Dispel the Political Fog and Call for Resistance

“It confirmed my feeling that a film could be an act of resistance, and I’m deeply indebted to that experience. In my own way I try to continue to resist and use film in that way.” (Andrew & Erice, 2004)

-- Victor Erice

 

When Erice was asked if he admitted to liking the use of metaphor in his films, Erice did not answer it outright, but he believed that in a time like that of Franco's dictatorship, cinema should serve as an expression of resistance and that he would take responsibility for it. 

 

In that era, the honeycomb window frame was the prison of the adult world, imprisoning the innocence of children and made into honey and wax. However, the young girl Anna is the best expression of rebellion against that oppressive age in the film The Spirits of the Beehive (1973). 

Anna lives in a family made up of a bee-obsessed father, a valentine-missing mother, a cruel sister Isabelle, and such a family, left with a shell of a drained soul, was the norm during Franco's reign. The Spirits of the Beehive links Anna's crisis to the country's crisis (Perriam, 2008). In this film, all the resistance from Erice against Franco's politics is voicelessly expressed from the perspective of Anna, the different young girl.

 

Although the strict censorship would not have permitted overt resistance, Erice uses an ambiguous technique that cleverly circumvents it and allows the audience to question dictatorial rule. (Russell, 2007). For example, the Frankenstein monster, who has always occupied a significant place in Anna's heart, is considered in the censorship to describe dissident politicians because of the Franco regime's habit of dehumanising its enemies and thus forcing them to survive only in silence, outside of public acceptance (Russell, 2007). What the censors do not know, however, under Erice's metaphorical expression, Anna's display of goodwill towards the Frankenstein monster blurs the line between good and evil and threatens the black and white logic of the Franco regime (Russell, 2007).

Additionally, Anna shows the audience the will and power to turn fiction into reality (Harper, 1991). Unlike adults who lead regular and futile lives like bees in a hive, Anna’s world is replaced by an ugly and banal Frankenstein, noisy hives, poisonous mushrooms and wounded communist fighters. 

And it is in this way, Erice attempts to wake up people who are willing to sink under the dictatorship and tell them what is real and what is right. Therefore, Erice's work presents a dichotomy between the notion of childhood as a time of imagination, creativity and innocence, on the other hand, the imitation of adult cruelty (Harper, 1991). Then Erice portrays two very different kinds of children, Anna, who is innocent, and Isabel, who has been twisted by Franco's politics and is evil. However, there is no doubt that Anna's upbringing defines a good childhood, just as standing up against the oppression of Franco's dictatorship is what the Spanish people should do.

The great thing about Erice is that he does use the language of cinema to express resistance, awakening Spanish without being discovered by the dictator.

Reference list:

Andrew, G. (Interviewer). Erice, V. (Interviewee). (2004). The Quiet Genius of Victor Erice [Interview transcript]. Retrieved January 6, 2022 from: https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-2-issue-6/the-quiet-genius-of-victor-erice/

Erice, V. (Director/Screenwriter) & Querejeta, E. (Producer). (1973). The Spirits of the Beehive [Motion Picture]. Spain: Bocaccio Distribución.

Harper, S. N. (1991). The Concept of Childhood in Victor Erice’s El espíritu de la colmena. España contemporáneaRevista de literatura y cultura, 4(2), 77-88.

Perriam, C. (2008). El espíritu de la colmena: Memory, Nostalgia, Trauma (Victor Erice, 1973). J. R. Resina (Ed.). Burning Darkness: A Half Century of Spanish Cinema (pp.61-81). Albany: State University of New York Press.

 

Russell, D. (2007). Monstrous Ambiguities: Victor Erice’s "El Espiritu de la colmena". Anales de la literatura española contemporánea. 32 (1), pp. 179-203.