On Criterion, I watched The Spirit of the Beehive, directed by Victor Erice, and written by Erice and Ángel Fernández-Santos. It is a Spanish film from 1973, and considered one of the best films of 1970s Spanish cinema. It takes place in 1940 in the Castilian countryside just after the civil war, where the Franco regime has won (and still existed in its waning years at the time of the film's release), and centers on a rural family, who are often all separated in a large manor and only spend one scene all together.
The film's main focus is on Ana (Ana Torrent), a seven-year old girl who is stunned after watching a local screening from a traveling projectionist of James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein, particularly the scene where the monster accidentally kills a little girl. This scene awakens in her thoughts about life and death, losing her innocence both post-civil war and analyzing this scene. She asks her sister Isabel (Isabel Tellería) why the monster killed her, and she would reply that he didn't kill her because the movie is fake, nobody died. But then later, when prompted more, she messes with Ana's gullibility by telling her that the monster is a spirit that can be called on, haunting their home. Fantasy and reality get confused for Ana, when she finds a wounded Republican soldier hiding in their barn, and sees him like the misunderstood monster, or like a spirit.
The family feels like they act in a daze post-war, often busy in their own pursuits and thoughts. The father, Fernando (Fernando Fernán Gómez), is a beekeeper who attends to his hives, is quiet and withdrawn, and has a very serious, taciturn air about him. The mother, Teresa (Teresa Gimpera), is significantly younger than the father, and writes letters to a former lover, and the film shows a photo montage of her youth with her lover, like a past life before she settled with her husband and had children. Ana is often wandering alone or with Isabel through the countryside, and when Ana finds the soldier, she gives him an apple and ties his shoes, the acts of kindness that a child as young as her can show him. Isabel, meanwhile, has more of a mean streak in her, where she tries to choke the family cat before it scratches her to run away, and she scares her sister by playing dead or creeping up from behind her with large gloves.
The film is slow-moving, and has a haunting feel to it, like times in life after major tragedies that affect the world, where everything can feel empty, and people are moving in slow-motion. Ana is awakened by the film, questioning life, and showing a small act of rebellion in helping the soldier without realizing it's forbidden.
I had heard of this film from two podcasts, Critically Acclaimed Network and Zebras in America/Popcorn Eschaton, and it sounded really fascinating to me, a film that is inspired by Frankenstein, but is about childhood, loss of innocence, the power of cinema to change someone's perspective, and historical fiction post-war. I read a lot more in-depth views on Letterboxd, and don't want to imitate other people's more cultured analysis, so I will say that I really liked this movie a lot, found it really intriguing and sad and beautiful, and that I'm glad I checked it out.
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