THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973) - directed by Victor Erice

The fantasy life of children has always been fanciful fodder for filmmakers.  Alice in Wonderland (1933 & 1951), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.  (1953), The NeverEnding Story (1984), and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) are examples of fine films that explore the unfettered imagination of children and, in so doing, allow the viewer to escape the  realities of - or heightening his or her response to - the real world.  One of the most beautiful films in this wondrous film genre is neither a big special-effects extravaganza nor a highly-stylized work of whimsy, but a small, haunting and luminous Spanish film released in 1973 – The Spirit of the Beehive, directed by Victor Erice.

The film opens with a credit sequence consisting of children’s crayon drawings, followed by a variation on the traditional fairy tale introduction: “Once upon a time . . . somewhere on the Castilian plain, around 1940.”  A truck pulls into the tiny community of Hoyuelos, Spain to deliver a movie.  This is such a major event that the screening is verbally announced in the town square by an elderly woman.  The enthusiastic audience packs into a make-shift theatre to watch the movie, James Whale’s 1931 seminal horror classic, Frankenstein.  This is a truly delightful sequence that evokes the genuine appreciation of a pre-television/videogame/Internet audience for the communal movie-going experience. 

The children are captivated by the movie, including young Isabel and her younger sister Ana, who is positively awestruck.  The key scene from Frankenstein that fires Ana’s wonder is when the monster encounters the little girl Maria by a lake.  Maria is not afraid of the monster and sees it as a playmate.  Together they throw flowers into the water to watch them float.  When the monster runs out of flowers he continues the floating game by naively tossing Maria into the water, which results in her drowning.  Taking the movie for real life, Ana questions why the monster killed the girl.  Isabel explains that the movie is fake, but Ana is too young to truly differentiate between fact and fiction, so Isabel tells Ana that the spirit of the monster lives in an abandoned stone building in the middle of a wheat field.  The rest of the story follows Ana’s search for the Frankenstein monster’s spirit as she confronts elemental notions of death and the meaning of her individuality.

Bathed in a delicate honey-coloured light, The Spirit of the Beehive is a subtly dream-like and contemplative expression of a child’s obsession with a fantasy creature and what it represents as she steps into a real world fraught with danger.  Director Victor Erice’s shot compositions are poetic, simple and clean – an uncluttered canvas for a lyrical movie that feels less like a collection of scenes and more like movements in a piece of classical music. 

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If you live in the Greater Vancouver area, you can rent the Criterion DVD of The Spirit of the Beehive from the greatest video store in Canada, Videomatica - located at 1855 West 4th Avenue (phone: 604-734- 0411) in fabulous Kitsilano.