From my favorite movies..

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

"Bee Season" is a multi-dimensional cinematic masterpiece with subtle streams of subtext swirling just below the surface, sweeping us into a deep and gentle journey of emotional and spiritual transformation. This little film is filled with deeply penetrating multi-layered representations of familial archetypal roles of spouse, father, mother, son, daughter, and sibling, mystical and metaphysical wisdom, and haunting reflections on the deep human psyche, shadow, and the powerful undercurrents of buried memory. Slowly, these subtextual streams rise and become the text in this beautiful cinematic work. This is a gentle, haunting, sacred, mystifying, and subtly profound motion picture. In the final moments, there is revelation that is beyond what can be spoken. For some this is a difficult movie to watch because of its transmodern approach to story, shifting the ground underneath what we normally experience as text and subtext, but if you can open yourself to this wondrous little film it will feed your heart and soul.

When I sat down to watch this film I knew almost nothing about it; just that is starred Richard Gere as a father whose daughter enters spelling competitions. While that is true it is much more about the lives of the four family members and how a seemingly ideal family becomes dysfunctional. Saul, the father, is a professor who wrote his thesis on Kabbalah and believes that words can literally bring you closer to God. When he learns that his daughter Eliza has won the local spelling bee he decides that he must teach her how to use Kabbalah to help her go all the way to winning the national championship. In doing so he starts paying less attention to his son Aaron and doesn't notice that he has abandoned his Jewish faith and is seeking answers elsewhere; ultimately starting to attend Hare Krishna meetings. His wife Miriam is the most dysfunctional of them all; she has taken the teaching about 'repairing the broken world by reuniting its shards' literally and has been breaking into houses and stealing small items for a substantial time. Inevitably things can't go unnoticed forever; Miriam is arrested and ends up on a psychiatric ward and Saul learns of his son's conversion... this leads young Eliza to worry that it is her fault as the family's fault lines were exposed shortly after she started taking part in competitive spelling bees.Not being American the idea that a spelling competition could attract any interest seems a little strange but logically it is no stranger than any other competition and the scenes in the competitions weren't boring... I'm sure many viewers will have found themselves trying to spell the words! What did drag on a bit was the father's constant going on about words bringing people closer to God and his failure to see the affect it was having on those around him. The cast did a decent job with the material; Gere was certainly believably of the self absorbed father who was so wrapped up in his own views that he ignored those around him and young Flora Cross was delightful as Eliza. Juliette Binoche was good as the mother although I found it hard to believe that her character had been breaking into houses for years without getting caught until now.Overall I'd say that the film was okay; something to watch on a rainy afternoon if there is nothing more appealing on television but not really something to go out of your way to see unless you are a real fan of one of the actors.

I can't understand why so many people have given this film such a bad wrap. Well, I guess it's no action flick or thriller, but it is one of the most complex, layered, beautiful, thought-provoking films I have seen in a long time. I am an aspiring writer, and if I ever write something that comes even close to representing an interesting analysis of life as this film does then I will consider myself a success. It was also visually absolutely stunning and whilst there were, for me, no single outstanding performances I thought all the actors did a wonderful job.If you like head films that challenge, question and rip back the layers, then ignore the lowish rating and give this film a go.

Bee Season is not exactly what I expected. I pictured a heart warming film about trials and tribulations and ultimate success. Instead, this film was a walk on the eerie side of mysticism and emotional problems that haunt everyday people. The daughter hears the words in her spelling bees talk to her and can spell words she never even heard before. What's with that? The father takes her under his wing and teachers her kabalistic stuff of how the words she hears can connect her with God. The mother is a kleptomaniac looking to catch the light in stolen knick-knacks so she can talk with her dead parents, or at least come to grips with their deaths 30 years before. The son gets involved in hari christnas because of a pretty girl. The father is almost oblivious to his families impending disaster. An interesting little film that is well made and well acted, but not an uplifting adventure of any kind.