Bee Season - PG-13
Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the film focuses on a family's gradual, difficult breakdown. It includes several tense family scenes, one harsh argument between father and son (yelling and using the f-word), and the revelation of the mother's mental illness (she's having flashbacks to the harrowing sight of her parents' fatal car crash, and stealing objects from houses she can reach by car and by foot). A young spelling prodigy comes to see not only how words are spelled, but also how to forgive and help her fragile family.
Families can discuss the increasing distances among the family members. How might Saul pay closer attention to Miriam's needs, even as he pursues his own desire for a profound spiritual experience? How do the various searches for spiritual "connection" parallel one another?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Words are mystical, magical, and wholly material in the delicate, literalizing BEE SEASON. As sixth grade spelling prodigy Eliza (Flora Cross) wins trophies and accolades, she also comes to understand -- and forgive -- her parents' flaws. The movie's themes and images are evocative and sometimes cryptic, raising spiritual and emotional questions.
Based on Maya Goldberg's 2000 novel, Scott McGehee and David Siegel's movie focuses on the Naumanns, a well-meaning, intellectual family whose dysfunctions provide a ground for exploring the relationship between language and experience, or, put another way, the dire consequences of literalizing desire. That the film can't get at this problem without also literalizing characters' yearnings and imaginings both tangles up theme and plot in ways that are sometimes clunkier than they are poignant or shrewd.
As Eliza travels to various spelling bees, the film makes visible her process: when she spells, she is overtaken with what seems a trance, closing her eyes and apparently feeling or even seeing the words in concrete forms. She's coached in her victories by her suddenly attentive father, a Kabbalist professor named Saul (Richard Gere). He convinces himself that her special affinity for letters means she might become a mystic, "someone who can really connect to God," as he puts it (and as he has tried to be).
Saul's interest in Eliza leads him to spend less time with her brother Aaron (Max Minghella). Feeling neglected, Aaron looks elsewhere for "meaning," outside temple and certainly, outside his family. Again, the movie's effort to make visual this transition and struggle is clever but also heavy-handed: Aaron meets cute with Hari Krishna devotee Chali (sunshiney Kate Bosworth). "Something's missing," she notes, oh so sagely, "From your life." Soon Aaron's sneaking out of the house and deceiving his father so he can pray at the house where Chali and the rest of her orange-robed colleagues drink tea and burn incense.
Most tragic and most literal is the search conducted by Eliza's mom (Juliette Binoche), long ago traumatized by her parents' deaths in a car accident. She converted to Judaism when she married, and as she too feels neglected by Saul, she falls increasingly into a form of literalization that has, apparently, plagued her for years. Her visions (nightmares, memories?) reveal the fragmented way by which she sees the world, what the camera shows through the kaleidoscope she gives Eliza. Slowly, she comes undone, frightening her children.
Suffused with loss and longing, BEE SEASON is often, in single scenes, delicate and moving. This makes its lapses into inelegance almost more intriguing, though, as they seem so unlike the brief close-ups of Eliza's shallow breaths and closed eyes. Alternately lyrical and frustrating, the movie depends too much on contrivances, stereotypes, and very slow-on-the-uptake parents and partners. All of which leaves you feeling a step ahead of the narrative, not an ideal position when contemplating spiritual "truths."
Families who like this movie might also like other films about troubled families, including The Ice Storm (rated R) or Stepmom, or films about sensitive children, like Billy Elliot or My Girl.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentPassionate sex scene between parents. |
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ViolenceFlashbacks of car accident that left one character's parents dead (no bodies, but disturbing fragments of visual/emotional trauma). |
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LanguageBrief strong language by father and teenaged son during an argument (f-word). |
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Social BehaviorFamily grapples with loss of emotional closeness and spiritual direction; a troubled mother becomes a thief; a father becomes obsessed with his young daughter's capacity to "connect with God." |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoMinor. |
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