In recent years, American cinema has experienced something of an infatuation with spelling bees.  There was the wonderful documentary which did so well at the box-office and on television, Spellbound, which followed the preparations of eight youngsters for the national championships and pulled no punches in showing how gruelling this work could be for the students – and the pressures from parents.

2006 saw Akeelah and the Bee with Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett.

In 2005, Bee Season was released but, surprisingly, was not a box-office winner.  Given that the cast was led by Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche, this seems strange.  Given that it focused on an 11 year old girl who won the local and state competitions and went to the finals in Washington, this also seems strange.

But, when you see it (and the recommendation is that audiences catch it on television or DVD), you will understand why.  There is much more to it than the spelling bees.  It is a film about words and offers a great deal of thought about words. In fact, there are also fascinating religious dimensions to the film and a lot of God talk.

The core plot is quite straightforward:  Eliza Naumann is good at spelling, wins competitions and is coached by her University lecturer father, Saul, who devotes himself to his daughter.  She qualifies for the finals.  The family seem devoted.  Mother, Miriam, has converted from Catholicism to Judaism for her husband’s sake.  The older son, Aaron, is a devout and searching young man.   Richard Gere is genial and quietly controlling as Saul.  Juliet Binoche is loving but increasingly bewildered as Miriam.  Flora Cross (whose first film this is and whose first language is French) is completely convincing as Flora and Max Minghella (son of director, Anthony Minghella, also in his first film) is persuasive as a good young man but who is teetering on the edge of rebellion.

The background of the film is the increasing dysfunction in the family.

While the spelling sequences are exciting in their academic way, and the family troubles, subtle at first and then quite surprising, are important, audiences may find some of the religious dimensions tougher going.  But they are rewarding.

Naomi Foner (who has written few but interesting screenplays like Running on Empty and is the mother of Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal) has adapted a novel by Myla Goldenberg.  In the novel, Saul was a cantor at the synagogue.  Here he lectures in comparative religion at Berkeley and has written his thesis on the Kabbalah.  We hear part of his lecture on the ‘tukkim olan’ theme of Hebrew thought: how God could not contain his love and transmitted his loving energy into a big bang which created our world; how our work in this world is to restore the unity, to bring the shards together so that they hold the light; the restoration of the world is a reparation, a repairing of the world and any act of kindness, any altruism restores this unity.

With his interest in Kabbalah, Saul is a man of words and is delighted at his daughter’s power with words, her intense concentration, her visualising of words, seeing clues in her surroundings.  He realises she could be a suitable person for Kabbalah  mysticism and trains her in meditation.

In the meantime, he unwittingly relegates Aaron and his cello-playing to the sidelines of the family.  In the meantime, Aaron finds his father’s control and God talk constricting and visits a church during Mass, meets an attractive girl (Kate Bosworth) who invites him to Hari Krishna meetings which seem to fulfil his spiritual needs.  Miriam, we discover, has been shattered by her childhood, death of parents, boarding school, and has an obsession with collecting glass, collecting shards to capture the light.  This has some devastating consequences for her and for the family.

The film was directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel who made a strong film about mother love, The Deep End.

There is much in Bee Season to entertain.  There is much to think about.

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: