Open Writing

The undercurrent

The 1973 Spanish film Spirit of the Beehive centres on a family in a small, isolated, very quiet village in 1940. Ana, the wide-eyed younger daughter aged about 7, is the main character. As the story unfolds, we see the world, her world, through her eyes. She has a slightly older sister, Isabel, who takes pleasure in teasing her.

Their father goes out to work but, at home, is preoccupied with bee-keeping and writing in his journal. He writes about bees. Their mother seems to wander around the house with few real interests, occasionally writing letters to someone who is not named but who might have been a lover she lost earlier in the Spanish Civil War.

In one of her letters, she writes:

"Nothing can bring back the happy days we spent together... but I pray to God I may have the joy of seeing you again.... Only the walls are left of the house you remember. I often wonder where the things we had then ended up. It is not nostalgia. It's hard to feel nostalgia after what we've been through these past few years... I look around me and see so much that's missing, so much that's destroyed, and so much sadness. We've lost...our ability to see life."

There are clues here to the way the bloody Civil War has changed their lives. They dare not talk about it, for fear of recrimination, but a great deal lies behind her written words — only the walls are left... what we've been through... so much that's destroyed... so much sadness.

She cycles to the railway station, posts her letters on the train, and never receives replies. Towards the end of the film, after someone has been shot, she throws her last letter into the fire. That might be a hint that her lover's eventual return has ended in tragedy. We are not told. We have to guess.

Fernando, the girls' father, is far more cryptic in his lengthy journal entries about bees and beehives:

"...the diverse and unceasing activity of the masses... The ruthless effort... The comings and goings of feverish intensity... The final repose of death."

He finishes this entry with:

"Someone who watched those things, after staring in awe, quickly looked away, his face showing a nameless and sad horror."

It is significant that he immediately crosses out that sentence. It is something which cannot be said, for fear of recrimination.

His comments echo the more overt reaction of the Spanish artist Picasso whose great painting "Guernica" (1937) portrayed and expressed the horror of the bombing by Fascists, aided by Germans, of the town of that name.

Meanwhile, the two little girls are not aware of this dark undercurrent of fear and sadness. At least, Ana, the youngest girl, is not. Her older sister Isabel seems in her behaviour to be aware of what has been happening even if she does not understand it. The idea of death is certainly in her thinking. It influences her strange attitude towards Ana.

It is in this context that the major motif or symbol within the film arises. At school, the girls' teacher has a crudely made life-size cardboard cut-out image of a man. She uses it to teach simple (and discreet) anatomy. The children have to place bones, organs and eyes in the correct places. When the cut-out is unveiled for class, the children have to greet it as though it is a real person, saying "Good morning" to it. The symbolism of this does not become apparent until the girls go to see a film being shown at the village hall.

The film is the grainy old black and white version of "Frankenstein" with Boris Karloff playing the monster.

That evening, at bedtime, Ana asks her sister why the monster killed the girl and why he himself was killed. Isabel explains that it was only a film, it wasn't real. "Besides," she adds, "I saw him alive... in a place I know near the village". Questioned further by the inquisitive Ana, she explains that he isn't a ghost: "He's a spirit. Spirits don't have bodies. That's why you can't kill them."

To be continued.

Reference:
The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973, DVD, Optimum Releasing.
© Copyright Brian Barratt 2010