‘We Still Have to Close Our Eyes' is an intriguing documentary feature by John Torres. It was a part of this year's TIFF apart from the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival and the Valdivia International Film Festival. Within about 12 minutes, the film is able to be an unreal mood-piece while focusing its narrative on one such strange notion. The film primarily uses clips from the footage captured from the sets of many Filipino productions, such as the movies of Lav Diaz and Erik Matti. And yet, it re-purposes those mismatched parts in such a symphony that it fits the tone of a sci-fi narrative it aims to build within.
“We Still Have to Close Our Eyes” is screening at Across Asia Film Festival
The film works largely as a found-footage production that we have seen often in several avant-garde works. It has a similar amount of low-key approach in terms of its attention to the individual scenes or the way they have been lit. What matters the most is the mood it is going for and John Torres is clever enough to find it with the succession of its frames. It blinds you to believe that there's this dystopian world where you have control over another person and all his actions. It suspends our belief about what we see as unadulterated footage to make us engrossed into this world that feels almost like a singular vision with preconceived ideas.
The pieces of information that we get to see in between are mere fractions to what this film with the ambitions of being transcendental aims to achieve. The reconstruction of its original fragmented reality almost achieves the dreariness that Lav Diaz achieves through his recent ‘The Halt'.
All the visible human figures we see look almost as if they are under surveillance. This cleverly presented façade of looking into more personal parts of their lives without their will serves the actual purpose of the film. After all, beyond the story that we speak of, there's a point that becomes clear through this 12-minute voyage- the idea of being under control and of seducing the power of control. The despair appears even more real when the subjects are put under such scrutiny.
While its cinematographic skills can't be judged as a singular achievement, the editing makes the right use of all of its components to immerse us throughout. The scintillating sensation that a recurring musical piece gives marks it as a solid achievement in the hypnotizing Asian experimental works likewise. As a result, ‘We Still Have to Close Our Eyes' is a largely admirable attempt to observe the shimmers of talent to put Torres in the league of Lav Diaz in the coming years.
