The new Spanish movie “Close Your Eyes” put me in mind of a recent post by designer/illustrator Tad Carpenter: “Being an adult means watching a 2 hour movie in like 8 or 9 days.” 

Are those days truly gone, when one went to the movie theater or watched a film at home and fully committed to the self-contained vision of the filmmakers with no interruptions? Going to the bathroom or pausing a movie like “Deadpool & Wolverine” may not be detrimental to its enjoyment, but missing even one moment of a film like “Close Your Eyes” can almost seem like you’re missing out on the meaning of life. 

Opening Friday at Film Forum, “Close Your Eyes” focuses on themes of identity and memory and does so in such a quiet, unhurried way that many viewers may find it frustrating. Indeed, it clocks in at nearly three hours. Director Víctor Erice’s “slow cinema” style can come off as airless and affected, yet for those open to its visual elegance, allusions, and introspection, the movie-going (and -staying) experience could prove profound.

The picture begins in 1947 at a chateau situated in a leafy suburb of Paris. Its opening scene, which lasts nearly 15 minutes, involves a regal but ailing Spanish Sephardic Jew, Monsieur Lévy, and a Spaniard who fought against Franco’s Nationalists, Monsieur Franch. Lévy explains that he’s changed his name several times in order to evade persecution, with one getting a sense that he’s lived a grand if precarious life. His mission for Franch: to find his illegitimate daughter at Shanghai and bring her back to Paris so that he may look upon her before his death. 

Thus we have our plot — except we don’t, as we soon find out via voiceover that this scene was one of the last to feature the actor playing Franch, Julio Arenas, who disappeared shortly after filming it in 1990. The unfinished movie he was starring in was called “The Farewell Gaze,” and its director, Miguel Garay, is now in Madrid 22 years later to appear on a TV show similar to “Unsolved Mysteries.” During the interview, Miguel addresses his longtime friendship with the actor, how they met while in the Spanish navy, and how eventually Julio became an actor and he a novelist and director.

When questioned about what might have happened to Julio, Miguel reluctantly answers that the actor sometimes sank into depression. After the interview, the host asks if he might convince Julio’s now-adult daughter Ana (Ana Torrent, who played the little girl in Mr. Erice’s beloved “The Spirit of the Beehive”) to also appear on the show. Parallels are immediately apparent between this request and the one made of Franch in Miguel’s incomplete feature. So begins our film’s real scenario: Miguel meets with people from his past, and the larger story comes into focus — the disappearance of Julio.

Throughout the film, Mr. Erice’s primary mode of expression is leisurely, one-on-one discussions, like the one between Miguel (Manolo Solo) and an old flame, Lola (Soledad Villamil). During this luminous scene, still-burning feeling crackles between the two, as does past hurt. When Miguel tells her what he thinks happened to Julio, how he may have chosen to walk away from his actorly life, we’re presented this hypothesis in a richly cinematic interlude.

Not only cerebral and metaphorical, the film is also pleasurable, mostly due to gorgeous, tenebrous lighting, understated notes of levity, and moments of singing. One such occurs when Miguel is joined by his neighbor in a sing-along of “My Rifle, My Pony and Me,” a ditty made famous by Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in “Rio Bravo.” As one might imagine with a movie whose lead character is a former director, there are many more references to film history.

Once Miguel finds out that Julio may be alive, the film gets a little convoluted and its ponderousness a bit verbose, yet Mr. Erice maintains his focus on his actors’ great, lived-in faces and subtle moments. In the final scene, we are left rapt by the movie’s tribute to the power of cinema, even if, for some like me, the ultimate philosophy behind “Close Your Eyes” is elusive.