The Spirit of the Beehive
Director: Victor Erice
Year Released: 1973
Rating: 2.0
Summaries of this picture talk about the fact that two little girls become fascinated with the movie Frankenstein, but that's because there's really not that much to it: it's a becalmed and serene picture about small-town life, with some wonderfully composed shots but a hollow interior. Erice relies too heavily on symbolism - mushrooms, bees, black trains, a classroom figure that needs organs (like Frankenstein's monster, obviously) - to represent post-war Spain instead of actual emotional development or involved storytelling (in other words, it's about surface details). Call me a miser, but casting doe-eyed children to look innocently at the world around them is not enough to generate identification in what I'm guessing is a 'larger' message.
