Bee Season.

= 3 stars

Starring Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Flora Cross
Directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel

Amazon Link

This film concerns a spelling bee, a quietly dysfunctional family, but more so the mystical Kabbalah. Your knowledge of the last item should probably determine whether or not you rent this film. I know next to nothing about the Kabbalah and therefore the deeper meaning of much that transpired was lost on me.

The family members are Saul (Richard Gere), Miriam (Juliette Binoche), their son Aaron (Max Minghella), and youngest daughter Eliza (Flora Cross), who despite living in a picture-perfect Berkeley hills home along with everything they could ever want, still aren’t totally happy (surprise). They mostly wander in a light, East Bay morning haze, preoccupied with respective familial duties.

Their upper-middle-class-bobo ennui could veer off into satire or hysterics, ala The Upside of Anger, The Royal Tennenbaums, or American Beauty, but no - it’s preoccupied with spiritual yearning, and one that is largely insular. Reaching God in a personal and meditative manner is the youngest daughter, who through vision and concentration is shown the spelling of words.

During Bee Season, I was strangely reminded of another enlightenment film, Peaceful Warrior, which also took place in Berkeley and involved Nick Nolte as a guru who trains a gymnast to surpass himself. That film’s path to enlightenment involved a master and student matching wits, while Bee Season suggests an intensely personal path, without much interpersonal communication. Flora receives some guidance from Saul, but most of the film is devoted to what takes place in her mind.

Whether or not you believe enlightenment is best found from a teacher or from within is besides the point, as after watching Bee Season I’m convinced that former is more dramatically involving. As drama can be based on conflict, it helps to have an antagonist and protagonist duking it out in dialogue, rather than an individual doing battle with their own soul while mediating (even with CGI effects of letters materializing).

All the while, Saul encourages everyone, rushes off to work, and neglects things so they never really to come to a head. The family deals with their problems in a realistic, but frustratingly free-form way. Miriam has a habit of stealing keepsakes in some effort to reconcile her parent’s death, which is never fully explained, and Aaron’s decision to join the Hari Krishnas is made presumably just to irk his father - although there’s a cute blonde (Kate Bosworth) - and is never completely explained either.

Still, at end of Bee Season is a perfect moment where Eliza defies her visions. The resultant look on Saul’s face is quite priceless. It’s as though all the nonexistent dialogue in the film subtly has a reason, to demonstrate that the most powerful moments in life need not be communicated directly, but in a quietly sublime manner. Flora sends a message to her father, and he understands, but noone else in the crowded room has a clue of what just transpired. It’s communicated wordlessly, and I got the feeling the father will never confront her to ask “why,” because he already, sheepishly, knows the answer.

But I don’t give that moment too much credit, because it takes far too long to get there. Maybe I need to study the Kabbalah to appreciate Bee Season more.

Note: For exciting spelling bee action, I’d recommend Spellbound, a documentary about several quirky kids memorizing all the words to win a spelling bee in vastly different ways. It’s funny, energetic, and really gets into the stressful competition of all-or-nothing stakes.

IMDB: Bee Season
Wikipedia: Bee Season
Rotten Tomatoes: Bee Season 41%

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