"Spirit of the Beehive" (1973), Directed by Victor Erice

"Spirit of the Beehive" is a very different type of film to break down. To begin it has a slower pace than other films. The story seems to drag on throughout the film in a sluggish manner for my taste. It is interesting creating a story however around a little girl who watches a Frankenstein (1931 original) movie and wants to find the monster, but of course there is no real monster. There's also the fact that the Spanish Civil War has just ended and the county for a good amount is left in ruins, so there is a very war torn atmosphere throughout the film. The spanish civil war affected a lot of people and we get to see some of the residuals of that through these two small children Isabel and Ana.

The camera work and style is very straight forward however, a lot of hots seem to linger longer than they should. The one scene when Ana (I think it was Ana), was playing dead and scared Isabel was a very moody scene and brought light a very dark feeling. This movie has a sort of depressive feeling to it. The framing of the farmhouse, which Isabel goes to and finds the man holed up makes for a very effective scene set-up, but I think the whole piece just waits to long to get to the subjective point. The movie does take advantage of its setting to create a haunting mood, but there is something very offbeat about the director's approach. Obviously that's Erice's style I guess, but it's not for my taste. I would have made this film very different.

Just like in any other post-war drama there needs to be a good hook and that seems to be missing I think. I really want to explore this film deeper, but since I don't have it on hand to watch again I can't do so. If there was one thing I would switch around it would be the relationship between the two main characters. There needs to be a different conflict and the subjective nature of this piece follows a path that is darkly lit and not overly effective to grab my attention anyway. For some reason I am reminded of surrealist images in watching this movie. Maybe it's the time period, but this movie has that awkward early 1970's feel to it, which is not a bad thing however, it does not work for me. I will say though that the use of musical influence on several scenes does help in adding to the war torn atmosphere. I still haven't seen the ending, or at least I don't think I did. The last thing I remember is the little girl giving the man in the farmhouse an apple. I haven't seen past that point, so it's tough to categorize the rest of this movie.