Memories came out of hiding, but not emotions; not even the memories of emotions.
- Julian Barnes — Flaubert’s Parrot
Words like “haunting” and “elliptical” fail to express the beauty of Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive. Imbued with doubt, naivete and the overarching paranoia of Franco’s Spain, Erice constructs a narrative of innocence and loss, one that spans the gulf between parent and child, creating a story of tremendous power, muted by a poverty of expression, painful remembrances and an unwillingness to admit deep feelings. As Franco’s Spain becomes a metaphorical placeholder for today’s political turmoil, Erice transports us to that time and place: one frozen by an anonymous, banal, and bureaucratic evil that reduces us to zombies paralyzed by fear, the fear that those feelings and memories we’ve forgotten may someday come flooding back to drown us with regret, a fear that strips us of humanity altogether, leaving us naked before its unnameable dread.
2 responses to “Frightened, walking in the dark woods, haunted by gods and monsters.”
I added this to my Netflix cue this morning, just after I read a thread about Pan’s Labyrinth where this title was thrown around a few times by Del Toro naysayers. Do I detect some kind of indirect comment about PL here or is this mere coincidence?
I haven’t seen PL yet, but there’s an undeniable connection based on what I’ve read and heard, which isn’t a bad thing at all. I think they’re very distinct directors. Del Toro could never make a movie as delicate as this one, nor could Erice have the visual intensity and violence that del Toro has mastered.
The Spirit of the Beehive became an instant favorite. Erice is like a Spanish Malick, and he’s made three films in the last 40 years, and I think that the other two are currently out of print.