Bee Season

RATING:

Starring: Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Flora Cross, Max Minghella, Kate Bosworth. Written by: Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal. Directed by: Scott McGehee, David Siegel

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, a scene of sensuality and brief strong language.

Imagine if Joan of Arc had entered the National Spelling Bee competition instead of leading a pivotal war and you get an idea of what Bee Season is trying to do. The story centers around a young girl, named Eliza Naumann (Flora Cross), who has an exceptional gift for word composition. Unlike her other sixth grade peers, however, she doesn’t pour over vocabulary lists and lose sleep memorizing different contexts. It is eluded that every time young Eliza steps up to the microphone at each competition to receive her word, she is aided by the voice of God. For a movie obviously attempting the artsy drama approach, it is really funny to watch the pre-pubescent girl close her eyes and go off on a twenty minute trance before each of her spellings. With visual effects, the filmmakers attempt to illustrate her preternatural, heaven sent talent for the audience. In one of her first onscreen competitions taking place at a school gymnasium, she learns that the last letter of a word she is struggling with is “E” as the scoreboards all light up with digital vowels. In another moment, given the word “origami” to spell, a folded paper bird flies into the room and points to an “I” on a poster when she has difficulty remembering the last letter.

Again, the suggestion is that the young protagonist is a mystic that can hear the voice of God in her own creepy little way. Watching the film, however, I couldn’t help but continually think that Bee Season was suggesting that the Lord is a cheater. The special effects themselves were appropriately subtle but I prefer my cinematic acid trips directed by someone like Terry Gilliam. Come to think of it, this could’ve been a really cool movie in his hands. Far from the sentimental portrait of a family trying to rebuild itself, Gilliam might have depicted the little girl and her depraved, psychedelic trances as a story about a lunatic believing to be a prophet. Instead of the slow, methodic image of Eliza’s shirt patterns weaving themselves into her given word, the front row of the spelling bee audience might have turned into some weird ass dragon people wearing t-shirts with a phonetic breakdown. Then, this movie wasn’t made for guys like me.

Then there’s Richard Gere. The man is a talented actor but he keeps playing pansies. If you’ve seen Unfaithful, you’d know that it was painful to watch him have a calm, sober conversation with the man his wife was banging on the side. Granted he has a psychotic breakdown and kills the dude with a snow globe, but it’s his initial laid back attitude that I remember with frustration. Here, he plays Saul, father of the aforementioned spelling aficionado. A college professor and Kabbalah enthusiast, he becomes so preoccupied with his daughter’s, well, powers, that he neglects to notice that his wife goes out for private strolls every night and returns early in the morning. In one scene, he’s laying in bed when she walks home. He asks her where she was and she responds with, “I’m tired. I want to go to sleep.” Rather than demanding she tell him and becoming justifiably enraged, he rolls over and sighs. It just might be the most emasculating moment in cinematic history.

Bee Season attempts to tell a symbolic story of communication, or lack thereof, between a family and hits you over the head with the metaphor that a young girl’s remarkable flare for words, the very tools for communication, accomplish the very opposite effect. Maybe there’s a lot of nuance and such that I can’t appreciate but, frankly, the movie is boring and moves at a snail’s pace. I dig movies that are weird and, giving credit where credit is due, combining spelling bees and ancient Kabbalah is not exactly the fast-assured recipe for box office success you find too often in theaters. Other than this novelty, however, the film just didn’t do it for me. Many of the scenes meant to be poignant and significant played as unintentionally hysterical. If you want to see the real blood tears of kids competing in spelling bees, check out Spellbound. I haven’t seen it yet but from what I understand the faces the kids make under pressure is worth the price of rental alone.