A small Castillan village after the end of the Spanish Civil War. A truck screening movies arrives, and screens “Frankenstein” to the public. Among the viewers are little sisters Ana and Isabel, who are fascinated by the movie. They live in a remote house with their mother and father, a poet and a beekeeper. Ana goes to a desolate shack and finds a wounded Republican soldier there; he is later shot during the night. Ana flees to the forest and imagines meeting Frankenstein’s monster there. A search party is sent after Ana. She returns back home.
Hailed as one of the highlights of Spanish cinema, included in Roger Ebert's Great Movies list, “The Spirit of the Beehive”, one of only three feature length movies directed by Victor Erice, is a gentle, minimalist, but anti-nostalgic recollection of growing up in Francoist dictatorship. Almost everything here is allegorical: the four-member family is never shown together in a frame, and mother and father are almost always shown separately in the house, to illustrate the emotionally torn up state of the country under the regime; their desolate home is surrounded by a wasteland, to depict Spain’s isolation under Franco; the leitmotif of bees in a beehive are akin to blind obedience to one absolute ruler; whereas the two little girls are glimmers of hope that their generation may live to see a change. However, symbolism alone does not make a great movie. A cinematic vision is more than that, and sadly the movie is at times boring and heavily overstretched, not always offering a more versatile viewing experience or achieving some universal appeal outside its country of origin. The opening act of kids joyously welcoming a cinema truck, and the projectionist promising them they will see the best movie ever, as well as their petrified faces while they are watching a screening of "Frankenstein", is endearing and magical, yet it is a pity the entire film never repeats that simple perfection. Such scenes as Isabel and Ana pouring soap on her chin, to pretend she is shaving, are cute, but not that great. The minimalist story shows very little. So little, in fact, that it becomes too little to keep the attention of the viewers to the fullest.
Grade:++
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