This one is really a classic that future generations will come to love, I think.