08 · 06 · 26

Upon the death of Manolo Solo (1964-2026) and CLOSE YOUR EYES

Rafael Aviña

The actor born in Algeciras (Cádiz), Spain, whose name is Manuel Jesús Fernández Serrano—but better known as Manolo Solo—and who majored in Education and Theater in Seville unfortunately died of cancer last week. Beyond doubt, he embodied the emblematic face of contemporary Spanish cinema. He only took part in representative films of that cinematic tradition and was responsible for bringing a certain sensibility, sobriety, and effectiveness to the characters he portrayed in films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Biutiful—by Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu, respectively—15 Days with You, Marshland, Gun City, and The Fury of a Patient Man—for which he received the prestigious Goya Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Manolo Solo played the role of the director of a prison in the critically acclaimed film Cell 211—directed by Daniel Monzón— whose character is responsible for coping with the brutal rebellion led by the violent and charismatic murderer Malamadre (played by Luis Tosar), and he also deals with the presence of a young prison officer, who, trapped in the middle of the commotion, gets injured and has to pretend to be an inmate. In a similar way, Solo gives an outstanding performance in the extraordinary film The Good Boss by Fernando León de Aranoa—for which he was once again nominated for a Goya Award—where he embodies the “right hand” of his boss Julio Blanco (played by Javier Bardem), the owner of an industrial-scale factory.

In this film, Solo plays the role of Miralles, who since childhood has lived in Blanco’s shadow: Miralles’s father would load the rifles for Julio Blanco’s father when they went hunting. As an adult, Miralles is in charge of the factory’s production; however, his colleagues find him distracted and more preoccupied with the problems in his marriage than with the company’s productivity standards. By the same token, Manolo Solo starred in the charming moral fable The Portuguese House by Avelina Prat, in which he plays the role of a teacher in his fifties—a cartography and map-drawing expert—whose wife, a Serbian immigrant, chooses to disappear without leaving any trace, and this will end up in him embarking on a journey through a world he is unfamiliar with. At an estate in Portugal, he will assume another man’s identity and reinvent himself as a gardener who plants seeds, waters the fields, and discovers the soil he once knew only through flat maps.

Nonetheless, his greatest and most important film is and will always be Close Your Eyes, which was the film that brought Víctor Erice back to directing and, in fact, was the opening film of the 21st edition of the Morelia international Film Festival in 2023. This film offers a deep reflection on the act of contemplation as an extension of the cinematic gaze itself, and as a way to remind us of the inexorable course of time and the relevance of memory. The very same creator of The Spirit of the Beehive, El Sur, and Dream of Life here develops a filmic essay about his own myth, his understanding of the creative process, and his conception of the art of filmmaking as a means of depicting dreams and, especially, the dichotomy between frustration and everlasting hope.

For almost three hours, the film weaves a mysterious map around the transcendence of even the smallest decisions, and oblivion as a refuge from the reality that confines us. Every single scene is crucial because it is a hint at other mysteries to unfold, just as it happens when this TV show about unsolved cases makes its appearance. In the movie, Julio Arenas (played by José Coronado) leaves Miguel Garay’s (Manolo Solo, marvellous) directorial debut unfinished by vanishing during the shooting of the film set in the forties. Garay’s movie tells us the story of a grown and terminally ill man, who is desperately looking for the daughter he had with a Chinese singer, having nothing but a photograph of the girl as a clue. The main character of Garay’s movie, hands this photograph to the character embodied by Julio Arenas, who would be responsible for finding the daughter.

Regarding the disappearance of Julio Arenas, as the police find only his shoes on the shore but not the body, they end up concluding that the actor drowned. Against all expectation, more than two decades later, the aforementioned TV show about unsolved cases reopens the mystery of Julio Arenas, including his last and never-before-seen scenes provided by his friend Miguel Garay, who, in fact, gave up filmmaking to enjoy a peaceful life in a small fishing village. The program’s broadcast brings forth a new clue that leads Garay to a nursing home run by a group of nuns.

Close Your Eyes is a thriller while also it is also an introspective story, a drama about friendship, honesty, and perhaps it could become Erice’s cinematic legacy on aging and his own directorial career. This film is, above all, a moving and refined poem that honors the profound aesthetic beauty reflected in the gaze, memory, loss, and the ungraspable essence of what remains—and will remain—alive within the walls of a movie theater. Manolo Solo’s transcendence, marked by his sensibility and honesty as a film actor, is represented precisely in that role: a filmmaker who seeks his own truth.

Translated by Michelle Olvera