I hope I'm not the only one who thought that. That's all I wanted to say.

I am proud to say that I have just added a NEW TOP FILM to my favorites list. :)The Spirit of the Beehive took me through probably one of the GREATESTEXPERIENCES of my life. Honestly, judging form the plot on IMDb, I did not think it would be that good. Now, after watching it, I declare it to be the MOST BREATHTAKING movie I have scene in a verrry long time.It is SET IN 1940, and LITTLE Ana and her older kid-sister, Isabel, venture around their Spaniard country-side where they attend school, go mushroom picking with their father, discover a deserted building, and most importantly, WATCH MOVIES at their local cinema house.Ana is mesmerized after watching the new film in town, James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), where her sister tells her lies to scare her even more of the monster. I love that while the movie is playing, they show the scene where Frankenstein's Monster encounters a little girl and is shown to be harmless by playing with her, but obviously the villagers will think otherwise.CHILDHOOD, in many ways, is one of the most beautiful things to portray on the big screen. Especially, because it is an adult re-creating these moments that have some similarity to their own youth (or I would hope so in Victor Erice's case); the innocents, freedom, imagination, energy, and even purity that comes from us when everything was so simple.****The girl who plays Ana put me to tears towards the end of this story. I could not help but get a little emotional, because not many directors can really show what it is like to be a kid again.

Reportedly, this film is a critique of the Franco regime, couched in metaphor so as to get past the dictator's censors. Even knowing that, it is difficult to understand exactly what director/screenwriter Victor Erice is saying, so perhaps the censors' purpose was sufficiently achieved. It is clear that the story takes place in Spain in the 1940s, and we meet an apparent rebel as well as a military officer. The story follows two sisters, each no more than 10 years old, as they whisper to each other in their bedroom, attend school, and search for their Karloff-inspired vision of Frankenstein's monster. We also get occasional glimpses into their mother's past and into her husband's thoughts about life and beehives (their house gives the impression of a beehive, with its yellow honeycomb windowpanes). Slowly the pieces come together, if only into a vague picture, but then a new puzzle presents itself as we have to confront the strange experience of Ana, the younger and more introspective sister. Clips from the 1931 film "Frankenstein" serve as a guide for us, just as they inspire the sisters, but can take us only so far toward a clear resolution. Happily, there is enough quality for an enjoyable viewing experience regardless of comprehension. These child actors are much more natural and convincing than most, and a wide, time-lapse shot of a green valley is starkly beautiful.

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.