Two things about this movie:
1. I did not understand it at all.
2. I loved it.
Six-year-old Ana (Ana Torrent) lives in a Castilian village in newly Francoist Spain. At/near the beginning of the movie, she sees James Whale's Frankenstein and is captivated by it. When she and her sister Isabel (Isabel Tellería) are laying in bed that night, Ana asks the older girl about the motives of the monster and the mob. She wants to know why violence happened--why the monster kills the girl, why the people kill the monster. Isabel doesn't know, but when Ana accuses her of ignorance, Isabel reacts by lying: the monster is alive, and he lives nearby!
You guys, this is great. The characters of Ana and Isabel are maybe my favorite depictions of childhood in any movie I've ever seen. (Plus, fun side effect of making two prepubescent girls the main characters: this film passes the Bechdel test so hard.)
Ana becomes preoccupied with the monster, whom she wants to befriend. And Isabel elaborates on her lie, of course. Here's how you summon the monster. Here's where the monster lives. Ana returns to the abandoned building--the monster's house--without her sister. She looks around, and you can see that she's hesitant, nearing skeptical. But she sees a footprint that's gargantuan in comparison with her own tiny foot, and an incredibly subtle change comes over her face. I got so excited in that moment. She's on the verge of knowing better, but she pulls back just in time.
Look, I could happily describe how each scene of this movie made me feel, but that would be ridiculous, so I'm just going to say that there's a lot of important, loaded stuff in this movie: mushrooms, loneliness, a Republican soldier, bees, a family in pieces. If symbolism were physically dense in the same way as celestial bodies, this movie would be a fucking neutron star. I'm often impatient with that sort of thing, but this time I was too busy being engrossed. And this movie--because it is really, really good--is 100% enjoyable even if you, like me, know nothing about fascism, Spain, or filmmaking. The acting, writing, and direction are as confident as they are understated; the cinematography (by Luis Cuadrado) and music (by Luis de Pablo) are flawless. If I recommend this movie any harder, I am going to pull a muscle.
El Espíritu de la Colmena could have been prescribed to me as medicine. When I watched it yesterday, I was so sad, and I needed something as sad as I was--but still undespairing. And frankly, I needed to see something that made me feel but didn't even try to make me understand.
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