The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

Truly Dreadful Film

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Blistering performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

As you can see on IMDb there is a lot of praise for this film. It is my understanding that it was voted within the third greatest Spanish films ever made. It's good but I wouldn't go that far..Many people here have mentioned the historical metaphors within the film but I won't delve into that, I thought the story was completely about the main character Ana. First off, the actress who played Ana was very authentic, with a striking face full of emotion. She genuinely believed a lot of what was happening in the film including the Frankenstein monster being real! Such authenticity means it's worth seeing it for that alone and that is where the films true beauty lies...For all this though, for what is essentially a beautifully shot film with great cinematography and performances, the film was a bit dull! It was only after the first 45 minutes or so that I started to wake up. There was a whole sub-plot between the parents marriage which I felt added little weight to the rest of the story.. There just wasn't a whole lot I felt I hadn't seen before.So for me, I can see the film for what it was worth and why it received such accolades. But it was a little too dull for me to consider it "Great"I recall one of my absolute favourite films ever The Fall, which also included a little girl who believed so much of the movie around her, that film was gripping from start to finish and never dull for a moment. Strange it hasn't gotten the praise it so deserved..

The melodious flute score is an overture to this phenomenally shot film (much owes to the cinematographer Luis Cuadrado, who went blind during the shooting and would committed suicide in 1980) with profound imagery of Spain under the circumstances of Francisco Franco's ebbing ruling regime. Running against a succinct 95 minutes, the film introduces us a rural village in 1940s, after watching the horror-classic FRANKENSTEIN (1931), a seven-year-old girl Ana inexplicably gets possessed with the spirit of the monster in the film, slowly, her elder sister Isabel, and their parents, all realize their live will eternally changed by the unstoppable pace which their country is also experiencing. The diegetic curve doesn't limn an overbearing quantity of hubbub to foreground the family- related crisis, instead, it quietly and singularly takes its time to observe every tiny fluctuation of its executors' mind of state, subtle and poetic, under the background of oil-painting-alike texture and sometimes tender amber aura, the magical influence of the film's idyllic melancholia and psychological allusions can take your breath away if you can immerse yourself into the mise en scène.Ana Torrent (3 years before her another gripping child performance RAISE RAVENS 1976, 9/10) is the attention-grabber among the cast, such a consuming delivery of a girl's convoluted mind orbit around her daily encounters under the minimal and drab milieu, also emotionally tangible is the sibling relationship between her and Isabel, more obliquely but equally palpable hinted is the insular stalemate of the communication with and between their parents, the whole state of the family sets off a torpor which is both depressing and unbearable. Ana is looking for her own monster to whom she can relate her feelings, what would be more thrilling and ironical than befriending some creature with a kind heart under the protection of a spine-chilling outfit, no matter it is a ghost or a spirit, the wounded fugitive is her salvation, but is suffocated by the cruel reality, and also creates a crevice between her and her father, the delusional imagination triggered by the poisonous mushroom is the last resort and we never know if there is a cure for her. Victor Erice's own career path is quite tortuous, over 40 years or so, the fact that only 3 feature films are made is a crystal clear testimony of an auteur's abiding friction with the investors, comfortingly at least this film doesn't fail him and will always be an incentive for aficionados to be indebted for his prowess and acknowledge his uncredited endeavor.

...and have a penchant for history (and little kids), this interminably-long film may appeal to you. It is very 'quiet' and requires long periods of intense concentration (I suggest abstaining from liquor during the 1.6 hours of its viewing - I broke down after 50 minutes), the ability to split time in numerous venues and great memory recall while focusing on clinical issues with split-scene incoherent photography (exposed very nicely, by-the-way). This film is not a 'popcorn' movie in the traditional sense - more of a v-e-r-y l-o-n-g documentary on child (directorial?) psychoses. In addition to the above, you'll need the following qualifications for viewing: 1) knowledge of the Spanish Civil War/Inquisition and its global implications, 2) a degree in childhood psychiatry, 3) a neurotic director's view of substance and t-i-m-i-n-g, 4) a very long afternoon, all by yourself, 5) and, the patience of Job's wife for an anti-climatic ending.Game, anyone?

This is one of the most ponderously dull movies I have ever seen. I have read about all the 'metaphors' herein and I am not a dumb person, and this is absolute drivel. I understand that the characters represent Spain and Franco and it's very political. I understand the undertones about the power of youthful imagination and the magic of cinema. That being said, I have no idea how it is rated as the best movie from Spain ever, much less the best movie of the seventies. This is supposedly one of Guillermo Del Toro's faves, and I have to say I enjoyed every single one of his movies, even the atrocious Blade II, far more. To give you some perspective, I LOVE the movie Solaris (the original), which I thought was the slowest paced film ever made until I had watched a single hour of this movie. If you can get through the first hour without going into an art-house coma or becoming unspeakably pretentious about supposedly 'metaphorical' pseudo imagery, then I salute you. Supposedly this movie is heavy on metaphor, which I take to mean that the movie is a metaphor for what it must be like to be a child with the dullest existence possible. The little girl that plays Ana is very good, but this movie is akin to reading a book of Richard Dawkins' with a hipster outside a cafe in France while listening to the Shins: That is, as pretentious and boring as possible.Do yourself a favor and watch the beginning if for no other reason than that you can then argue about it when someone brings it up at a party trying to sound smarter than you. Don't blame me if you are falling asleep twenty minutes in though.