El cuadro

The Painting (El Cuadro) is a high-risk exercise in which the great paintingo , a well-known masterpiece : 'Las Meninas' was made by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) in 1656 is analyzed and shows the young Infanta Margarita with her court . It is the most interpreted artwork in history. But that is only what can be seen at first glance. The 3.18×2.76 m² painting, which hangs in the Prado in Madrid, has invited many art historians to discover, decipher and analyze it. In twelve chapters, the director conducts an extensive search for clues together with a large number of experts . An enjoyable mystery/documentary which is mainly made up of interviews, it is completed with stop-motion sequences , in doing so, filmmaker partially reconstructs the constellations of the image with puppets , resulting in agreeable sequences . It turns out to be a splendid art documentary that builds its narrative like a detective story and really inspire the interested viewers . As director, along with many art historians , searching for clues and attempting to decipher the enigmatic elements of the painting in twelve chapters.

Delving into the inner world of an artist supposes an incredible effort to assimilate the peculiarities of this both in its content and in its form, with the added value that the filmmaker must approach the material with humility and respect but without giving up their own identity and the good director Andrés Sanz gets these interesting purports . In such a specific subgenre, there have been incursions of authentic giants, towering technical and artistic achievements , such as the classic ¨Lust for life¨ (1956) by Vincent Minelli with Kirk Douglas , Anthony Quinn , James Donald, the modern flick shot by Milos Forman in the fictious ¨Goya's Ghosts¨ with Javier Bardem , ¨The Girl with a Pearl Earring¨ (2003) by Peter Webber with Colin Firth as Vermeer , Scarlett Johansson, or the recient ¨Loving Vincent¨ (2017) by Kabiela with Robert Gulaczyk , Douglas Booth , ¨Gauguin - Voyage de Tahiti¨ (20179 by Edouard Deluc with Vincent Cassel or the excellently made documnetary by Víctor Erice titled ¨El Sol del Membrillo¨ with painter Antonio López , all of them share an overwhelming aesthetic sense, as well as an admirable cinematography to capture, understand and immortalize a beauty that is as palpable for them as it is for the authors involved. Those critics , painters, experts , artists pay tribute to one of the best painters in history : Diego Velázquez .

Since he was a child , the Spanish filmmaker Andrés Sanz Vicente (1969) has been fascinated by painting itself and its effect on the viewer. After a while, when he returned from America, where he made short films like ¨Bedford ¨(2004) and "Flat Love" (2009), and anything else , he rediscovered the image and started talking to art historians about this image. Director makes an effort to move away from the naturally expository tone adopted by the feature film with an interesting proposal , to propose the analysis of the work as a mystery story. Faced with a truly intriguing beginning with a miniature theater with a screen on which a message is projected announcing that the germ of the project is a recurring dream that Sanz himself experienced as a child . This turned into an intensive study that raised more and more questions . For his documentary , he interviewed many art historians, all of whom had worked intensively on the image , collected 60 hours of material, and then edited the film into twelve exciting chapters . As the film focuses mainly on explaining in an almost scientific way the origin , development, purpose and peculiarities of one of the great works of universal painting, accompanied from time to time by some dreamlike elements such as the use of some shots from old movies or , above all, a stop motion animation recreating the painting itself frame . Each section deals with a new aspect . This film demonstrates how deep one can go in contemplation of a single painting . Seeing art is the opposite of being boring and Sanz Vicente demonstrates that this also works magnifically as a feature film . He builds his documentary as a kind of detective story in which he discovers more and more mysteries together with the interviews and decodes them together . Thus playing with new approaches and being able to immerse himself in the image in a different way . Along with well-developed interviews, a large-scale consideration is opened, which has the full potential of an intensive artistic interpretation and at the same time shows what can be hidden in a single painting.