Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

James Hitchcock In 1940, the year in which this film is set, Spain, which had so recently been torn apart by a bloody civil war, had paradoxically become an island of peace in a Europe being torn apart by an even bloodier international war, but that Spanish peace was an uneasy one, maintained by Franco's repressive, authoritarian dictatorship. In 1973, the year in which this film was made, Spain remained a dictatorship. Franco's decision to remain aloof from the struggle being waged by his fellow-fascists Hitler and Mussolini had paid off, enabling his regime to remain in power for three decades after theirs had crumbled. The Spain of the early seventies, however, was in some respects less repressive than the Spain of the early forties, and Spanish film-makers, and other creative artists, were able to address the past in ways which would not previously have been available to them. The action takes place in a Spanish village on the Castilian plateau. The main character is Ana, the six-year-old daughter of a wealthy family. The village is an isolated one, so isolated that it does not even have its own post office; anyone wishing to post a letter has to do so on special trains when they pull into the local station. Nor does it have its own cinema, so when a travelling showman arrives to show a film (James Whale's "Frankenstein") in the village hall this is a major event. Ana is haunted by the film, particularly by images of Frankenstein's monster; when she discovers a soldier (either a deserter from Franco's army or a survivor of the defeated Republican one) hiding in a barn he becomes confused with the monster in her mind. The film's title "El Espíritu de la Colmena" ("The Spirit of the Beehive") is a somewhat enigmatic one. Víctor Erice, who wrote and directed the film, borrowed it from the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck, who used it to describe "the powerful, enigmatic and paradoxical force that the bees seem to obey, and that the reason of man has never come to understand". In the film it seems to have a double significance; the "Beehive" part refers to the fact that Ana's father Fernando is a beekeeper and the "Spirit" part to legends of ghosts and spirits which are said to haunt the area and about which Ana's older sister Isabel teases her. The film acts as a depiction of Ana's inner life, and in her imagination the hunted soldier is conflated not only with the monster but also with these spirits, with a picture of St Jerome hanging in the family home and even with "Don Jose", an anatomical model used by the local schoolteacher to teach her class about the human body. There is a fine performance from the young Ana Torrent as Ana and an equally good one from Isabel Tellería as Isabel. The symbolism of the film has been interpreted in a number of ways as referring to the Spanish Civil War and to Franco's regime, although there is insufficient space in this review to discuss all these interpretations, none of which can be considered definitive. If, however, it was Erice's intention to use his film to comment obliquely on Francoism, he got away with it. The regime's censors had no problem with it being shown in Spain, even though his treatment of the theme of the fugitive soldier is surprisingly sympathetic to the man's plight. At one time no film treating such a theme in such a way could have been shown in Spain. The film itself contains an example of Francoist censorship of the cinema; "Frankenstein" is allowed to be shown, but only when preceded by a prologue making it clear that it is an allegorical condemnation of revolution and godlessness. (It must be said that Franco was far from being the first person to place such an interpretation on Mary Shelley's fable). Erice has been described as the Spanish Terrence Malick. His output has been even more limited than Malick's; this was the first of only three films he has made. The visual look of this film has much in common with Malick's masterpiece "Days of Heaven"; both films are set in a largely flat, featureless landscape and use a restrained, sombre palette of colours. Despite the British stereotype of "sunny Spain", the Spain we see here is often a gloomy place with overcast skies. Another feature of Erice's style is his use of symmetry; many of his shots are composed in such as way with the left-hand and right-hand sides of the screen balancing one another and with some prominent person or object in the centre. Erice is able to use this technique to give prominence to a number of objects which thereby take on symbolic significance- the railway lines, an old well and, most importantly, the barn in which the soldier is hiding. One criticism which some might make of the film is that it is too slow, but others might feel, as I do, that this is not necessarily a fault, merely part of a style of film-making which, in its pacing, emphases and visual style is very different from the standard Hollywood film (or, for that matter, the standard British film) of the early seventies. "El Espíritu de la Colmena" can be seen as marking the arrival of a fresh and independent Spanish school of film-making, just as Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" from two years later marked the birth of a New Wave in the Australian cinema. 8/10

l_rawjalaurence Made at the height of the Franco regime, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE has been read an an allegory of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, concentrating particularly on the destruction wrought amongst those who served in it and their families.Even for those viewers unacquainted with Spanish history, the film is pregnant with meaning. For those interested in the use of intertexts, director Victor Erice's direct quotation from James Whale's seminal FRANKENSTEIN (1931) introduces us to the idea of spirits and human (re) creation that dominates the narrative. Little Ana (Ana Torrent) is duped by her sister Isabel (Isabel Tellería) into believing that there lurks a spirit close by their isolated farmhouse who can be conjured up simply by wishing for its presence. Ana encounters a military deserter and believes that he is the spirit. Her discovery transports her into a dream-world where she re-enacts the famous sequence from Whale's film where the monster meets the young girl. In SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE the monster (José Villasante) does not kill Ana, but leaves her unable (or perhaps) unwilling to separate fantasy from "reality." Through such strategies director Erice forces to question our ontologies; do we really know what being "human" is, and can we separate this state of being from our imagination?This theme acquires a religious dimension through repeated shots of Jesus Christ surrounded by the Apostles and a human skull. In Christianity we are taught to place our trust in the Holy Spirit, but how do we know that this is a "good" spirit, as opposed to the "evil" spirit conjured up in Ana's mind. Erice leaves us with no answer.From thence it is but a short thematic step to reflect on Ana's father Don Fernando (Fernando Fernán Gómez) and his tendency to write his scientific discoveries about his beehives in a journal, in a manner similar to Colin Clive's Dr. Frankenstein in Whale's film. Does Don Fernando like to consider himself a Creator, performing experiments with bees rather than human beings? Or are they linked in some way? Erice emphasizes the parallels through shots of the patterned windows of Don Fernando's house, which are shaped much the same as the honeycombs in his beehives.The film's narrative unfolds slowly, with plenty of static shots in which characters move in and out of the frame. Light is an important element of the mise-en-scene, with our attention focused deliberately on the two little girls' faces, as well as those of their parents. This visual strategy once again forces us to reflect on what separates human beings from other species, spirits as well as bees.THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE is a highly complex work, whose sophisticated visual style and structure warrants repeated viewings. A true classic of European cinema.

Lambysalamby As you can see on IMDb there is a lot of praise for this film. It is my understanding that it was voted within the third greatest Spanish films ever made. It's good but I wouldn't go that far..Many people here have mentioned the historical metaphors within the film but I won't delve into that, I thought the story was completely about the main character Ana. First off, the actress who played Ana was very authentic, with a striking face full of emotion. She genuinely believed a lot of what was happening in the film including the Frankenstein monster being real! Such authenticity means it's worth seeing it for that alone and that is where the films true beauty lies...For all this though, for what is essentially a beautifully shot film with great cinematography and performances, the film was a bit dull! It was only after the first 45 minutes or so that I started to wake up. There was a whole sub-plot between the parents marriage which I felt added little weight to the rest of the story.. There just wasn't a whole lot I felt I hadn't seen before.So for me, I can see the film for what it was worth and why it received such accolades. But it was a little too dull for me to consider it "Great"I recall one of my absolute favourite films ever The Fall, which also included a little girl who believed so much of the movie around her, that film was gripping from start to finish and never dull for a moment. Strange it hasn't gotten the praise it so deserved..

Harhaluulo54 The Spirit of the Beehive is dull and empty shell of a movie with ridiculously slow pacing. The movie in generally has nothing going on. The only reason why people seem to like it and think it is great, is the deep symbolism it has to offer. People be like "I got it, it was deep and hence it is good." Deepness is good, but this movie is easily the least solid thing created by this medium, offering nothing but shallow and irrelevant scenes and zero plot which lead to a lacking conclusion which doesn't conclude more than any of the former scenes. This movie is the prime example of a movie where there is nothing to get, but the fans will get "it" anyway. This movie is the reason why South Park made an episode about "The Poo That Took A Pee." For those who do not know, it was literally a story about poo taking a pee, written by an 8 year old, but people thought it was socially thought-provoking and deeply philosophical work about the current sate of our society and human nature. This movie's fans prove that apparently you don't have to think anything on your own while making a movie because the fans will do the thinking for you and refer to the movie with words like epic, smart and deep while the only word you need is tedious.