Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.
Someone to whom I lately showed, in my crystal beehive, the spinning of that wheel, as visible as the main wheel of a clock, someone who clearly noticed the agitation of the honeycombs, the continuous mysterious, maddening flight of the nurse over the cradles of the bees still unborn, the animated bridges and stairs built by the workers, the invading spirals . . . from Fernando’s The Spirit of the Beehive
Historical Background: Nobody will ever accuse Spanish director Victor Erice of churning out works at an overly prolific pace. In a career spanning three decades, Erice produced exactly three films – one per decade and always in the years ending in "3": The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), El Sur (1983), and Dream of Light (1993). On the evidence of his first film alone, this miserly productivity is our great loss. The Spirit of the Beehive was sufficient to make fully evident to critics that Erice had an extraordinary intuitive grasp of the cinema as art.
The Story: The story unfolds in the rural village of Hoyuelos in the Castille province of Spain in 1943. Five-year old Ana (Ana Torent) and her sister of about seven, Isabel (Isabel Telleria), are children of Fernando (Fernan Gomez) and Teresa (Teresa Gimpera). The parents are kindly but have been beaten down by war and the totalitarian regime and have largely retreated into their own isolated worlds. Fernando is a scientist who keeps bees and spends endless hours in the apiary, carefully studying their behavior. In the evening, he works on a book to be entitled “The Spirit of the Beehive.” Teresa, isolated in an unfamiliar and barren town and ignored by her husband, writes letters of longing to unknown persons lost in the war and mails them by hand as the mail trains pass through. The young girls are left to themselves, under the ostensible care of a largely unseen nanny, Milagros (Lally Soldavilla).
The village is visited, once a year, by a traveling film company. This year the selection is the James Whale rendition of Frankenstein (1931), starring Boris Karloff. The children are in awe of the film, especially when Frankenstein is befriended by Elizabeth, handing him a couple of flowers and asking him if he would like to play. Little Ana is bewildered, however, about why Frankenstein killed the little girl and why the villagers subsequently killed Frankenstein. She pleads to Isabel for explanation. Isabel demurs but Ana persists on demanding an explanation. To satisfy Ana, Isabel makes up an explanation that is not half-bad for a seven-year-old. She explains, first, that what happens in movies is not real and created by tricks. She adds that Frankenstein was not really killed because he was actually a spirit. He only dressed up with arms and legs to go out. Isabel adds further that she has seen Frankenstein herself, that he only comes out at night, and that he lives at an old abandoned barn outside of town. She concludes, “If you are a friend of his, you can talk to him whenever you want to. You close your eyes and you call him.” With that, Isabel is finally able to get some sleep.
Isabel and Ana explore together, setting their ears on the train tracks to listen for on-coming trains and then watching them pass. They visit the abandoned barn, looking down the old well. Ana is fascinated with the idea of befriending Frankenstein, and visits the old barn often, sometimes on her own. She is encouraged when she discovers a very large boot print, nearly twice the size of her own foot. Ana resolves to visit the old barn in the middle of the night (since Isabel had told her that the spirit is only visible at night). As luck would have it, a fugitive Republican soldier has jumped from the freight train nearby and, with a leg injury, has sought refuge in the barn. Ana innocently and courageously approaches the man, certain that her kismet is to befriend a monster. She offers him an apple that she has brought along and ties his open shoelace for him. She returns the next day with a blanket and one of her father’s jackets, with a watch in one pocket. The poor desperate wretch is grateful beyond words.
SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP DOWN TO THEMES IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THIS MOVIE – WHICH YOU CERTAINLY SHOULD!
That night, in the cover of darkness, a spatter of machine gun fire seen at a distance from the old barn, signals the death of Ana’s unfortunate “monster.” The next day, Fernando is called to the police station because the deceased fugitive had been in possession of a watch recognized as belonging to Fernando. He is unable to identify the man but acknowledges that the watch is his. He obviously has no idea how the man could have acquired the watch, though Ana’s strange wanderings come to mind. At the dinner table, that night, without conversation, Fernando calmly pulls the watch from his pocket, allowing Ana a brief glimpse. That night, Ana runs to the old barn and is distraught to discover only blood stains where her friend and monster had lain. Fernando appears, having secretly followed his daughter. He calls to her as she runs off wildly into the night, carrying the blood-soaked rag that had wrapped the fugitive's wound.
Ana wanders in agony, baffled by the stupidity of the adult world, just as she had been previously baffled by the Frankenstein film. She comes across a poison mushroom (her father had taught both girls to differentiate the edible ones from the poisonous ones). We wonder if she will ingest it. She comes to a site by a pond, reminiscent of the place where Frankenstein first encountered Elizabeth in the film. She sees her own reflection in the ripples of the pond transmuted into an image of Frankenstein. She sees his hands reach out as though to strangle her, but they comfort her instead.
In the morning, a team of town folks and dogs search high and low for the missing Ana. Finally, she is found asleep, exhausted, overexposed, and in desperate melancholy – but alive. She is rushed home, tended to by the doctor, but is non-responsive and non-communicative. Her mother wonders if she will recover. The doctor (Miguel Picazo) assures Teresa that Ana is only traumatized and her emotional pain will heal. Before turning in that night, Teresa finds Fernando asleep at his desk. She gently closes his book, removes his glasses, and extinguishes his lamp. Life is too short not to care.
Ana awakens in the middle of the night and sips a bit of water from a glass. She walks to the French doors with the stain-glassed window panes and walks out into the starry night. The words of her sister echo through her head, “If you are a friend of his, you can talk to him whenever you want to. You close your eyes and you call him.” She looks peacefully into the night and calls softly, “It’s me, Ana.” . . . “It’s me, Ana.”
Themes:The Spirit of the Beehive (or El Espíritu de la Colmena in Spanish) is as thematically rich as any film that I’ve watched in recent months. The principal themes encompass the fears and anxieties of childhood, the role of cinema in our imaginations, the sometimes insane quality of the adult world, and the suffocating repression of Franco’s Spain.
The Spirit of the Beehive captures the fanciful imagination of children about as well as any film ever has. This is accomplished by the lush, hazy images evocative of the world of imagination. The Spirit of the Beehive is a kind of visual tone poem created out of image clusters. This film also provides a piercing insight into the capacity of film to stimulate the imagination of children. Befriending a Frankenstein becomes Ana’s focal desire in life.
Then, we see the contrast between this evocative, fictional world of the children and the horrors of an adult world where a frightened fugitive is pointlessly shot to death and we are challenged to explain to ourselves how the child’s world is any more absurd, any more ridiculous, or more irrational than our world as adults. How is Ana to understand the heartless murder of her friend? The Spirit of the Beehive is Ana’s search for an understanding of human nature, which becomes our search as well.
There’s an interesting irony that I’ve noted in relation to political censorship. Obviously, freedom-loving people everywhere deplore censorship but it sometimes has the remarkable effect of furthering rather than stifling artistic creativity. Artists who are prohibited from open expression of political dissent sometimes become masters of subtlety and symbolism and end up conveying their message in a more artistically profound manner. Such was the case in the Czechoslovakia of the 1960’s under the yoke of Soviet occupation and such is the case with Erice and The Spirit of the Beehive. The film was made in the waning days of the repressive Franco regime. In addition to the film’s other magnificent qualities, it is incisive political allegory about the human toil of repression – without a single word of dialogue devoted expressly to the subject. The emptiness of life in Fascist Spain is illustrated by the melancholy barren landscape of empty fields and abandoned buildings. We see it as well in the bleak, spiritless gray adobe dwellings of the village. And always – repeatedly – the metaphor of the beehive, with the bees ceaselessly and aimlessly scurrying about, producing honey that will inevitably be confiscated.
Production Values:The Spirit of the Beehive is, quite simply, among the most masterful films I have encountered. Its strengths include gorgeous cinematography, exquisitely sensitive direction to produce a highly atmospheric film, great performances (especially by Ana Torrent), evocation of meaning by situations, expressions and creative editing rather than mainly dialogue or narration, and profound thematic substance. This is utterly brilliant cinema in every respect.
The cinematography for The Spirit of the Beehive was provided by the legendary Luis Cuadrado. The color palette emphasizes honey-hued golds (in keeping with the beehive motif) as well as browns and yellows. The use of light and shadow is particularly noteworthy. For the interior shots, the center of the frames are lit, often by candlelight or soft lamplight, but the borders of the frames dissolve into shadow, aptly expressing the pervasive claustrophobia and dismal alienation brought on by the stifling Franco dictatorship.
Some of the individual shots are remarkable. The family sits at dinner without a word being spoken. Isabel and Ana exchange funny expressions relating to the soup they are eating. After several minutes of this amazingly evocative silence, Fernando pulls from his pocket the watch taken from the dead fugitive, allowing Ana to glimpse it. By that one small gesture, he both informs her of the change in circumstances, queries her as to her involvement, and demonstrates to Ana his good faith by keeping the issue secret from both Teresa and Isabel. All of that is accomplished without a single word of dialogue! Other interior shots feature a stain-glassed window with a pattern reminiscent of a honeycomb. There is an eerie and poignant scene near the end where Ana, alone in the woods at night, imagines an image of Frankenstein in a pond – not so much frightening as reassuring. Another magnificent scene has Ana watching her sister and other children leaping over the open flames of an outdoor fire like so many little witches.
The entire film is shot with a dream-like quality. There is very little dialogue, action, or camera movement. Instead, the story unfolds through small vignettes, facial expression, and juxtaposition of images by skillful editing. The story builds methodically and inexorably, scene by scene. Since we as viewers must struggle and search for meaning as the film progresses, we develop an intimate empathy for Ana’s struggle to make sense out of her world and that of the adults.
Ana Torrent delivered a truly amazing and intense performance for a 5-year-old girl – among the best that I’ve ever seen. It rivals her own beautiful later performance in Cria! (1975) and the ineffable one turned in by Brigette Fossey in Forbidden Games (1952). Isabel Telleria held her own, as well, in the less demanding role of sister Isabel. Torrent later appeared in films such as Vacas (1991) and Thesis (1996).
Fernando Fernan Gomez is possibly the greatest Spanish actor in history – or at least competitive for the title. He has appeared in over 170 films during his career. His credits include Belle Epoque (1992), The Grandfather (1998), All About My Mother (1999), and Butterfly (1999). He won the Goya Award for Best Actor in 1998 for the title role in The Grandfather. It was enjoyable to see him in action as a middle-aged actor since my previous experiences with his work were all from when he was quite old.
Of the fifteen or so reviews and comments that I read in relation to this film, many were as enthusiastic as myself, and all were strongly positive except one. One viewer complained of being bored and unable to follow the story. It is true that the story is not delineated in the typical straight-forward manner via dialogue or narrative. For viewers dependent on straight exposition, the film may pose a problem. Otherwise, it is as close to perfection as filmmakers can aspire.
Bottom-Line:The Spirit of the Beehive is a truly great film – a bona-fide classic even at just thirty years of age. When it was first released, it won the top prize at the San Sebastian Festival of Cinema. If you love great cinema, you don’t want to miss this film. Poignancy, evocative mood, deep themes, political allegory, moving performances, exceptional cinematography – this film has it all. The Spirit of the Beehive is in Spanish with English subtitles. The running time is 98 minutes. My copy was VHS, but from what I’ve read, I’d recommend that you look for the DVD instead.
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