Bee Season is flatly based on the premise that words are ultimately incomprehensible and therefore magic. The movie makes a direct link from kabbala-sorcery to spelling bees in a way that is absolutely hilarious, but it seems the filmmakers will be the last to get the joke.
According to the dark and mysterious mythos of the movie, one can become god and so achieve telepathic and prophetic powers -- by meditating on the mysterious spelling of words. The more difficult a word's spelling, the more incomprehensible, and therefore the more magical. Rearrange words and magic numbers appear. Study the kabbala and you will have supernatural visions and become an expert speller. Oh boy.
Misinterpret the secret kabbala hidden in the spelling of English words and you will go insane and become a serial thief, as happened to one main character.
Although the movie was made in dead earnest, it is an unintentional commentary on how primitive human beings trapped in the Stone Age can walk among us in this age of high technology. Indeed technology and the complexities of spelling in English can stump any or most of us, but the primitive human sees in the inscrutability secret magic.
The movie's dead earnest handling of superstition can have you falling out of your chair in laughter, as it did me.
Or the movie's failure to show how spelling is magic and the movie's slow, very slow, move to an embarrassingly predictable end will have you falling out of your chair asleep.
According to the dark and mysterious mythos of the movie, one can become god and so achieve telepathic and prophetic powers -- by meditating on the mysterious spelling of words. The more difficult a word's spelling, the more incomprehensible, and therefore the more magical. Rearrange words and magic numbers appear. Study the kabbala and you will have supernatural visions and become an expert speller. Oh boy.
Misinterpret the secret kabbala hidden in the spelling of English words and you will go insane and become a serial thief, as happened to one main character.
Although the movie was made in dead earnest, it is an unintentional commentary on how primitive human beings trapped in the Stone Age can walk among us in this age of high technology. Indeed technology and the complexities of spelling in English can stump any or most of us, but the primitive human sees in the inscrutability secret magic.
The movie's dead earnest handling of superstition can have you falling out of your chair in laughter, as it did me.
Or the movie's failure to show how spelling is magic and the movie's slow, very slow, move to an embarrassingly predictable end will have you falling out of your chair asleep.