MovieChat Forums > El espíritu de la colmena (1975) Discussion > I don't understand how people like this ...

I don't understand how people like this so much.

posted 18 years ago by blisseternal
47 replies | jump to latest

I understand that the shots look good, and the acting is well done for girls that age, but what else makes this film so good? It was tedious at times, and I didn't understand the point of some of the shots (Especially the one scene of Teresa lying in bed for like a straight 3 minutes). Not much really happened in the way of plot, and the end left some things unexplained. Someone please explain how this deserves a 7.8.

[–] onepotato2 14 years ago

This movie is sublime.

[–] Endy7 14 years ago

This is like asking why men like breasts

[–] CoSMiGoNoN 14 years ago

This is just a matter of individual taste. There are some people that like a lot of imagery in a movie and enjoy it, there some (like me), where even though the cinematography is breathtaking, what I look for in a movie is more of a story. To me this was a really slow movie, where much of the plot is narrated visually, kinda like Eraser, Theorema, which are really not my cup of tea.

[–] Endy7 14 years ago

Yup, some like films, some like illustrated books.

[–] alihojati 11 years ago

People who like this film,understand great filmmaking,people who don't like this film,don't understand great filmmaking,it's as simple as that buddy

[–] lombano 11 years ago

The film has depths beyond being a simple story of the goings-on of a certain family in a certain time period. For example, an important, perhaps the main, theme is how one deals with the harsher realities of life, from war to loveless marriages. The extremes in this are Ana on the one hand, who retreats into a private world to the point of delusion, and Isabel who embraces brutality. The symbolism of the beehive is closely related to this - the "sad horror" the father describes of frenzied activity serving purely utilitarian purposes (obviously significant, given it's repeated twice in a film very sparse in dialogue) and devoid of compassion is a description that could apply to plenty of harsh circumstances. The honeycomb motif is far more than a matter of aesthetics.

[–] IMDB_Vits 11 years ago

First of all, I'm not one of those who think that every movie with unusual events is automatically good (I hated THE TREE OF LIFE and MULHOLLAND DRIVE, among others). That being said, I found this movie to be intriguing. It was the presentation of everything that hooked me into wanting to guess what certain things meant. And it didn't feel pretentious (like in the examples I just said). Also, ANA was a very interesting character.

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] 10 years ago

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[–] chuck-526 10 years ago

...the acting is well done for girls that age...

You're in the right ballpark, but it doesn't sound like you're on base yet. This is probably the greatest film portrayal of the life of a very young child of all time.

Ana was so young her boundary between "acting" and "reality" was notably squishy. That's why the script was modified so the names of the characters were the same as the names of the actors (rather than using conventional character names while "on stage"). The scene with Teresa combing Ana's hair was difficult because Ana completely refused to let Teresa put a comb in her hair that day. Finally Teresa pinched Ana's bottom, figuring either she'd "behave", or the scene she'd make couldn't be any worse than it already was. The facial reaction shots of Ana watching Frankenstein on the screen are real - it really was her first viewing. The director has noted those shots were neither directable nor repeatable, and feels they are the very best shots of his entire career.

At the same time that the filmmakers "arranged" things to get the performances they needed, Ana did considerable outstanding acting. If you've ever been around kids that age, you've probably experienced that asking a kid to "pretend you're falling asleep" or "pretend you're waking up" will produce performances that don't even remotely look like the real thing. Yet Ana did it. She communicated wordlessly her wonder and fear and hope at discovering the man's footprint near the abandoned building. Her close examination of a leaf from the broken flower pot when her sister was "attacked" is quite emotive. She looked out of the corner of her eye without turning when her "attacked" sister came back to life and "attacked" her. And remember her quivering jaw when she "saw" Frankenstein?

And so many "little things" about her character ring true of someone that age. Just a couple examples: one is her pride in being able to tie her shoes ...true slowly and awkwardly, but without any help or advice from anyone else. And wanting to "show off" as is typical, she ties not only her own shoes but one of the stranger's. Another is her use of the stepstool at school, because she's so small she can't even reach things in the classroom.

The only case I can think of that's somewhat similar is the little girl in 'The Fall', which again was a mix of "reality" and "acting". Because they were concerned that her accent be consistent throughout, they had to keep her away from the rest of the actors and complete filming very quickly, before she picked up an idiomatic non-accent (I believe she was from Slovenia). One scene in the film where she displays great distress worked because she really did wet her pants then. And they never let her see the actor portraying the "crippled" character walk until filming was complete, as she'd be unable to maintain the illusion he was crippled if she "knew better".