Our imagination is populated by the characters found in
fiction. We think in terms of characters, and plotlines, and the tropes that
characterize our fiction. It is certainly the case that many of us see
ourselves as characters, and we weave storylines that bear a strong similarity
with we have seen and read.
Many times, the two meld together. There have been times
when I find my life reliving a plotline I have encountered before, and I find
myself temporarily wondering at the confluence of the two, eagerly awaiting
what is to come next. It isn’t necessarily a case of déjà vu, which we have all
felt, and refers to a feeling of already having had a certain experience (a
temporary glitch in the virtual reality created by software, in accordance to
the vastly stimulated film The Matrix), but instead of slowly seeing the pieces
fall into place. It is like recognizing a pattern.
The retreat into fiction is a notable trope (formula element)
in much of modern fiction. The retreat into a private fantasy realm is one that
occurs frequently, and I used to associate it with some of my formative
experiences as a child, when watching Japanese monster movies. It is, of
course, an example of escapism, and I am endlessly fascinated by the idea that
is constitutes a needed coping mechanism, a parable that allows us to confront
and not escape from our problems.
These observations were brought to the fore after watching
the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive. For a country that was still
living in a culture of repression, thirty years after the end of the Civil War,
it is natural to view it as a way that art has helped popular audiences cope
with the aftermath of traumatic events.
Over half a million people died in this war that lasted from
1936 to 1939, and which, as has been emphasized over and over, was a prelude
and preparation for World War II. It was a prolonged and gritty war, one that
witnessed many episodes of heroism but also incredible savagery. It was a war
that, in many ways, responded to longstanding conflicts that had never been
truly resolved in Spain, and that harked back to the 19th century
and the advent of liberalism and the hopes that were frustrated by the
returning king Fernando VII, a divisive and autocratic ruler who was out of
step with the changes being seen in the rest of Europe.
There were international brigades who volunteered to fight
against the Nationalists. It was a cause celebre, one that inspired socialists,
anarchists, and those who believed in the coming worker’s utopia. It was also a
war that was fought, according to the Nationalist forces, to preserve a union
that was seen as coming apart, and the second Republic under Manuel Azaña took
on a tragic air.
The film deals with the immediate aftermath of the war. It
is the year 1940, and the country has been pacified. There is a spirit of crisis,
and this reflects the reality in the country at this time, as the country
struggled to recover from economic devastation that was further accentuated by
the isolation into which the country was plunged. Franco kept Spain out of the
European war, but Spain lived through terrible times, with food shortages and a
country that was sputtering along economically, with little access to
international capital that was desperately needed.
We are introduced to the magic of cinema, that of small-town
itinerant peddlers who travel from time to time, screening films to audiences
who are starved for entertainment. It must have been quite a spectacle, and it
recalls a few of the stories I heard told by my parents, who grew up in rural
Mexico in the 50s and 60s, and who also eagerly awaited the arrival of mobile
cinema. The peddlers would arrive, and of course, word would spread quickly,
and sheets would be procured for the evening function, and everyone would get
their chairs ready to show up in someone’s corral. “¡Hay balazos!”, the word
would ring out, for everyone loved movies with gunfights, and my parents told
of taking chairs and enjoying these evening small-town spectacles, where
audiences derived as much enjoyment from the running commentary they shared as
from the movie itself.
The film, in this case, is the American classic with Boris
Karloff, Frankenstein. We have an adaption of the Mary Shelley novel of the
early 19th century, a product of romanticism and one in which we
have a much more frightening and articulate monster than that encountered in
the film. The children are excited, and one imagines, it is a way not only to
escape from the drudgery of the town, one that seems painted in black and
white, but also, a way to give a name and form to projected desires. The
monster is not what is seems, and the girls, especially the younger one, Ana,
is much taken by the mystery of this relationship between monster and child.
We are referring, of course, to mysteries that haunt not
only children but adults as well. These adults seem to have carved out a
semblance of normalcy, and little mention is made of the tragic war and the
suffering it produced. It is as if everyone is making an attempt to avoid the
topic, almost as if people wish to erase this episode from their consciousness.
Ana, though, is entranced by the spirit of the monster, and by the idea of
reaching out and exploring what she seems to perceive as a state of affairs
that somehow seems off kilter. What is beautiful is just as likely to kill as
to nourish, as she learns from her trips with her grandfather (played by
Fernando Fernán Gómez) to hunt for mushrooms.
There are invisible things out there, things that will come
if you call out to them, as her older sister Isabel tells her in their earnest
conversations at night. There are monsters and deadly things, the spirit of
unresolved traumas, and ghosts that, one must say, are inevitably
representations of wrongs that have not been addressed or acknowledged. There
must be many ghosts populating Spain after the end of the Civil War, but Ana
puts it into more familiar terms, and she seeks our private spaces, seeks to investigate
and call forth these ghosts.
The mom is, evidently, yearning for contact from a lover,
and her father seems, at times, strangely distant, seeking as he does to
maintain his holdings, he being some sort of functionary who furthermore keeps
bees at his estate. Sweetness laced with peril, of course, and he goes around
in his own monster suit, his protective wear, which brings up other parallels
with Frankenstein. One takes it that for him to have preserved as much of his
estate as he did, he must evidently have fought on the side of the
Nationalists. What manner of suffering did he occasion during the war?
Spirits are, indeed, called forth by the young child, and we
see particularly in the arrival of the fugitive man to what seems to be an
abandoned shed out in the middle of the fields. It is winter, and he jumps off
a train, and takes shelter. Ana finds him, and not only is she not afraid, but
she shares her food with him, then brings items from her father’s household
(his coat, his watch) to give to him. What kind of danger does this man
represent? Is he one of the last and forlorn holdouts from the Republican side?
Is he just a common criminal on the run? What gives her the courage to approach
and befriend him?
This is a divide that proves endlessly fascinating, for it
speaks of parallels in which distance drives people to acts of violence and
repression. The husband and wife are evidently estranged, and we see as well a
society in which people are ill at ease, as if aware of the restraints and the
repression that accompanies the Nationalist victory. In a film such as
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, we see a similar fable, in which a young
child escapes into her own private realm to escape from the reality of a
repressive father and family circumstances that seem perilous. She needs to
deflect her worries by disguising them, something which the psychologist Bruno
Bettelheim has maintained is very much the determining factor behind the appeal
of fairy tales.
These tales, it must be added, deal with acts of extreme
violence. People are eaten, placed into ovens, consume poisoned fruit, are
maimed, and suffer all form of physical punishment, in addition to the mental
suffering that is provoked by the lack of attention and love. These are
parables that seem instantly recognizable for most of us, because they capture
the feeling of being unwanted, of lacking the security we all crave, but also,
through their resolutions, promise a feeling of satisfaction that often proves
to be elusive otherwise. We don’t all have fairy godmothers or magical
talismans to save us when we need to confront the next big challenge.
This, then, brings to mind the perception of muted danger.
It is evident not only in the gun that is carried by this mysterious man, but
also, as mentioned before, in the watch that is stolen, and that ordinarily
would have been considered an implement of power. The watch plays beautiful
music when opened, and it somehow seems to have a healing power, for it entrances
those who have it, and operates much as any other portal of escape. And, of
course, we have the bees, busily producing their honey, but able to string
savagely, and the mushrooms, the ones with the fanciful names, those that can
kill if one isn’t careful just as effectively as any gun. (There is a scene in
which the young girl Ana, after having run away, goes back to the mushroom
patch, and would seem to be on the verge of consuming one of these deadly
mushrooms.)
Conflicts, then, come to the form, for there is no retreat
from the dangers of this or any other circumstance. It would seem that the film
is, of course, a reflection on the dangers of repression, and an attempt to
exorcise ghosts that continue to haunt our imagination. Frankenstein had a
tender scene in the old film in which he meets the young girl by the side of a
lake, and she shares with him a flower that entrances them both. Why he would
kill the girl seems to be one of the unresolved mysterious of this and any such
encounter, and what brings out the monstrous in us is just as much a matter of
concern. The monster seems as much the victim as the criminal, and we will of
course always harbor the impression of a childish entity, one who is unable to
comprehend his own power, but who wishes, nonetheless, to be understood.
The young man who has taken refuge is discovered and killed,
and the child runs away after an encounter with her father at the abandoned
building where the young man had been hiding. Who was the real monster, in this
episode? Why did the man have to be killed? Would we have seen a reenactment of
the movie version of Frankenstein? She had given the man her apple, what gift
would he have given her in return?
In the end, after a haunting sequence in which the monster
visits the child who has run away to the countryside and is desperately being
sought by her parents and the town authorities, we are left to wonder as much
by this fascination with the monstrous quality in all of us. Where does it
lurk, and what brings it forth? The child is traumatized, much as the entire
country is traumatized, and her silence mirrors the inability of the town to
talk and deal with the consequences of what is evidently a stifling spirit of
repression. We have to remember that, in Spain, when this film was released
(1973), we were nearing the end of the Franco dictatorship. Artists were
addressing the question not only of what had taken place decades before, but
also, of what came next.
It is, thus, logical that the movie would end with a child
who is just as obsessed as she ever was with the haunting mysteries that
confound her, mysteries that point to the way in which her society and her
family itself has been damaged. She is probably as much of a ghost as any of
the magical or fantastic creatures that consume her imagination, and she glides
along, earnest and serious, and prepares to commune with other ghosts, calling
out to the monster once again.
Maybe there is a way for Frankenstein never to have to kill
the girl. Maybe justice means that they both have to be saved, rather than both of them dying. Otherwise, what hope
does she have?
OGRomero © 2013
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