Everything is fake!

Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
Screenplay and Direction: Victor Erice

This offering is said the best film ever to come out of Spain. To a movie connoisseur, this film is all about what filmmaking is all about. It is about the depiction of subliminal messages in symbolism and in such a subtle manner that beats the censors but not the intended target, the audience.

To a regular filmgoer, the movie would be as exciting as watching paint dry. It is relatively slow, with frequent long pauses between takes. It is said that it was intentional to drive home the point about Spain's tumultuous times under the fascist dictator General Francisco Franco between 1939 and 1975. It tried to show how people led hollow lives; there was silence due to the dearth of human economic activities and governmental censorship that altered people's reality.

It narrates a family of four, a father, a mother and two young sisters with a live-in maid. Both the parents are obviously not on cordial terms. Both of them seemed to be engaged in their own activities. Father (Fernando) is into writing poems and tending to his beehives day in day out. Mother (Theresa) is in her own world, writing letters to an unknown lover.

The setting is 1940s Francoist Spain, in a small village where nothing is happening. The excitement of the day is the arrival of the movie screening van. That day, they were screening a butchered version of Frankenstein. The two sisters (Isabel and Ana) are watching the film. Ana, the younger one, is confused about the story and why Frankenstein is beaten up by the villagers in the movie. Isabel tells her that everything on film is unreal. Frankenstein is very much alive and is hiding in a nearby barn.

The director, Victor Erise, has a particular interest in telling stories from children's point of view. (See El Sur). Ana slow learns about death. She thinks that an army deserter who hides in the barn is the Frankenstein from the film. She feeds him and gives her father's coat to him. So, when the deserter gets killed, Fernando is summoned by the Francoist police, and Ana goes into hiding.

What about the beehive? What is the symbolism here? In my mind, the activities surrounding the beehive are pretty unproductive. The worker bees work laboriously in what seems like forever unfinished tasks. They appear perpetually busy, working non-stop. All their efforts, the intricate organisation, and the complicated distribution of labour mainly fatten the Queen Bee and ensure her fertility. The worker bee would probably get a pittance for his life-altering endeavours. His life purpose, much like the peasants in the lower rung of the pecking order in a fascist regime, is just to fatten the elites under the pretence of doing a noble job in the name of the country.

Capitalism, vulture capitalism and the post-truth era are not different from a fascist organisation. The commoners are sold a particular idea. That idea is emphasised and reminded repeatedly to generate a false sense of urgency in their minds. The powers-that-be utilises the power of media towards this end. We all end up doing a lot of unnecessary chores to satisfy the agenda of the top 1%.

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