Last week I stumbled across what might be the best movie made in Spain, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE. I’ll guess that students of film know all about it and studied it and so on, but my circle has not heard of it. I won’t tell the story of the movie, but I suggest that you find a copy and view it.
The film is set in Fascist Spain in 1940 in a lonely village surrounded by empty fields. It’s about a family in which the the father is a poet and a beekeeper. The beehive is there to represent the dull decadence of a moribund society where individuals mean nothing and don’t connect and nothing changes. This is a simple, plain and gorgeous movie. Two little sisters see the weekly town movie, FRANKENSTEIN and set off through empty fields to find the monster. In contrast to the beehive is the inner life of a six-year-old, played by Ana Torrent, whose dreams, hallucinations and creativity dominate a haunted landscape marked by forboding.
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