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Rating: Vìctor Erice, now 75 years old, is a Spanish film director with only 3 feature films to his name, the first of which, The Spirit of the Beehive (1972), the subject of this review, is considered a cult film.
Set in Spain in 1940, just after the civil war, in a village of the Castilian Meseta, The Spirit of the Beehive tells the daily life of two little girls. Isabel and Ana are sisters. Isabel is the older, a bit naughty and mischievous. Ana is younger. Ana is kind, deep, and reflective.
One day, a traveling truck arrives in town and brings cinema with it! Young and old alike pay the ticket to watch this strange film. It is Frankenstein by James Whale from 1931.
At the end of the screening, indeed, the children are disturbed by the viewing, and Ana, in particular, remains fascinated by the terrifying creature in the famous scene where the monster meets the little girl in a forest near a river.
The film does not have a real plot, it neither begins nor ends. It is a suggestive film seen from the perspective of the children, or better, through the eyes of the children. Their curiosity, their fantasy, their imaginary world contrasts with an arid and desolate landscape, with a barren countryside, with the mystery and uneasiness of nature and the surroundings, with the absurdity of war that brings death, so useless and incomprehensible.
The beehive and its "spirit." The bees. The girls’ father is a beekeeper, and perhaps we are the bees, always busy doing something as if it were "necessary".
A subtle, poetic film but also rather unsettling, at times almost distressing. A film of fixed shots and silences, of gazes. A mysterious film.
Ana will find her Frankenstein, her spirit. She will find it, lose it, and search for it again.
The Spirit of the Beehive is a circular film or perhaps one in expansion.
The Spirit of the Beehive is a little gem.
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