Bee Season (2005)
11-year-old Eliza is the invisible element of her family unit: her parents are both consumed with work and her brother is wrapped up in his own adolescent life. Eliza ignites not only a spark that makes her visible but one that sets into motion a revolution in her family dynamic when she wins a spelling bee. Finding an emotional outlet in the power of words and in the spiritual mysticism that he sees at work in her unparalleled gift, Eliza's father pours all of his energy into helping his daughter become spelling bee champion. A religious studies professor, he sees the opportunity as not only a distraction from his life but as an answer to his own crisis of faith. His vicarious path to God, real or imagined, leads to an obsession with Eliza's success and he begins teaching her secrets of the Kabbalah. Now preparing for the National Spelling Bee, Eliza looks on as a new secret of her family's hidden turmoil seems to be revealed with each new word she spells.
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Excellent but underrated film
Brilliant and touching
Best movie ever!
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
This film is about a family whose lives are thrown into a turmoil after the unexpected success of the young daughter at a spelling bee competition."Bee Season" has the potential to be an engaging and touching drama. Though it is beautifully shot and the scenes are well composed, the plot needs a lot more explanation and development. I find the family's life before the spelling bee competition very underdeveloped, which makes me unable to appreciate the extent of the change before and after the competition. The reason and progress of Miriam's mental deterioration is also poorly explained. It leaves me with so many questions about why she acts the way she does or feels the way she does. "Bee Season" may be an interesting drama, but it fails to live up to its full potential
I can't understand why so many people have given this film such a bad wrap. Well, I guess it's no action flick or thriller, but it is one of the most complex, layered, beautiful, thought-provoking films I have seen in a long time. I am an aspiring writer, and if I ever write something that comes even close to representing an interesting analysis of life as this film does then I will consider myself a success. It was also visually absolutely stunning and whilst there were, for me, no single outstanding performances I thought all the actors did a wonderful job.If you like head films that challenge, question and rip back the layers, then ignore the lowish rating and give this film a go.
Several other reviewers have commented on the fractured nature of this film. It appears to be a Kabbalistic approach to healing shattered reality, put together as a parable.I know very little about Kabbalism, so that may be why so many pieces were nonsensical to me. Some things, however, were clear on reflection. Eliza's choice at the end was a redemptive sacrifice. It was a way of turning Saul's obsession back upon itself, so he, when he was brought up short by the apparent disaster, would be accessible once again to his family. The final implications are that she is successful in this, and happy with her choice. Eliza also connects with her mother through the camera, and apparently starts her back on the road to healing.There are some very nice uses of glass and kaleidoscope imagery as metaphors of shattered personality and lives, particularly for the mother, but for all the characters to some extent.All of that makes sense, but as a whole, it just doesn't work. The mother has apparently been in a psychotic break for many years, and no one noticed? The son, who seems to have a close relationship with both his father and his sister, responds to the father's extra time with Eliza for the bee with petulant jealousy, and finally runs off to join the Hari Krishnas, without any indication of why he is searching or why the traditions of his family do not work for him. His motivation seems to be nothing more than an exceedingly pretty face.The daughter, Eliza, is the hardest one to believe of all -- even though she is masterfully represented. In an unusual form of Deus Ex Machina, she restores the shattered family by having paranormal abilities, and then denying those abilities as a sacrifice to redeem the ones she loves. (I suspect this is part of Kabbalistic mysticism, but I don't know.) In one spoken letter, she brings sanity back to her shattered family, reeling in all the fragmented pieces, just as her father had described, and her mother had tried and failed to do. It's a nice idea for a parable, but I found the final answer too pat, the mystical portions glossing over frightful danger, and the pain of the family both believably intense yet unbelievably represented, and I could not believe the solution.Maybe it is because my own spiritual views are vastly different from the writers, but it was painful to watch, and neither satisfying nor helpful.
The first one was "Man on the Moon" which I had to stop as I couldn't take it any more. But I was really surprised how bad THIS movie was. I remember the "wonderful" reviews about Bee Season last year. Half way through the movie I thought to myself that who ever produced this movie, must have been on some good drugs or a young teenager making a movie for a class project. This movie was dragging so badly that I was able to make a cup of coffee without missing anything. The back and forth of different scenes with no explanation as to what it's about was absolutely ridiculous.The best thing that could happen to this movie is if someone remakes it - and it makes sense.