Víctor Erice: The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

Early 1940s. An isolated village in the middle of the Castilian plateau.The echoes of the Spanish Civil War still in the air. Its consequences and traumas. The loss of political and intellectual illusions, the impossibility of building up a decent country.

A middle-class household in the village outskirts. Two little girls, Ana and Isabel, wander about the long corridors and half empty rooms. They play and shout and chase one another in childish joy. Sometimes they daringly venture into the infinite plains surrounding the house. Investigating riddles. Running there, as if trying to reach the distant horizons.

The father is absorbed by his books and thoughts. Also by his bees. He looks after a beehive, spending many hours at it, contemplating the busy insects, their tiny mechanical life. As if wishing to isolate himself from the harsh reality. The mother is also an abstracted person. She seems to have a few secrets, also a deep inner world. The relationship between the two is of some sort of distant care and affection. They lovingly watch out for the girls without imposing their presence.

One day, something unusual happens. A truck with an itinerant cinema exhibiting James Whale's Frankenstein enters the village roads. The unexpected wonderful movie will be a shock for the girls. In particular for Ana, who will not understand the (apparent) monster´s evilness. The deep impression in her will set into motion something subtle and powerful at a time.

Isabel and Ana. Children discovering the tiny things that make up the fabric of reality, its secret marvels. Which usually go unnoticed by the adults after life long repetition. Two different natures. Isabel, slightly older, with a more practical approach to life. Even a touch of cruelty. And sensible Ana, with more power to grasp the intangible.

1940s, in Spain. A dusty time, poor and oppressive. Not good for lirism, to be sure. Even so, the world and its discreet magnificence unfolds before the girls. Ana, through her huge dark yes, seems to absorb reality and process it into some kind of magic of her invention. A strange communion with the ghost of the monster, his reasons, has been established.

The spirit of the beehive is the spirit of the (beehive-like) world, and its creatures. Much more developed in some than in others. A spirit to keep up as something precious in the harshness of the present. And the future. Some, if they ever had it, will lose it. Others, like Ana will probably tresure it throughout the years to come, or their full existence.

The Spirit of the beehive is one of those movies that cannot be explained with words, without sounding too lyrical, cheesy or simply banal.  The movie is a spectacle of images, sequences, smartly put together. Not to talk about but to watch. One of those mysteriously haunting works that we simply cannot forget. Or understand why we can´t. Perhaps because as critic Linda C Ehrlich put it it never finishes saying what it has to say. Some invincible enigma stubbornly remains at its heart.