Bee Season (2005)

"Bee Season" is a multi-dimensional cinematic masterpiece with subtle streams of subtext swirling just below the surface, sweeping us into a deep and gentle journey of emotional and spiritual transformation. This little film is filled with deeply penetrating multi-layered representations of familial archetypal roles of spouse, father, mother, son, daughter, and sibling, mystical and metaphysical wisdom, and haunting reflections on the deep human psyche, shadow, and the powerful undercurrents of buried memory. Slowly, these subtextual streams rise and become the text in this beautiful cinematic work. This is a gentle, haunting, sacred, mystifying, and subtly profound motion picture. In the final moments, there is revelation that is beyond what can be spoken. For some this is a difficult movie to watch because of its transmodern approach to story, shifting the ground underneath what we normally experience as text and subtext, but if you can open yourself to this wondrous little film it will feed your heart and soul.

This film, about a disconnected family and members pursuing spirituality each in their own way, introduces the viewer to many interesting ideas, plot twists, and spiritual potentials but fails each idea it promises to unveil.Unfortunately, the characters themselves have been written as one dimensional, unsympathetic, disenchanted, even frustrating. Their nearly total non-communication with each other is only exacerbated by the poor dialog they do share in very few moments.The pacing is ponderous. These are visual vignettes, but no actual relationships or personal progress develops.We really don't know at the end of the film who these people are, and most importantly, we are happy to leave them to their own imprisonment and disinterest.If the Mother is excited about her pursuits, we see nearly none of it. If the son is excited about his conversion, we see none of it at all. If the daughter is excited about the spelling Bee, we see none of it.Even the pain of the family's tragedy is buried so completely that we can easily mistake it for extremely bad acting. But an actor must have a script, and here there is none.As for the spirituality, no responsible father would ever dabble in Kabbalah or prana without proper guidance, and to do so with one's own daughter is nothing short of reckless endangerment.But again, we don't really know who the father actually is, and in most scenes he seems pleasant enough.The film winds up as a "poser" of spiritual notions, presenting things that reflect a very superficial understanding, and no actual experience with its subject matter - neither in family dynamics, character development or spirituality.Yet, the source material is an interesting juxtaposition of ideas that could have been legitimately explored by real characters. Fortunately, that film has already been made a few times by writers and directors who actually knew something of legitimate spiritual experience and succeeded entirely in bringing it to the screen: The Razor's Edge(original version) with George Marshall, Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power; or Frank Kapra's Lost Horizon, or Douglas Trumbull's Brainstorm.

I know a lot of people liked this but my wife and I found it depressing, confusing and very unsatisfying. Do not waste your time and money on this movie. The wife seemed to have a lot of problems but there is no explanation as to why or what she was really doing every time she disappeared. The son had a lot of anger but that is hard to figure out and why would the family seem to be clueless as to his condition. The daughter- did she develop this spelling ability all of a sudden? Why did she never smile? Maybe she was as depressed making this movie as we were while watching it. Richard Gere has no clue as to what is going on in his family yet purports to be a family guy. I don't get it

Bee Season is not exactly what I expected. I pictured a heart warming film about trials and tribulations and ultimate success. Instead, this film was a walk on the eerie side of mysticism and emotional problems that haunt everyday people. The daughter hears the words in her spelling bees talk to her and can spell words she never even heard before. What's with that? The father takes her under his wing and teachers her kabalistic stuff of how the words she hears can connect her with God. The mother is a kleptomaniac looking to catch the light in stolen knick-knacks so she can talk with her dead parents, or at least come to grips with their deaths 30 years before. The son gets involved in hari christnas because of a pretty girl. The father is almost oblivious to his families impending disaster. An interesting little film that is well made and well acted, but not an uplifting adventure of any kind.