monsters, bees, and spirits
by
Douglas Messerli
Víctor
Erice, Ángel Fernández Santos, and Francisco J. Querejeta (screenplay, based on
a story by Victor Erice and Ángel Fernández Santos), Victor Erice (director) El espíritu de la colmena (The
Spirit of the Beehive) / 1973
In
conjunction with his show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, filmmaker
Guillermo Del Toro was asked to curate a series of films, the most recent of
which, Victor Erice’s 1973 El espíritu de
la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive),
was viewed by Howard, our friend Pablo, and me this past week.
Erice takes us to the beehive world not
only through the intellectually removed father and husband of this work,
Fernando (Fernando Fernán Gómez), who spends most of his days caring for his
honeybees, but through the entire honeycombed windows of the family’s house and
honey-colored light that infuses this entire film.
Fernando’s younger wife, Teresa (Teresa
Gimpera), on the other hand, is a true romantic, pining for her lost lover of
another time, and writing him secret love notes she posts to the local trains mail boxes
which pause in her village.
At the center of this film, however, are
the couple’s two young daughters, Isabel (Isabel Tellería) and Ana (Ana
Torrent), who, except when they are in school, are left pretty much to their own
devices, wandering the local village and fields. Early in the film, they attend
a mobile cinema screening, in the town’s city hall, of James Whale’s Frankenstein, brought by Franco forces
to this village and others presumably to show the dangers of “monsters” within
the society, people who did not obey the Franco norms who needed to be
destroyed so that the society might safely survive.
Ana, however, is not so much frightened
by the monster but is curious about "Why did he kill the girl, and why did
they kill him after that?" Her older sister, a bit impatient with Ana’s
naiveté gives the “realist” answer: the monster did not truly kill the girl and
she isn’t really dead. But she then adds in admonition that might surely have been
supported by the Spanish Catholic Church: such monsters do exist, but as
spirits, that can be called into life by simply speaking to them: “It’s me,
Ana.”
Ana is even more convinced by such
unearthly spirits when her sister takes her, across a vast unplowed field
(clearly representing the failure of Franco forces to help the farmers to
create a rich land) to a crumbling empty sheepfold. No spirits appear, but Ana
does see a large footprint that seems suggest someone or something has visited
the spot.
That
evening the Francoist forces arrive, discovering the soldier and shoot him to
death.
Having found the coat and watch in the
dead soldier’s possession, the police visit the gentle beekeeper, searching for
an explanation. Fortunately, they presume it had been stolen; yet he knows the
truth by watching his family members’ reactions to his report of the incident.
When Ana returns, she finds only remnants
of blood, magically suggesting her bond with the dead soldier.
Followed by her father, she bolts and is unable to be found for several hours.
Along her route she may or may not have
eaten of the poisonous mushrooms which her father had previously pointed out to
her and her sister. In any event, she is eventually found unharmed. But her
recovery is slow, and she seems to lie in a kind of fitful coma, suffering the
events, assures their doctor, that will eventually be forgotten.
But perhaps Ana has gone into a kind of
trance, much like her mother’s romantically-inclined memories of her past.
Although Ana’s mother finally comes to realize that the past is over, as we see
her throw yet another of her letters into the fire, Ana links herself with it,
calling out into the night, “It’s me, Ana,” connecting herself with a
pre-Franco world that is the only one which the citizens can hope for. Surely
the spirits of the past, whoever they are, cannot be as terrible as the
monsters with whom they have been forced to live.
Los Angeles,
September 15, 2016
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