The story takes place in 1940, after Franco’s forces had declared victory, but long before Republican resistance had been fully stamped out.
Although its principal character, the grade-schooler Ana, was probably too young to have clear memories from the beginning of the war, she is highly precocious.
We see her reading, studying photographs of her mother from the family album, and typing at her father Fernando’s desk.
And we see her simultaneously disturbed and thrilled by the sight of Frankenstein’s monster interacting with a girl her age in a Spanish-dubbed version of James Whale’s 1931 horror masterpiece, which is touring the Spanish countryside with a cinema on wheels.
Ana’s innocence absolves her of responsibility for seeing what her elders do not.
At various points, The Spirit of the Beehive invites audiences to identify with multiple characters besides Ana: her mischievous older sister Isabel, her depressed mother Teresa, her stoic father, and even her school teacher.
Ultimately, though, we connect most often and intensely with Ana. We repeatedly see close-ups of her rapt face, her eyes eagerly consuming the spectacle before them, no matter how insignificant it might seem to grown-ups.
Ana Torrent, the Spanish actress who made her film debut as Ana, has described the experience of making The Spirit of the Beehive as one in which she merely followed Erice’s instructions since she was too young to play someone else.
But that is not the impression we derive from watching Torrent on screen. On the contrary, her face conveys a deep awareness of the story.
Through Ana, we learn to discern details that someone with a grasp of the wider world would probably overlook, precisely the sort that people living under a ruthless authoritarian regime need to register.
The sort of details that people today need to register, whether they live in places where democratic institutions have already been dissolved or where the threat of that happening is palpably proximate.
Every time we see Ana’s eyes open wide, we are reminded how dangerous it is to close ours.
What makes The Spirit of the Beehive such a great film – and undoubtedly one of the best films ever to convey the perspective of children – is that this lesson never feels like one.
The film hurls us into Ana’s world, making us feel along with her rather than keeping us at a distance.
To be sure, Erice avoids didacticism because he had to. Even in Franco’s final years, when the severe authoritarianism of the fascist regime’s first decade had given way to a subtler approach, freedom of expression was still a minuscule shape on the horizon. But few works of art have done a better job of turning necessity into a virtue.
The Spirit of the Beehive’s form communicates what content dares not.
A sequence early in the film exemplifies this quality.
The evening after Frankenstein is shown in the town, we see the girls in their beds, discussing the monster.
Asked to keep the promise she made Ana during the screening and explain why he killed the little girl, Isabel declares that neither the girl nor the monster die, because they are fictional characters.
Isabel goes on to claim that the monster is actually a spirit rather than the creature with hands and feet that made such a big impression on Ana. We hear the sounds of heavy footsteps.
Then, the film cuts to a shot of their father walking around in his study below, waiting for the water in his mug to boil. The footsteps turned out to be his.
We next see Fernando hunched over a small radio, the kind that people used to build from kits, with a pair of headphones.
Although we cannot tell what he is listening to – or even whether he can hear anything at all – we perceive this line of communication with the outside world as a potential narrative catalyst.
Frankenstein also serves that function. But, whereas the arrival of the travelling cinema is a public event available to anyone who attends the screening, the radio in this scene signifies privacy and the potential for danger that comes with it.
This shot is followed by one in which Fernando is writing a letter at the desk in his study. In a voice-over, we hear him discussing how a person responded to his glass beehive, but not who that person is.
It’s a distinctly negative assessment, focusing on the bees’ ceaseless activity and their lack of individuality. Somebody looking for a metaphor for Spanish society under Franco can certainly find it here, though the analogy could apply to all human striving.
After Fernando falls asleep in his chair, we cut to a few shots of bees and one of his hive, sitting on a table.
At this point, the film cuts to a close-up of his wife in bed, alone. The light streaming into the room tells us that we are well into the morning.
First we see Teresa turn her head towards the camera, resting on her side. Then we hear the sounds of someone we presume to be Fernando entering the bedroom.
She closes her eyes, pretending to be asleep. And even though she opens them briefly on two occasions once he enters the room, she closes them again, not wanting to make a connection.
Without a single word passing between the couple, this sequence shows us how far apart they have drifted.
We don’t see Fernando and Teresa together until late in the film, when they have breakfast together. Even then, they seem to be occupying different worlds.
Although we first see a shot of Fernando and then one of Teresa, it isn’t a typical shot-reverse shot sequence because they do not speak or look at each other.
The camera only returns to the father after showing us Isabel and Ana eating breakfast between their parents, further reinforcing the sense that the couple’s relationship is irreparably damaged.
Only at the very end of the film, when we see Fernando once again asleep in his study, do we see Teresa interact with him, as she drapes a coat over his shoulders and carefully removes his glasses.
Although this is a tender moment, the fact that he is unconscious for it mirrors the bedroom scene, when he thinks his wife is asleep.
To Erice’s credit, The Spirit of the Beehive never overexplains.
During one sequence, which takes place while Fernando is out of town, we see a close-up of Teresa’s hand picking out notes on the family’s out-of-tune piano.
Then we see colourised photographs of her when she was younger and clearly a lot happier. Finally, we see Ana looking at the black-and-white shots in the family album.
Although scant, the evidence we are given suggests that Teresa had a great love who fought on the losing side in the war and had to flee the country. Her marriage is based on something other than romantic love.
Ana picks up on this but is too young to know what to do with this knowledge. But her youth does not prevent her from casting judgment on her community when she learns that the escaped partisan she has been visiting in an abandoned farm building has been murdered.
Only because Ana is a small child could her outrage get past the Spanish censors. In this regard, she functions somewhat like the children who star in many Iranian films, whose youth allows them to express feelings that grown-ups never could.
As The Spirit of the Beehive draws to a close, Ana runs away, seemingly disgusted by the resignation of her parents, the fact they have grown silent in the face of horror.
She hallucinates an encounter with Frankenstein’s monster before being found by a search party and brought home. We then see the doctor talking with Teresa about Ana’s condition.
“She looks our way but doesn’t recognise us,” Teresa tells him. “It‘s as if we didn’t exist.“
Considering what a keen observer Ana has been throughout the film, this statement reverberates with irony.
It’s because Ana sees so clearly that she refuses to recognise her family. The doctor explains to Teresa that Ana is young and will eventually come out of her stupor.
“Bit by bit,” he declares, “she‘ll begin to forget.“
That forgetting is the price of growing up in a state that isn’t free, as the Pacto del olvido that maintained détente in post-Franco Spain indicates.
Thankfully, the remarkable little girl we see in The Spirit of the Beehive always stays the same age.
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Screenshot courtesy of Victor Erice. All rights reserved.
