"The Spirit of the Beehive" is a contemplative look at two children's experiences with the 1931 film "Frankenstein," and its affect on their interactions with fantasy and the obscured world of their parents and Francoist Spain shortly after the Civil War. It's the kind of European art-house film that some could dismiss as slow and quiet, which indeed it is, with an average shot length of about 11.6 seconds and entire scenes comprised of long takes without dialogue or a score. I've panned similar styles in other films. One of the last times I did so was another monster-related and slower European film, Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu" (1979). The difference is that there has to be something to contemplate for the film not to be derided as plodding. There should be a function to the aesthetics. That's what makes "The Spirit of the Beehive" so interesting.
First, I like films that use cinema itself to skirt the boundaries of reality and fantasy, which this one does through "Frankenstein." The inherent paradox of the art form, as both supposedly objective observer and instrument of illusion, calls for it. "Spirit of the Beehive" also does well to mirror elements from "Frankenstein" in not-too-obvious of ways. Childhood as analogous to the Frankenstein monster is apt, and both Mary Shelley's novel and the 1931 are partly about that. The scene in "Frankenstein" where the monster meets a child is deservedly focused on, repeated and mirrored--on screen, in the children's play, by Isabel's aggression and in Ana's dream. There's also the man who injures his ankle jumping from a train and whom Ana befriends in the place where she believes the Frankenstein creature lives in the real world. It's a similar storyline to the one in Hammer's "The Evil of Frankenstein" (1964), where a deaf and mute woman nurses her fellow outcast, the monster. Also like the monster, Ana runs away. Much of this is about death and the children's grasp of it. The dead body being kept in the cinema brings it full circle.
Second, the perspective of a child and the relationship with reality and imagination is a wise angle for a film made in Francoist Spain that is a veiled critique of the regime and the Church. Being outside of that place and time myself, I especially relate to a child's lack of understanding for the situation. The horrors and repression are something largely unspoken in the film. "Frankenstein" becomes an outlet for the children to try to comprehend the greater world, including death and desolation. For the adults, the mother finds this through letters, and the father continually struggles to write the beehive metaphor for it.
Others have mentioned how the home somewhat looks like a beehive, with its haxagonal window panes, and the film's honey-colored lighting. Moreover, that contemplative, or slow, style of quiet long takes befits such thematic contemplation and draws attention to imagery, trying to say what the film is censored from saying aloud and becoming dreamlike in what it wish it could not allow, monstrosity run amok.
First, I like films that use cinema itself to skirt the boundaries of reality and fantasy, which this one does through "Frankenstein." The inherent paradox of the art form, as both supposedly objective observer and instrument of illusion, calls for it. "Spirit of the Beehive" also does well to mirror elements from "Frankenstein" in not-too-obvious of ways. Childhood as analogous to the Frankenstein monster is apt, and both Mary Shelley's novel and the 1931 are partly about that. The scene in "Frankenstein" where the monster meets a child is deservedly focused on, repeated and mirrored--on screen, in the children's play, by Isabel's aggression and in Ana's dream. There's also the man who injures his ankle jumping from a train and whom Ana befriends in the place where she believes the Frankenstein creature lives in the real world. It's a similar storyline to the one in Hammer's "The Evil of Frankenstein" (1964), where a deaf and mute woman nurses her fellow outcast, the monster. Also like the monster, Ana runs away. Much of this is about death and the children's grasp of it. The dead body being kept in the cinema brings it full circle.
Second, the perspective of a child and the relationship with reality and imagination is a wise angle for a film made in Francoist Spain that is a veiled critique of the regime and the Church. Being outside of that place and time myself, I especially relate to a child's lack of understanding for the situation. The horrors and repression are something largely unspoken in the film. "Frankenstein" becomes an outlet for the children to try to comprehend the greater world, including death and desolation. For the adults, the mother finds this through letters, and the father continually struggles to write the beehive metaphor for it.
Others have mentioned how the home somewhat looks like a beehive, with its haxagonal window panes, and the film's honey-colored lighting. Moreover, that contemplative, or slow, style of quiet long takes befits such thematic contemplation and draws attention to imagery, trying to say what the film is censored from saying aloud and becoming dreamlike in what it wish it could not allow, monstrosity run amok.