Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

zacknabo The Spirit of the Beehive dir. Victor Erice, 1973 Arguably the best film about childhood—amongst other things: family, solitude, imagination and the power of film—is the elusive Spanish director Victor Erice's 1973 masterpiece The Spirit of the Beehive. A quiet, aloof scientist, Fernando (played eloquently by Fernando Fernan Gomez) has moved his family of four to the provincial town of Castille amidst Franco's reign in 1940, where Fernando can quietly devote all of his time to his study of bees. In the middle of nowhere, undisturbed in his new country homestead, Fernando is free to spend all of his time at the apiary. His family is left isolated and alone. His two young daughters are left to wander about, playing childish games, entertaining themselves with only their vivid imaginations and ample amounts of time that seem to drip by like honey. Erice with precise parallelism in his direction has Fernando study the bees habitually, manipulating their environments and recording what effects his intervention has on their actions and lives, running likewise to the audience's godlike view of the family and what effects Fernando's choices have on each member of the family. The mother, Teresa (Teresa Gimpera), languishes in a ghost-like-state, wallowing in her seclusion, spending the majority of her time depressed, writing long letters to family and loved ones, some of which were left behind in war. The children, Isabel (Isabel Telleria) and Ana (Ana Torrent)—whose performance you won't be able to find much better, child or adult from any era of acting—are often left unattended by both parents, but fortunately have their lives transformed by chance as they leave school one day and attend a screening of the original Frankenstein in a makeshift movie theater. The film is put on by a gruff, carnival barker of a man, a traveling movie projectionist who promises amazement, frights and a life changing experience. Ana is terrified and in awe of the picture and cannot come to terms with the monster, but is particularly disturbed by how the townspeople in the film treat the monster. Ana, wide-eyed and gullible, falls right into the bored amusement of her older sister and the stories she tells. In a simple, childish, yet poetic yarn, Isabel explains that the monster really did not die as Ana watched in the film because the monster is in fact a spirit who cannot die, and is actually a spirit that Isabel herself has witnessed in the well out at the abandoned barn. Ana becomes obsessed with finding her elusive monster, leading to a wonderfully lyrical turn in the story as the old barn is home to a rough man, a criminal of sorts, wounded and on the run from the police. Erice masterfully creates a film that is simply transcendental; a beautifully haunting allegory, intermingled with a restrained and unique coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of Franco-era hell. Ana's growing disconnect with reality is equally matched by the geographic isolation of each pastoral frame, along with the methodic imagery of the bees that Erice uses (much like his methodic filming of the quince tree 20 years later in The Quince Tree Sun). The amber glow, like honey, with which Erice and the cinematographer light the house, along with the honeycomb design in the old, farmhouse's window pane, only further the beehive metaphor, putting the family in their own isolated apiary, only there is no one to control or record the changes. The Spirit of the Beehive is poetic, breeding moments of idyllic childhood with memories of disturbing solitude and danger. When imagination and reality become too close, creating chaos, a chaos mirrored by the bees that Fernando introduces to an unnatural environment, which brings Ana rushing back to reality, yet still (the audience is left guessing) unsure of the actions of the adults and "her monster." No one cares for hyperbole, but to say Beehive is one of the most visually stunning films ever made is only accurate. Luis Cuadrado photographed the film with such beauty it is hard to find anything to equal, not to mention the man was going blind at the time of the production. Erice's first masterpiece—and one of the few films he ever made, which makes it that much more of a treasure—is truly a marvel and something to behold on various levels: visually poetic, narratively sensual, directed with as much care as Fernando cares for his bees, and acted with a brilliant level of restraint and maturity rarely found on screen. If you watch The Spirit of the Beehive and you do not like the film…the best advice anyone could give you would be to just give up, because it isn't film that you are looking for, maybe a nice show on CBS is more your speed.

jungophile First off, I was watching this film because I decided to go through the Sight and Sound poll of best films and check out a few I hadn't seen. "Spirit of the Beehive" didn't really grab me that much in the description, but I thought the slow pacing might bring to mind the kind of art house style created by Michaelangelo Antonioni in his "ennui trilogy" which I am consistently fascinated by even after several repeat viewings.I'll be honest, I was bored throughout the first 45 minutes or so. However, Ana Torrent, the primary child actor, has an amazing face that Erice's camera just adores, so I hung in. Gradually, I came to a more open-hearted way of seeing this film just for what it is, rather than having any expectations of it having to "do" something to draw me in.This film graciously asks you to open up to it, and if you aren't willing to do that; well, perhaps you've seen the kind of reviews here saying how this film is dull and pretentious.There are sublime gifts to be had in the experience of viewing "Beehive," but it does ask you to expand your perceptual awareness in a way I feel helpless in trying to elucidate precisely. All I can say is three-quarters of the way in, I surrendered to it with humility, and it started feeling like a work of art.I'm sure the situation is similar with people who find Antonioni's films dull and pretentious. His critically acclaimed trilogy (two of which made the best of list) can seem excruciatingly boring to some, but in my case, I totally "got" where Antonioni was coming from and felt right at home in an instant, just like many of the positive reviewers here have described with Erice's film.This is why I love viewing foreign films of distinction; they really compel me to imagine a wider, inter-dimensional plane of perception.

jotix100 Victor Erice, the director of one of Spain's best films of all times, reminds this viewer of his American counterpart, Terence Malik, they do not have a long list of films in their resumes, but both have the capacity to create unusual films of unusual beauty, about unusual themes. It is certainly a loss for the audiences attracted to their work. Having seen this film years ago, the occasion for taking another view came when it was shown on a classic channel recently.At heart, "The Spirit of the Beehive" is about the terrifying effect on an impressionable young girl's of things happening around her in the Spain of 1940, right after the civil war and its devastating effects on the country. Ana and her sister Isabel are the daughters of parents who have stopped loving each other. It becomes clear Teresa, the mother is in love with a man who has disappeared from her life, but she keeps longing for his return. Fernando, the father, lives in his own world, surrounded by the bees he so lovingly keeps in his large estate.Ana and Teresa, like small children they are, love to get into things that normally would not be approved by their parents. Watching James Whale's "Frankenstein" at the makeshift city hall where the pictures are shown, has a profound effect on the girls. Ana and Teresa love straying from home, unsupervised, to the abandoned structure where they believe to be haunted. Ana, the bolder girl gets a big surprise as she surprises an escapee running from the law.Victor Erice shot this film in a Spain still under Franco's control, a daring move because of the reigning atmosphere in his native country. There is a lot of symbolism in the picture, although subtly done. Ana's fears are at the center of the story, but it has also a lot to do with the situation of the country in 1940, a sad period for the survivors of the civil war. The best thing is Ana Torrent whose innocence, expressive eyes, and her luminous presence works wonders to enhance the film. Fernando Fernan Gomez, a giant in the Spanish cinema gives a wonderful performance. Teresa Gimpera is effective as the wife and Isabel Telleria shows she was a natural as the other sister.Victor Erice showed why is one of Spain's most talented directors of all times.

coltcompton 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.