Bee Season

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Flora CrossScreen Time: 80%Role: Eliza Naumann Age: 11 years old |
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Alisha MullallyScreen Time: 5%Role: Young Miriam Age: 11 years old |
Bee Season
Photos
Directed: Scott McGehee, David Siegel
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387059
Summary
A wife and mother begins a downward emotional spiral, as her husband avoids their collapsing marriage by immersing himself in his 11 year-old daughter's quest to become a spelling bee champion.
Movie Reviews
by Mel Valentin"A subtle, nuanced portrayal of a middle-class family in crisis."
Bee Season
centers on a middle-class Jewish-American family, Saul Naumann (Richard
Gere), a religious studies professor at the University of
California-Berkeley, his wife, Miriam (Juliette Binoche), a French-born
research scientist (and convert to Judaism), their 11-year old
daughter, Eliza (Flora Cross), who discovers a mystical connection to
language, and the esoteric tradition of Kabbalah through her father and
his research when she begins winning spelling bees from the local level
through the national competition held in Washington, D.C., and her
teenage brother, Aaron (Max Minghella), a cellist and her father's
favorite who inevitably finds Saul's attention and affection shifting
to Eliza, once Saul discovers Eliza's gift for language and her
spiritual potential.
"Tikkun Olam" the Jewish mystical concept
of "mending the world," becomes integral to the resolution of the
multiple storylines, as Saul begins to introduce Eliza to the Kabbalah.
Saul describes a metaphor-laden vision of divine light, broken vessels,
and healing through good deeds (which helps to repair the broken
vessels, bringing us closer to God). Saul also reveals that he wrote
his Ph.D. dissertation on Abraham Abulafia, a medieval Jewish mystic
born in Spain. Abulafia is a key figure in the development of Kabbalah,
due to several key texts he wrote and disseminated among select members
of the Jewish community. For Saul, Eliza becomes the vessel to help him
obtain the unobtainable, communion with God, something he can't
accomplish on his own.
Eliza's initial success in the spelling
bee acts as a catalyst within her family. Her cold, narcissistic,
academic father takes a renewed interest (assuming he had an interest,
once) in Eliza, becoming her mentor and trainer for the spelling
competitions. Miriam's already cramped, uncommunicative relationship
with Saul continues its deterioration, with her connection to her
children also undergoing a negative transformation (initially closer to
Eliza, she becomes marginalized in the wake of Saul's decision to
become Eliza's mentor). Miriam also has some long unresolved emotional
issues that have begun to resurface, causing her to behave erratically.
Aaron finds himself replaced in Saul's affections by Eliza. The change
doesn't so much change Aaron and Eliza's relationship as it does
Aaron's relationship with Saul.
Aaron finds himself in a
public park one afternoon where he encounters Chali (Kate Bosworth), a
young woman who's taken an alternative, Eastern path to spiritual
fulfillment. In his obvious attraction to Chali and, later the sense of
home and comfort she and her friends offer, Aaron becomes easily swayed
into joining an alternative religious community, perhaps permanently.
As Bee Season unfolds, it becomes clear that Aaron isn’t alone
in his desire for spirituality. Saul, as a professor of religious
studies, takes an intellectual approach to spirituality, preferring to
live through his daughter. The spelling bee is instrumental in bringing
Eliza’s gifts to Saul’s attention, allowing him to live vicariously
through Eliza’s growing triumphs, but also through religious
instruction, with Eliza functioning as an intermediary for Saul’s
spiritual desires (i.e., mystical communion with God).
Naomi
Foner Gyllenhaal's adaptation makes several important changes from
Goldberg's novel, beginning with the setting (Oakland, California
instead of the East Coast), the time period (contemporary as opposed to
the period setting), and a change in professions for the two adult
characters, Saul, from a cantor at a Jewish synagogue to a religious
studies professor, and Miriam, from a lawyer in to the novel to a
research scientist in the film. The change in Saul's profession
certainly makes sense, since it sharpens (and crystallizes) Saul's
academic intellectualism and the mysticism he's incapable of
experiencing directly.
Bee Season has several flaws, all of them minor. First, McGehee and Siegel's contemporary setting for Bee Season
proves to be problematic in regards to the alternative religious
community Aaron joins, since this particular plot development seems to
belong in a different decade (even if the California setting is
appropriate). Second, Bee Season essentially involves four
characters on separate and occasionally overlapping personal journeys.
Aaron's personal journey ends abruptly, while Miriam's seems
underdeveloped, in large part because her story is told primarily
through flashbacks and dialogue-free scenes (it's to McGehee and
Siegel's credit, however, that they don't resort to catch-all,
reductive answers to explain Miriam's deteriorating condition). Saul
undergoes a cathartic moment of insight and spontaneous connection,
which also makes him more sympathetic than he otherwise would have
been.
It's Eliza's journey, then, that functions as the central storyline. Bee Season
allows us to see Eliza's world through her eyes (sometimes literally,
as she visualizes words), but more importantly, in how Eliza perceives
her family, her role in her family, and her (incorrect) responsibility
for the crises that beset her family. With Eliza at the center of Bee Season, a great deal depends on Flora Cross' performance, which may just be the best children's performance since Anna Paquin in The Piano
Gere, Binoche, and Minghella
acquit themselves favorably challenging roles, with Gere playing a
familiar narcissistic character, while also managing to make him
sympathetic to audiences. Likewise with first-time actor Max Minghella,
who shows remarkable control of expression and enunciation throughout
most of the film. His truncated storyline, however, means that a lack
of resolution hangs over his character and, by extension, his
performance. Juliette Binoche has to do more with less: her character
is the least verbal, leaving her to use facial expressions and body
language to create the interior life of a tortured character.
(although here, Eliza is far more taciturn and introverted, which, in
turn, demands expressivity and nuance from Cross). Not surprisingly,
Cross' deliberate, thoughtful speaking style is due to her background:
she's an American born and partly raised in France, making her not
quite a native speaker. The pauses in her speech patterns perfectly
complement the character she plays.