Through the Eyes of Children, Tell the Wounds of Society

In both The South (1983) and The Spirits of the Beehive (1973), Erice enters the complex and imaginative world from a child's perspective, penetrating their innocent souls and guiding the audience to consider the world through children’s eyes (Lindo, 2018).

 

Erice has a talent to create an atmosphere of strangeness and mystery for his characters, and bring this atmosphere envelops the audience and takes them to know Spain (Lindo, 2018). In The Spirits of the Beehive, Erice shows a damaged family under Franco's governance, while in The South, he portrays a father who has a failed life as a result of the Spanish Civil War conflict.

Erice exposes the brokenness of the adult world by capturing the richness and intensity of emotions from children perspectives (Godwin, 2018). In The Spirits of the Beehive, Erice describes Spanish people’s lives as oppressed as a bee in the hive of Franco's rule from Anna's perspective. And from Estrella's point of view, we see the helplessness and pain of her father, Augustine. 

 

Born in the South, Augustine was a republican and imprisoned after Franco's reign, and after his release from prison, he ran away from home because of disagreements with his father and was eventually forced to part with his beloved. Hence, for Augustine, the South was a confinement he was desperate to escape, a heartfelt love at a time of war, and a wound that could never be mended. Although deep in Estrella's memory, his father was a magic man and cared for her in every way; this was all destroyed when Augustine was caught desiring to look for his previous lover. Since then, loneliness and melancholy have enveloped the middle-aged man, who suffered from the damage inflicted on society by the Civil War, while the final desperate suicide is Erice's attack on Franco's rule.

Furthermore, from the perspective of two girls, Erice expresses her dissatisfaction with the destruction of children's childhood in post-war Spanish society. In The Spirits of the Beehive, although Anna's childhood is portrayed as innocent, her sister Isabelle is shown as a victim of the adult world. In The South, Erice still shows the audience that the adult world strikes a blow against the innocence of children.

Estrella's early childhood is wonderful, with loving parents who kept her life separate from the awful adult world. Yet the day she discovered her father's secret, she gradually peered through the doors of the adult world to see the pain and trauma of that world. When a child believes that she is an extension of her parents, it means that the child is coming out of childhood and experiencing vertigo that comes with the adult world (Godwin, 2018). The children's sense of security is destroyed and with it the need to face the adult world under the weight of the dreaded Franco's rule. Henceforth, Estrella’s childhood no longer is pure and happy.

Erice's films always give the impression that they can cross the screen threshold and enter the audience's psyche to tell them the truth.

Reference list:

Erice, V. (Director), Querejeta, E. (Producer), Linares, J. L. L. & Morales, A. G. (Writer). (1983). The South [Motion Picture]. Spain: Chloë Productions, Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográficas & Televisión Española.

Godwin, K. G. (2018). Victor Erice’s El Sur (1983): Criterion Blu-ray review [Online]. Retrieved January 6, 2022, from: https://www.cageyfilms.com/2018/07/victor-erices-el-sur-1983-criterion-blu-ray-review/

Lindo, E. (2018). El Sur: A Complete Incomplete Film [Online]. Retrieved January 6, 2022, from: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5759-el-sur-a-complete-incomplete-film