jungophile First off, I was watching this film because I decided to go through the Sight and Sound poll of best films and check out a few I hadn't seen. "Spirit of the Beehive" didn't really grab me that much in the description, but I thought the slow pacing might bring to mind the kind of art house style created by Michaelangelo Antonioni in his "ennui trilogy" which I am consistently fascinated by even after several repeat viewings.I'll be honest, I was bored throughout the first 45 minutes or so. However, Ana Torrent, the primary child actor, has an amazing face that Erice's camera just adores, so I hung in. Gradually, I came to a more open-hearted way of seeing this film just for what it is, rather than having any expectations of it having to "do" something to draw me in.This film graciously asks you to open up to it, and if you aren't willing to do that; well, perhaps you've seen the kind of reviews here saying how this film is dull and pretentious.There are sublime gifts to be had in the experience of viewing "Beehive," but it does ask you to expand your perceptual awareness in a way I feel helpless in trying to elucidate precisely. All I can say is three-quarters of the way in, I surrendered to it with humility, and it started feeling like a work of art.I'm sure the situation is similar with people who find Antonioni's films dull and pretentious. His critically acclaimed trilogy (two of which made the best of list) can seem excruciatingly boring to some, but in my case, I totally "got" where Antonioni was coming from and felt right at home in an instant, just like many of the positive reviewers here have described with Erice's film.This is why I love viewing foreign films of distinction; they really compel me to imagine a wider, inter-dimensional plane of perception.

Harhaluulo54 The Spirit of the Beehive is dull and empty shell of a movie with ridiculously slow pacing. The movie in generally has nothing going on. The only reason why people seem to like it and think it is great, is the deep symbolism it has to offer. People be like "I got it, it was deep and hence it is good." Deepness is good, but this movie is easily the least solid thing created by this medium, offering nothing but shallow and irrelevant scenes and zero plot which lead to a lacking conclusion which doesn't conclude more than any of the former scenes. This movie is the prime example of a movie where there is nothing to get, but the fans will get "it" anyway. This movie is the reason why South Park made an episode about "The Poo That Took A Pee." For those who do not know, it was literally a story about poo taking a pee, written by an 8 year old, but people thought it was socially thought-provoking and deeply philosophical work about the current sate of our society and human nature. This movie's fans prove that apparently you don't have to think anything on your own while making a movie because the fans will do the thinking for you and refer to the movie with words like epic, smart and deep while the only word you need is tedious.

SnoopyStyle It's somewhere on the Castilian plateau around 1940. A traveling movie show brings the classic Frankenstein to town attracting all the eager youngsters. Ana and her older sister Isabel are fascinated by the meeting of the little girl and the monster. Ana can't understand why the girl was killed but Isabel assures her that it's all fake. In fact, she's seen the monster alive in real life as a spirit in the night and living in an abandoned farmhouse nearby. They go there and imagine the invisible giant. Then Ana finds a real wounded Republican soldier starts hiding in the farmhouse from the Franco forces. The girls' father tends to the beehives and writes while their mother daydreams about her lover who had gone to war.This is a pretty slow movie. It has some interesting shots, and a lot of long uncut scenes. The girls are amazing. The scene of them watching the movie is glorious. There's only one scene where the family is all together. It's not that loving family. Quite frankly, the parents can be just figures off screen for all I care. Ana Torrent has such a doll face. The camera can exist just by pointing at her. The problem is that this movie has no tension most of the time. It exists in its world but it takes forever to get to anywhere. If the movie wants to take the Frankenstein comparison to the fullest, it should have included a Dr Frankenstein in the movie. They could have added news footage of the war and Franco. Or maybe have a big commander as the doctor.

coltcompton This is one of the most ponderously dull movies I have ever seen. I have read about all the 'metaphors' herein and I am not a dumb person, and this is absolute drivel. I understand that the characters represent Spain and Franco and it's very political. I understand the undertones about the power of youthful imagination and the magic of cinema. That being said, I have no idea how it is rated as the best movie from Spain ever, much less the best movie of the seventies. This is supposedly one of Guillermo Del Toro's faves, and I have to say I enjoyed every single one of his movies, even the atrocious Blade II, far more. To give you some perspective, I LOVE the movie Solaris (the original), which I thought was the slowest paced film ever made until I had watched a single hour of this movie. If you can get through the first hour without going into an art-house coma or becoming unspeakably pretentious about supposedly 'metaphorical' pseudo imagery, then I salute you. Supposedly this movie is heavy on metaphor, which I take to mean that the movie is a metaphor for what it must be like to be a child with the dullest existence possible. The little girl that plays Ana is very good, but this movie is akin to reading a book of Richard Dawkins' with a hipster outside a cafe in France while listening to the Shins: That is, as pretentious and boring as possible.Do yourself a favor and watch the beginning if for no other reason than that you can then argue about it when someone brings it up at a party trying to sound smarter than you. Don't blame me if you are falling asleep twenty minutes in though.