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Spirit of the Beehive, The
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| Year: |
1973
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Director: |
Victor Erice
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| Stars: |
Ana Torrent, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Teresa Gimpera, Isabel Tellería, Ketty de la Cámara, Estanis González, José Villasante, Juan Margallo, Laly Soldevila, Miguel Picazo
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| Genre: |
Drama, Fantasy |
| Rating: |
  9 (from 4 votes) |
| Review: |
Spirit of the Beehive is an hypnotically beautiful Spanish masterpiece. Made during the latter years of General Franco’s dictatorship, it subtly criticizes post-civil war Spain, but is more loved for its beguiling portrait of a child’s world, and for featuring one of the most astonishing performances in world cinema: wide-eyed wonderchild, Ana Torrent. We open, as all fables do: “Once upon a time…”
It’s 1940 and the civil war has just ended. A mobile cinema brings Frankenstein to a sleepy, Spanish village and two little girls go to see it. Shy, six year old Ana (Ana Torrent) isn’t frightened but fascinated, especially by scenes where the monster plays with a little girl, then apparently kills her. “Why did he kill her? And why did they kill him, later?” she asks her older sister, Isabel (Isabel Tellería). Isabel, Ana’s closest companion, loves her but can’t resist upon her little sister’s gullibility. She tells Ana the monster didn’t kill the girl and isn’t really dead. He is a spirit and Ana can summon him if she closes her eyes and thinks: “It’s me, Ana.” Meanwhile, Ana’s elderly father (Fernando Fernán Gómez) spends his days tending to his beehives, which inspire his oblique, philosophical writing. His younger wife (Teresa Gimpera) dreams of her distant lover, to whom she writes letters. Isabel’s words make a profound impression upon young Ana. As she summons the monster, a fugitive soldier (Juan Margallo) leaps from a speeding train and takes shelter in an abandoned farmhouse. Discovered by Ana, the two share a wordless friendship destined to end in tragedy. Thereafter, Ana runs away to the woods where she has a miraculous encounter.
A visually driven film in the best sense, Spirit of the Beehive exerts a spellbinding hold as direct and simple as those children’s drawings shown over the opening credits. Ana Torrent is its heart and soul, wholly believable as a poetic child heroine, although Isabel Tellería deserves praise as the mischievous older sister. Their relationship is one of the most truthful and beautifully drawn in cinema, culminating in the unforgettable sequence where Isobel plays dead. Ana genuinely believes she has died and, for just a second, so do we. The look on her face when Ana realises she’s been tricked imparts a near-cataclysmic sense of innocence lost. As when the girls explore the deserted farmhouse, the surface simplicity of Victor Erice’s direction, only heightens his ability to turn childish games into moments laden with almost-Hitchcockian tension.
We are placed inside a child’s world with a level of intimacy achieved by no other film before or since. Shadow puppets, pillow fights, jumping on beds and playing with dad’s shaving kit (with the little actresses barely concealing their giggles) exhibit an exuberance, a spark of life contrasted with the listless world of grownups. Ana’s father’s obsession with his bees suggests his withdrawal into an intellectual hive (note the hive motif along his window pane), while her mother is similarly self-absorbed. With the civil war over, Erice seems to imply Spain has gone to sleep and will not awaken till the spark lit within Ana becomes a flame.
Magic hour cinematography bathes Ana’s journey in honey hues. The amber burnished chiaroscuro is all the more remarkable because during the shoot cameraman Luis Cuadrado discovered he was going blind (and, heartbreakingly, committed suicide in 1980). Victor Erice frames shots like portraits bathed in pools of light, while magical images speckle the minutiae of everyday life: Isabel leaps over a roaring fire; a train trundles past like rampaging dinosaur; Ana embraces the enchanted night in a shot that prefigures Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).
Not exactly prolific, Erice waited ten years before delivering another study of a little girl’s private world in El Sur (1983). Since his last international release, Quince Tree of the Sun (1992) (a film so unjustly maligned at Cannes, the poor man was discovered crying in a public toilet), he has stuck mostly to short films. Astonishingly, Ana Torrent matched her work here with another amazing turn, this time in Carlos Saura’s Cria cuervos (1976). She’s had a distinguished career since, including Alejandro Amenabar’s Tesis (1996) and can be seen as Katherine of Aragon in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), completing a triumvirate of former child prodigies alongside Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.
Monster fans can easily relate to Ana’s empathy with the confused, innocent Frankenstein monster. Spirit of the Beehive draws well upon the horror classic, particularly the ambiguity of that famous scene with little Maria. The climax cleverly mirrors key Frankenstein motifs: shadowy woodlands, torch-wielding peasants, a missing heroine and a sorrowful monster. What does Ana really see? Is it a spirit? Or a dream? As the doctor says to her mother: “The most important thing is your daughter is alive.” His words impart a relevance different to what he intended. Ana is alive and though the doctor claims she will forget her experiences, what is heartening is the film suggests otherwise. They become part of her soul, a light she’ll carry with her, always.
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| Reviewer: |
Andrew Pragasam
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