RUTHERFORD ON FILM
Intimate ‘Bee Season’ Explores Family Dynamics, Spirtuality as One of 2005’s Best Films
By Tony RutherfordHuntington News Network Writer
Huntington, WV (HNN) ---Let “Bee Season” lure you into fascinating, yet dysfunctional, world inside the home of a relatively ordinary family of four. Warning: Once you take this journey, you may reexamine your priorities by asking for help from a Higher Power or asking those closest for their input.
Although that description may sound stilted or too symbolic, this film about the academic competition of the national spelling bee spreads itself cunningly across your mind with the fluidity of jam rarely expressed in cinema, except for perhaps the now-classic, best picture winner, “Ordinary People.” Serving as a metaphor for commentaries on parents too involved in their children’s lives and the complicated interpersonal dynamics of family life, the drama steadily probes deeper into the family’s fallacies which open a rubric quest for identity, satisfaction and spirituality.
Buried beneath imaginative narration concerning how “words and letters hold secrets of the universe,” the Naumanns do their own things, except that their challenges appear as idealistic plunders for greater spirituality which mask the family’s self-destructive path. Sixth grader Eliza (Flora Cross) has a magical gift of closing her eyes and correctly spelling complex words. Her older brother, Aaron (Max Minghella), practices violin while heavily supervised by father Saul ( Richard Gere), a professor of religious studies. Meanwhile, mother Miriam (Juliette Binoche) seems overcome by spells which link to the past death of her parents in a car accident.
Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel ("The Deep End," "Suture") mastered a nearly impossible task of turning a spelling bee competition and routine family dysfunction into a compelling picture. Though their characters do not talk directly to each other much, the directors techniques for gazing inside their prism-like cerebrums has a simplicity that slowly yields not so mystifying complexities that can be summed through the following analogy --- letters form a word, words form sentences, and sentences make paragraphs. Yet, delicately those same sentences can be diagramed and taken apart to perfect communication skills. From shards of broken glass, “Bee” continually asks, if its possible for the gifted Naumanns to be patched or stitched together again for the good of the family unit.
Plain, withdrawn Eliza does not tell her family of her good fortune at winning the school spelling bee. In fact, she simply places a note under dad’s door telling him when the district competition takes place. When she receives no response, she spontaneously drafts her older brother to drive her to the competition.
Family communication patterns are more than just array; they’re jumbled, non-existent and silent. While attempting to “teach” every member to reach for uniqueness and success on their life journey, Saul has alienated everyone by heavy handed pressure to succeed without having the openness to listening, understanding, and reacting. Emphasizing criticism, competition, success and little positive input, the three residents inside Saul’s abode have buried their emotions so deep that their cries for help emerge in convoluted style which only a shrink could interpret.
Richard Gere ceremoniously handles the overbearing father’s personality with his patented high energy, rationally articulated style, which initially seems like that of a preoccupied diva but actually conceals disquieting, subtle manipulative emotionally bullying mechanisms. After his young daughter wins two bees, he now obsesses with ‘helping’ her study so she can become a national champion. In the process, he reveals complex relaxing meditative methods for achieving interaction with God.
Juliette Binoche plays mom and her duel personas first as a bland clichéd ordinary mother whose personal demons squirm ever closer to an explosive episode as we second guess exactly which issue has her falling off the planet.
Theological foundations of “Bee Season” do not play denominational favorites, either. Mom is Catholic, Aaron dabbles into a Hindu-like variation, dad remains steadfastly Jewish, even as he steers his daughter, who has a supernatural gift, into a path that he once attempted. The production would have little impact without a cross current of editing magic that clearly displays intimate simultaneous synchronicity by the family members and ingeniously incorporates a kaleidoscope as an instrument for injecting appropriately illuminating and mesmerizing special effects and cinematography.
Unrelentingly one of the year’s best the discoveries of “Bee Season” range from a trieste on how empty words disconnect individuals, to an awakening to the similar goals found in all forms of meditation and worship, and a matrix for stretching beyond the selfish to the selfless taking care of each other.