Bee Season Movie Review:


Do films like Pay It Forward and The Life of David Gale make you squeamish or violently ill? Do you like it when a 7-foot hairy man beats you over the head with a mallet marked “film concept”?

As the new film, Bee Season concluded I was reminded that once more Hollywood was screaming from one of their mystical pulpits and trying to reach out to the masses. Then I was hit square in the face with a mallet called “sucker!”.

Bee Season begins innocently as Eliza (Flora Cross), a young girl desperately tries to win the affection of her neglectful dad, Saul (Richard Gere) as she strikes out to become spelling bee champion. When Eliza wins, the affection from her dad falls to her but that in turn shuns Eliza’s older brother, Aaron (Max Minghella), who is going through a religious crisis of his own. Furthermore, Saul is unaware that his seemingly stable wife, Miriam (Juliette Binoche) is about to have a breakdown that will rock the family to its very core.

What can hold this struggling family together? Well their faith that is. You see the family practices Kaballah, a Jewish mysticism that looks at esoteric knowledge concerning God, God's creation of the universe and the laws of nature.

Saul teaches his daughter about the mysticism and the power that Kaballah holds and through his teachings he hopes she will succeed even more as a speller.

The film Bee Season is solely about spreading the word of yet another “hip” Hollywood religion. I don’t claim to be an expert or a believer but I know when I am being preached to.

The film is an overly sappy family melo-drama that shows that a family can stick together if they believe. Basically what it comes down to is that Bee Season is an “after-school special” about Kaballah.

I can’t say I enjoyed any of the performances except maybe Flora Cross who seems to be acting with her heart and seems the most genuine on screen. Binoche is utterly wasted as the wreck of a mother and seems to be there more for Gere than the audience.

Then there is the man himself, Richard Gere. The man, the mission and the mallet slamming into an unsuspecting audience member’s head. You would think after he did his “advocate” speeches at the Oscars that this man would have learned that we are here to be entertained not preached to. If you want to be preachy, be subtle, be clever and let us make up our own minds.

I really feel sorry for the average movie-goer who wanders into a screening of this “preach-a-thon”.

So Says the Soothsayer.



Dean Kish

McGehee and Siegel bring their fascinatingly visual approach to another difficult story with this film about spelling bees and all things mystical/spiritual. Yes, it's just a bit intense.

Meet the Naumann family: 12-year-old Eliza (Cross) is a spelling expert who has finally grabbed the attention of her preoccupied parents--Miriam (Binoche), still traumatised after losing her parents in a car crash, and Saul (Gere), obsessed with Jewish mysticism. Meanwhile, Eliza winning the district, regional and state bees takes the spotlight off older brother Aaron (Minghella), who finds the space to explore new beliefs through a beautiful stranger (Bosworth).

In a film obsessed with letters and words, Kaballah, Krishna, kleptomania and Catholicism are the central issues. Viewers could spend hours looking for anagrams and formulae. And each character has some sort of fixation as they try to find meaning in life. As it becomes apparent that Eliza has tapped into a divine sort of inspiration, Saul is both hugely proud and uncontrollably jealous. Because it's what he hoped to achieve for himself. There are moments when we wonder about the sanity of all four members of this spiritually hungry family. And the film's weakest aspect is the fact that they're so deeply out of the ordinary.

On the other hand, this provocative introspection is the film's one original aspect. The directors elegantly and inventively craft a film that gets deep inside the characters to see what makes them tick. And the cast all deliver transparent, intriguing performances as people we can identify with, root for and also worry about. We can identify easily with the idea that "something is missing in life".

But when they start going on (and on) about how God speaks through words and letters, it starts feeling like both a silly religious thriller and a Kaballah induction film. Fortunately, the writer and directors have a strong sense of character and story, and also a witty, playfulness that keeps the film from being predictable. Images and themes swirl all over the place, but while it looks and feels lovely, we're never quite sure what it means.

Rich Cline

Site Contents Copyright© The Z Review, unless used with permission.This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners of Bee Season and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.