The Spirit of the Beehive
1973
Directed by Victor Erice
I have struggled with sitting down and writing this post, since I have zero interesting things to say about this film. Didn't I just say that in a previous post? Either I am getting boring or the Book is getting boring. It's definitely one of those things.
The story follows a family of four in rural Spain. The father is mostly fascinated with bee hives and the mother is writing to an unseen ex lover. The two sisters go to see the 1931 movie Frankenstein. Ana is fascinated by it. Isabel taunts her sister and acts like a complete sociopath, but no one really seems too concerned about that.
This is obviously a beautiful movie. Part of the beauty seemed to come from the film's slowness, but that also made it a bit dull for me.
Of course, Roger Ebert wrote an entire essay about this movie and I can barely come up with two sentences about it, making me look like an asshole. Thanks, Ebert.
RATING: **---
Interesting Facts:
Exactly 1000 shots in the film. None of these shots had the family together.
It is, in my opinion, an amazing movie. It works both on a subliminal and an intellectual level as an analogy of Spain in the aftermath of the civil war. Ana Torrent is a darling and extremely huggable.
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