Bee Season (2005)

Such a frustrating disappointment

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This film, about a disconnected family and members pursuing spirituality each in their own way, introduces the viewer to many interesting ideas, plot twists, and spiritual potentials but fails each idea it promises to unveil.Unfortunately, the characters themselves have been written as one dimensional, unsympathetic, disenchanted, even frustrating. Their nearly total non-communication with each other is only exacerbated by the poor dialog they do share in very few moments.The pacing is ponderous. These are visual vignettes, but no actual relationships or personal progress develops.We really don't know at the end of the film who these people are, and most importantly, we are happy to leave them to their own imprisonment and disinterest.If the Mother is excited about her pursuits, we see nearly none of it. If the son is excited about his conversion, we see none of it at all. If the daughter is excited about the spelling Bee, we see none of it.Even the pain of the family's tragedy is buried so completely that we can easily mistake it for extremely bad acting. But an actor must have a script, and here there is none.As for the spirituality, no responsible father would ever dabble in Kabbalah or prana without proper guidance, and to do so with one's own daughter is nothing short of reckless endangerment.But again, we don't really know who the father actually is, and in most scenes he seems pleasant enough.The film winds up as a "poser" of spiritual notions, presenting things that reflect a very superficial understanding, and no actual experience with its subject matter - neither in family dynamics, character development or spirituality.Yet, the source material is an interesting juxtaposition of ideas that could have been legitimately explored by real characters. Fortunately, that film has already been made a few times by writers and directors who actually knew something of legitimate spiritual experience and succeeded entirely in bringing it to the screen: The Razor's Edge(original version) with George Marshall, Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power; or Frank Kapra's Lost Horizon, or Douglas Trumbull's Brainstorm.

Bee Season is flatly based on the premise that words are ultimately incomprehensible and therefore magic. The movie makes a direct link from kabbala-sorcery to spelling bees in a way that is absolutely hilarious, but it seems the filmmakers will be the last to get the joke.According to the dark and mysterious mythos of the movie, one can become god and so achieve telepathic and prophetic powers -- by meditating on the mysterious spelling of words. The more difficult a word's spelling, the more incomprehensible, and therefore the more magical. Rearrange words and magic numbers appear. Study the kabbala and you will have supernatural visions and become an expert speller. Oh boy.Misinterpret the secret kabbala hidden in the spelling of English words and you will go insane and become a serial thief, as happened to one main character.Although the movie was made in dead earnest, it is an unintentional commentary on how primitive human beings trapped in the Stone Age can walk among us in this age of high technology. Indeed technology and the complexities of spelling in English can stump any or most of us, but the primitive human sees in the inscrutability secret magic.The movie's dead earnest handling of superstition can have you falling out of your chair in laughter, as it did me.Or the movie's failure to show how spelling is magic and the movie's slow, very slow, move to an embarrassingly predictable end will have you falling out of your chair asleep.

I can't understand why so many people have given this film such a bad wrap. Well, I guess it's no action flick or thriller, but it is one of the most complex, layered, beautiful, thought-provoking films I have seen in a long time. I am an aspiring writer, and if I ever write something that comes even close to representing an interesting analysis of life as this film does then I will consider myself a success. It was also visually absolutely stunning and whilst there were, for me, no single outstanding performances I thought all the actors did a wonderful job.If you like head films that challenge, question and rip back the layers, then ignore the lowish rating and give this film a go.

Bee Season is not exactly what I expected. I pictured a heart warming film about trials and tribulations and ultimate success. Instead, this film was a walk on the eerie side of mysticism and emotional problems that haunt everyday people. The daughter hears the words in her spelling bees talk to her and can spell words she never even heard before. What's with that? The father takes her under his wing and teachers her kabalistic stuff of how the words she hears can connect her with God. The mother is a kleptomaniac looking to catch the light in stolen knick-knacks so she can talk with her dead parents, or at least come to grips with their deaths 30 years before. The son gets involved in hari christnas because of a pretty girl. The father is almost oblivious to his families impending disaster. An interesting little film that is well made and well acted, but not an uplifting adventure of any kind.