THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE ( EL ESPIRITU DE LA COLMENA )

Some regard this masterpiece as sheer poetry , others as magic itself , most as both sublimely combined.

Many a thesis could be written about the opening credits alone.Drawings that suggest some of the thematic landmarks , accompanied by haunting yet enchanting music.



The drawings of the opening overture sequence subtly  position  the viewer firmly into seeing the story from the perspective of the Children.

This scene allows you to share the most intimate secret thoughts , hidden from even their parents , whispered  in the most delicate barely audible hushed tones.



One is drawn into their Universe of inquisitiveness , curiousity and hope.Realising , the best we can give them in return is a mere world , a flawed one at that.

It is difficult to imagine in the exquisite perfect performances you are watching Children playing a role , not seasoned actors exhibiting a craft.

So much could be , has been , and will be written about the many myriad overflowing layers of metaphor , symbolism and meanings of this quite remarkable transcendent timeless work of Art that it is difficult to know when and where to start.This review  comes close to superficially touching and attesting the profound enthralling quality it has on filmmakers and casual viewing public alike.

I once showed a dozen or so classic non-American films to students at the Royal College of Art. To my surprise, despite the fact that the list included the work of such world-renowned directors as Luis Bunuel, Satyajit Ray and Kenji Mizoguchi, the film they fell in love with was Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive. They rightly thought it close to magic. It is one of the most beautiful and arresting films ever made in Spain, or anywhere in the past 25 years or so.

It is only right we have got so far before we even come to the political and social commentary undertones of this, more ways than one, purest quixotic art.This is a film to be enjoyed and savoured even if only watched in the surface tale of Children and Imaginings.

The film , in an odd way , was helped by the censor.Originally the film envisioned the Child Character Ana ( in the picture above) being played by an adult Ana looking back.But keeping Ana as a child coming to terms with the Frankenstein of the Adult world gives the film a universal quality that goes beyond borders and time to touch the spirit any person from any society that rules by creating or manipulating fear.The review below looks at a very few of the symbolic themes a sophisticated audience observing under the conditions known as "Franco aesthetics" would have honed into.

The gaping holes in the plot of The Spirit of the Beehive and the mysterious motivations of its characters are typical of this "Francoist aesthetic," a term used to describe artistically ambitious movies of the time that made use of fantasy and allegory. These characteristics, which remain so magical to modern audiences, were used in the period as a form of indirect critique.

As said before there are so many metaphors , sub-plots , symbolism and double meanings in this extraordinary work it can be the mother of a thousand thesis or more.The example in the link below gives an indication of how drunk with meaning a close deep study of the film and its symbols can get.

Here is a quote from the article.

The colour red is important in the film. It symbolizes the red cap of the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) mushroom. The mushroom is shown during the opening titles, and the fly agaric is also mentioned in the mushroom picking scene with the father. On the children's green (forest) headboards of their beds are red flowers with white dots, painted so as to resemble the mushroom, and their sheets also contain red flowers. And even Ana's mother is wearing a red shirt with white dots. Ana's school case, which she carries around everywhere, is also red: like the red mushroom it is a vessel of knowledge. St Jerome in the painting has a red cardinal's hat, like a red mushroom cap ("cap" comes from the Latin "caput", meaning "head").

And we could go on and on about The Cat (one of the greatest performances by an Animal on record) or the correspondence of Teresa , or the landscape.And , of course , Franco and Frankenstein and last and not least Bees.

The best way to enjoy the film is to watch it (below) and make it mean what it means to you.

TONY BENN WILL AND TESTAMENT at CELTIC CONNECTIONS

'I got a death threat last week. I haven’t had one in ages, so I was chuffed' (Tony Benn, 86). A unique preview of his forthcoming documentary film, followed by a Q and A with Tony. For the first time ever, through intimate quasi-confessional interviews and his personal, photographic and film archive, Will and Testament reveals Benn’s very human face behind the political mask. The documentary is an exclusive and deeply personal look at the life of a national treasure – a frank, candid and sometimes painful exploration of the great themes of life.

Doing a retrospective of an Actor or Artist is one thing , Artists are never as accountable in the full glare of history as must be a political track-record of delivery.

 A failing he has is that his record whilst in cabinet during many struggles and challenges for ordinary People can be construed as troubling in that he seems to have found his backbone at a later date and not during his tenure.Theres no getting away that in the business end of his career he was a bit too below the radar.As one commentator with an interest of the Labour Cabinet policy in Northern Ireland stated "There was a ceasefire in 1975 which stopped the targeting of British military personnel... the sectarian slaughter continued unabated, and Britiain's labour government (of which Tony Benn was a cabinet member) used the opportunity to gather massive amounts of intel in preparation for arrests later".Other observers of the struggle for equal rights and justice in Northern Ireland has identified this period as a time when the Republican Movement was nearly destroyed by activities of the security services and quasi-official assisted paramilitaries at the time of so-called ceasefire whilst the Equal Rights advocated waiting for the cabinet to deliver non-discriminatory laws and justice. 

But , to his credit , Tony Benn , after his peak of Political Influence in the form of collective Cabinet decision making policy was well behind him , has gone a long way to paying a political and active penance for enough time afterwards to atone himself several times over.



Leaving Parliament to devote more time to Politics was the Mantra Espoused when weighing-in with immense energy , robustness , commitment  and supreme resolve to social justice issues at home and abroad.

It has to be said there is a sickeningly mawkish,sentimental,gouey,gushing,slurpingly sticky,whimsical,New-Labour stage Managed , uncomfortable,artificial , false vibe, syrupy, treacly spoon-fed American style inauthentic gushing spin to the whole proceedings.Such things should be left for the like of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair , they could do with them.



All this is unnecessary , ultimately , Tony Benn does not need to pretend he is an ordinary man.For all his fans and supporters , knowing he is a privileged man who has concerns for the lives and struggles of ordinary People at Heart need be all his Will and Testament.

But dont get me wrong , i am a fan of Tony Benn , though i wish we could have got more the indefatigable man of action ,hope and encouragement and less , as he dismissively identifies , a flowing eulogy of a "National Treasure".

Just to balance things out here is an example of what Tony Benn is , can do , and hopefully always should be doing  until his last breathes.

BOXING DAY at the GFT

Based on the Leo Tolstoy short story parable Master and Man written in the last few years of the 19th Century this film is set in the present uncertain economic climate.

The Master in this case is a property speculator buying houses for a fraction of their worth from banks with a portfolio of foreclosed properties.The role of the Servant (Man) is a chauffeur having been chased away by his estranged wife from personally giving presents to his kids , who do not particularly want to see him even at Christmas.The Master takes solace from his woes by going on a confidence-trick funded trip to garner more investments to fund his Familys profligate lifestyle.The Man is reduced to finding consolation from the bottle to forget his disintegrating marriage and doomed access to his Children.




This Guardian review captures the structure of the film of one of Tolstoys most compact and compellingly accessible stories about an universal theme in which caring for others and sacrificing your own selfish needs is the best way to attain personal satisfaction and true Happiness.

Danny Huston takes the lead in all three pictures. In Boxing Day he's Basil, a desperate businessman who leaves his family in sunny Los Angeles at Christmas to make a quick killing buying and selling foreclosed properties around snow-covered Denver, Colorado. His unscrupulous charm is chillingly revealing when he cons an old lady into giving him the pin number of the church fund she administers. His false sense of superiority emerges when he insists that Nick (Matthew Jacobs), the alcoholic English chauffeur he hires in Denver, must call him "Sir". Rose, who wrote, directed and edited the film, skilfully charts the uneasy relationship between the two men, both losers in their own way, as they visit the abandoned properties Basil has on his list.

In the film the epiphany moment when the lead character loses his clumsy petit-capitalist whimsical justifications to a point when he is willing to give his own self for the preservation of a kindred spirit is considerably short of conviction , giving way rather to sententiousness ,  the best that can be said for the Film is that it will lead the viewer to develop an  interest to seek out and read the Short Story which will be the real star of the movie.

On the note of the short story here is a Guardian review of it by Chris Power , check out the 4 comments to get a truer perspective of the richness in meaning of Tolstoys short story parables.

"Master and Man" is a painstakingly crafted parable that stays vital despite its heavy symbolism, and whose characters do more than merely represent virtue and avarice. Nikita is kind and pleasant, but he's also a drunk who chopped up his wife's most treasured clothes. Brekhunov is odious but sees himself as a "benefactor". They are trapped in a hostile limbo between this world and the next, and they are 200 metres off the road in a snowstorm. Binding all this together, and making it a masterpiece, is complex prose that has the apparent simplicity of bare trees in a field of snow.