The Spirit Of The Beehive Reviews

Avoiding Franco

This film avoids using too many words to say something important about innocence and imagination in Franco's Spain. Made two years before Franco died, the film uses a story about children and their relationship with a beekeeping father to contrast totalitarianism with childhood. Might seem a bit slow if you're not into symbolism! Watch for child actress Ana Torrent (see Amenebar's 'Tesis' to see more of her as a grown up, not to mention an engaging film)

Beautiful

Dreamlike, beautifully lensed and virtually dialogue free tale of two young sisters in wartime Spain. The film's power comes from its striking juxtaposition of recurring imagery and a childlike view of the strangeness of the outside world. The younger sister, Ana, sees a travelling print of 'Frankenstein' at her remote Spanish village, and both fears and identifies with the tortured monster. The dynamics of the sisters relationships are brilliantly realised, and the slow creeping intrusion of reality into their young lives is managed with pace and style. An unashamedly romantic, sentimental vision, though not without its tougher moments. You really need to let this one wash over you.

Haunting and enigmatic

I've really no idea what this film was about but don't care. The sense of time and place (1940's rural Spain) is superb and the performances - especially the two girls - riveting. What starts as a fairly lighthearted dissection of a bygone age gradually gets much darker, even supernatural, by the end.

One of those films that stays in the mind for a long time afterwards, raising questions about the nature of relationships, reality and growing up.

Highly reccomended.

A Genuine Classic You Have To Work For

Let me start by saying that this film will NOT be for everyone being that it is a genuine masterclass in understatement and coded meanings in film. Without a basic understanding of Spanish history this film is almost impossible to engage with, although the slow paced beauty is still very much appreciable.

From the constant underlying comparrison between Frankenstein's monster and the country created by General Franco to the depiction of a country robbed of freedom of sight and speech signaled by a primary school anatomy class the real messages of this film are ones that have to be worked at to be appreciated. When they are understood, however, the beauty and subtlety is almost overwhelming.

All in all this film is a masterpiece, but only if you're prepared to hunt for the truth rather than take it at face value.

a moving story of the power of one child's imagination

Victor Erice's dreamlike portrait of Spain at the end of the civil war is a moving story of the power of one child's imagination. After the mobile cinema visits their forgotten corner of Galicia, Ana believes that Frankenstein's monster is real. Together with her sister she sets off to find him. Spirit of the Beehive is a story of lost innocence, of political upheaval but its central message is of the precious and fleeting nature of childhood. Beautiful in its detail and authenticity, this is a film to savour. (1973 Spanish with excellent subtitles)

Less is more in this quiet but powerful film set in post-Civil War Spain, where events, and more particularly, non-events, are seen through the eyes of a little girl who tries to make sense of it all. When a director can portray the feelings of a child this well (think of The World of Apu, for instance), the results are always very rewarding.

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[Highly rated reviewer]

I'm Ana.

Erice's beautiful, multi-layered offering concerns Ana, a small girl from a small village and the loss of her innocence through violence and hinted-at betrayal. Nearly all the characters and symbols within the film, including her father, her mother, the beehive, the state, Frankenstein and even the mannequin, Don Jose, are far more complex than 'the sum of their ostensible parts' (the last two quite literally as well as figuratively) and it is this realisation, this loss of simplicity and innocence that, come the end, stops Ana from calling out 'I'm Ana', which she once believed would bring back that which is lost, knowing in her heart too well, that do so would be futile.

Customer Review

Ignore all the arty-farty analysis because this is one truly dire film. The only consolation that can be had from watching this film is if you do so with lots of snacks. While you slowly empty your head at least you will be able to fill your tummy.

The Franco and fascist references are both irrelevant and nonsensical. They become a lame excuse for those seeking to be pretentious. Reference to the photographer going blind and eventually committing suicide are also meaningless within the context of the film. If a film is, as one reviewer comments, 'hard to grasp' then it has failed in its purpose. This film does this with aplomb.

There is a scene where the young girl feeds a man in a barn. A direct lift from the remarkable "Whistle Down The Wind". Technically the film has lots of faults, least of all a shot of the hill which is green and then becomes brown. The saturated colours contrast against that which is the spirit of childhood - bright and joyful.

Long shots is a misnomer, they go on and on forever and there is little action in each of the scenes to offer continuity. At some juncture the film takes on a little life such as the classroom scene only to fall back into rigor mortis shortly afterwards.

There is nothing to redeem this film. If you want a film that is about children and the horrors of adults then "Jeux Interdit" is the template.

Spirit Of The Beehive - 10

One of the great films of European Cinema

In the closing months of the Spanish Civil War a little girl, fresh from having seen 'Frankenstein', searches for the Frankenstein monster, and finds him, in the shape of a wounded Republican soldier.

This is a beautiful film, a regular feature of BBC2 in the 70s, and one of the best 'child's view of the world' films ever. Just see it.

A film which has the immense confidence to go slow

This is an extraordinary film. Slow, powerful and immensley beautiful. The two little girls around whose lives the film revolves, give performances of great truthfulness. Erice has the confidence in his filmaking skills to depict the life of a small Spanish town in 1940, with the loosest of storylines, the most important thread of which is the arrival of the travelling cinema bringing the story of Frankenstein. The children's parents lives are tantelizingly drawn, with little detail, but to great effect. The scenery is bleakly beautifuland the interior shots are stunning. I will never forget this film.