PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

wes-connors "Once upon a time, somewhere on the Castilian plateau, around 1940," a war-weary farming community is excited when the US film "Frankenstein" (1931) is to be shown at their town hall. Children are especially enthralled, with director Victor Erice focusing on two pre-teen girls, impressionable Ana Torrent (as Ana) and her mischievous older sister Isabel Telleria (as Isabel). The girls live on an expensive looking estate with their parents, beekeeper father Fernando Fernan Gomez (as Fernando) and modern-looking mother Teresa Gimpera (as Teresa)...Ana is especially mesmerized when Frankenstein's monster (Boris Karloff) meets a girl like herself (Marilyn Harris as "Maria"), and befriends the dangerous creature. Ana appears to identify with the little girl in the movie. She believes the movie characters are real and asks Isabel why they had to die. Isabel tells Ana everything in the movies is fake. The "Frankenstein" monster did not die, Isabel explains; in fact, his spirit resides in an abandoned lot near the girls' home. Of course, Ana decides to investigate. What she finds should surprise you...There are more than a few extra minutes in Mr. Erice's lyrical ode to mystery, fear and imagination. The only other compliant is that several of the characters do not really look like they exist in the year given. But, for all we know, shy little girls really did wear earrings in 1940. Erice's direction, the lonely performances, honey-colored locations, haunting music and Luis Cuadrado's photography give it a magical quality. All children have this magical time when events as they occur in "The Spirit of the Beehive" are entirely possibly, then we grow up.********* The Spirit of the Beehive (10/8/73) Victor Erice ~ Ana Torrent, Isabel Tellería, Fernando Gomez, Teresa Gimpera

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.

secondtake The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)Seen just for what it is, a story of a little girl and her precious innocence in a world seeming to teem with quiet adult mysteries, this is a beautiful and somewhat slow movie. Sometimes a movie can be so evocative and transporting, the slowness is a gift, a necessary quality for being absorbed and lost in another world. And an elegiac world, sad and embracing and heavenly all at once.For me, thought, the slow pace began to weigh down the better parts of the movie, and in the simpler parts it become a distraction. In a few sections with somewhat awkward acting (a scene between the main woman, a kind of Nordic looking troubled soul, and a doctor, is glaringly bad), the movie showed its underbelly, which is really a bit full of itself. The metaphors are pushy and overused, the utterly sweet little girl the one unifying and transcendent element.Again, just seen for what it is, set in 1940 Spain (just after its civil war, and during WWII, though Spain largely avoided the war because it was thoroughly fascist by then) it is filled with isolation and desolate landscapes and a kind of loneliness that goes beyond isolation. The key, and important, twist at the beginning, the arrival of a copy of the 1931 American movie "Frankenstein" (dubbed into Spanish), is a penetration of this sadness from outside of Spain, and outside of the rural world of these simple villagers. The little girl is rapt, and her acceptance of the monster in her heart, almost literally believing in him, is a metaphor for wanting more than what life is going to offer, but getting more than other might expect simply by looking for it, reaching out for the gentle monster of your dreams.There are other metaphors, little ones like the out of tune piano, and large ones like the beehives, which inspire some inner monologues that push meaning far too hard. There is a second dim theme to the plot, about this woman having an affair that tears deep into her heart. There is a sense of flow to the movie, of broad horizons (the land is flat and barren), or repetition that builds on itself. It's a thoughtful movie, certainly, and a deliberate one, and a very slow one. It won't transport many viewers (though it has a growing and worshipful following among critics and movie buffs). I don't think the translation and subtitles were a problem. I saw it with a native Spanish speaker who was equally open to the movie's magic and equally dulled by its slow pace and its dwelling on small things far too long, as if taking for granted a patient and spellbound audience.So you might have to see the movie for what most viewers, especially younger ones, no longer understand: it is a metaphor and almost a protest against the continuing if weakening fascist government of Spain in 1973. It had been 35 years since the civil war tipped in favor of the fascists, and the oppressive government had squashed Spain's development as an economy and as an artistic culture all that time. This was a typical faint but legible response, filled with subtle hints of defiance, wrapped in mystery and analogy as a way of getting by the censors.But most of all, this is about human nature, beyond politics. It's about wanting more, about being alone in a family that should be very together. Enter with patience, and willingness to get lost in the mood of it all, because this is the soul of the movie, and it might just win you over.

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.