The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

Director Victor Erice's films, with his painterly images, languid pace, and patient working methods (three films in the past 30 years), are reminiscent of the lyricism of Terrence Malick. The Spirit of the Beehive is about a little girl who, in the child's dreamy desire to make sense of her world, constructs a Frankenstein monster of both benevolence and violence. Its depiction of childhood is tender, the story simple and clear. Yet what makes the film so gorgeously affecting is its summoning of a difficult to grasp intensity beneath its placid surface, where emotional extremes take on a supernatural aura and hover in the chest like a thick tremulous cloud. Realizing one's "spirit" involves a melancholy understanding of life's random potential for joy and sorrow and that the switch can be sudden, as when the Frankenstein monster switches from playing with to killing a child. This amalgam of conflicting emotions comes from humanity and yet seems to operate from without, and is a wonderful metaphor for the swirl surrounding war. (The Spanish Civil War has ended but the stink still hangs in the air like an uneasy mist.) Ana's spirit is her own, but the title refers to the universality of this essence. With her wide and brown-as-a-chestnut eyes and shyly bold demeanor, Ana Torrent is exceptional as Ana. In her search for the spirit she registers the complicated layers of a child realizing death. Erice elicits another fantastic young performance from Isabel Telleria, who plays Ana's older sister Isabel with a mischievous, vaguely menacing air. Achieving a beauty of ache-inducing intensity, cinematographer Luis Cuadrado shoots the Castilian village and countryside using astounding gradations of wheat and amber colors. ~ Michael Buening, All Movie Guide