Amazing film, based on memory and emotion. Erice does a wonderful job, of showing the audience the nature of children and time. Most adults forget, until they themselves have children, or an encounter with a child just how confusing it is for a child to grasp the sense of time and certain life events. As a child everything and anything seems possible. As adults we are aware that certain things are the end, and the way things are sometimes are unchangeable. Erice uses Frankenstein and a little girl named Ana to help us realize how amazing it is to be a child. Frankenstein plays a common theme in all the characters lives, maybe not literally Frankenstein, but a "thing" that all the characters face daily that they deal with. For Ana it is literally Frankenstein, after she sees the movie. For her father it is his obsessions with bees, he is constantly thinking about, and playing with the bees. For her mother, it is possibly a lover that she is writing to throughout the entire movie. Ana is such a brilliant character, most of us forget that she is really a child in this movie. The genuine facial expressions shown, like when she is interacting with the wounded solider in the abandoned farm house. She is not scared, she even gets close to him to tie his shoe, and its the solider who flinches not the little girl. She brings his a jacket, and apple and then runs home. Her ability to be so genuine, is a characteristic most adults hope to possess. The dream sequence where Ana meets Frankenstein, is wonderful, it plays with the audiences mind, and makes your wonder did it really happen? and if it did really happen does that mean Frankenstein really does exist? or was it just a dream? The ending is phenomenal as well, you could not ask for anything better. As Ana is standing in the window, facing inward to the house saying "I am Ana, I am Ana"-so powerful, yet only from a child. She is realizing that she is a child, and its OK to exist in both worlds-the adult world, and the child world.
Review of The Spirit of the Beehive
