Directed by Victor Erice
Viewed on June 18, 2020
Mysterious and wistful glance at the power of a child’s imagination
“You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince... This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number. It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I would shine. But now if I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed.” —— excerpts from Billy Collins’ poem “On Turning Ten”
Silence in cinema is sacred and The Spirit of the Beehive indulges in this principle by using long contemplative takes that investigate and make physical the interior world of its children characters. Some scenes are beautiful enough that I was convinced that I was looking at stills of Vermeer paintings and not a film. The way the camera interacts with light filtered in through yellow honeycomb window panes, and the field of depth that is present, setting off the simple furnishings in the foreground and imbuing them with more meaning, were gorgeous.
The Spirit of the Beehive features children who are at the intersection of extreme youth and growing up, where reality and imagination have not quite divested themselves from each other. When young Ana watches James Whale’s 1931 production of Frankenstein at a traveling movie show and her sister tells her that the monster is real and that she can find him – but only if she follows a certain routine – Ana becomes obsessed by the meaning of the monster and his actions. She doesn’t understand that the worst action in the film was not the monster’s murders but rather his creation and abandonment by Dr. Frankenstein himself – she sees herself as the young drowned girl and is horrified yet curious of what death truly is. She begins to define the difference between life and death in her own way, going on an odyssey that will challenge her and lead her family to wake up from their indifference to each other.
The Spirit of the Beehive is a slow-burner, a kerosene lamp that illuminates those dark camping nights and like that singular source of light, the film reveals only what it can. Answers are hidden in the shadows of the film’s text and imagery, just as they are in reality when one is a child trying to figure out what it means to be alive as opposed to dead, to take action and learn to accept the consequences. No other movie will as effectively place the viewer back in the uncertain and adventurous times of being a small child looking towards growing up with equal amounts of disdain and anticipation.