When was the last time a movie made you swoon, I mean physically? I waited around 30 years to view this quiet, contemplative film touching on an excursion into a child's mind and a portrait of innocence not yet seen or experienced, by me anyway. After finally importing a copy, it was worth waiting all that time and a textbook example of one of those quite rare instances when you realize that yes, cinema can be magic and transcendent. I'm not going to throw words around like 'masterpiece' and the like with this film as that would somehow seem vulgar. What it deserves is a quiet respect, which I felt also emanating strongly from the film itself. Not a lot happens. In a small Castilian outpost, James Whale's Frankenstein is shown for the populace. From an austere homefront, two young girls navigate sweeping beige and brown plains and share a discovery. One forms a spiritual connection which will remain with her always. Fragile, slow and haunting, Spirit Of The Beehive is about many things, you just have to construe it on your own personal level. And believe....
Review of The Spirit of the Beehive
