Bee Season (2005)
Directed by Scott McGehee, David Siegel
Written by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal
Starring Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche
Release Date November 11th, 2005
Published November 11th, 2005
The narrative balancing act between explaining too much and not enough is quite a metaphorical tightrope for a filmmaker. Critics like myself tend to jump on a film that over-explains its plot through dialogue or image or excoriate a film for being too obtuse and inaccessible. In the case of the movie Bee Season, starring Richard Gere, the latter is the problem. The film, based on a novel by Myla Goldberg, is so inside itself in terms of characters internalizing their motivations that following what seems like a simple narrative about family strife becomes a herculean task of assumption on top of assumption.
Saul Naumann (Richard Gere) is a professor of Jewish studies and an avid follower of kabbalah. He is also a loving father to his son Aaron (Max Minghella) and daughter Eliza (Flora Cross) and a caring husband to his wife Miriam (Juliette Binoche), at least on the surface. Underneath it all Saul is driven zealot who has made his son's religious education an all consuming quest.
Aaron is a prodigy of religious studies who can recite passages of the Torah from memory. He flourishes under his father's attention even if it can be suffocating at times. The father-son bond is put to the test when younger sister Eliza shows an aptitude for spelling. Being a follower of kabbalah, Saul believes words are the keys to the universe, a path that leads directly to god. He see's Eliza's gift with words as an opportunity to reach the religious transcendence that neither he nor Aaron have achieved.
Aaron, seeing the attentions of his father taken away, rebels by following a beautiful woman named Chali (Kate Bosworth) into the beliefs of the Hare Krishna. Meanwhile Miriam withdraws from the family into a secret life of kleptomania that see's her breaking into strangers homes and stealing shiny objects.
Each of these plots evolve individually around Gere's character. Saul is an often overbearing presence who's religious obsessions tend to overwhelm good judgement. However, he is not nearly the bad guy the plot seems to want him or needs him to be. Saul is shown to be a very caring father who showers love and praise on his children and his wife, makes dinner for the family every night and wants only for everyone to be happy. For the plot to work Saul has to be more of a problem than he really is.
The script for Bee Season, adapted by by Naomi Foner-Gyllenhaal, seems to want us to believe that Saul's lavishing attention on Eliza is too much for the whole family to take. Unfortunately the film never bothers to demonstrate why this is such a big problem. Neither Aaron or Miriam object to Saul's treatment of his daughter, probably because Eliza is a willing accomplice avidly accepting her father's indulgence. So what is the problem that causes Aaron and Miriam to rebel?
Aaron's subplot about joining the Hare Krishna is played as both an earnest interest in achieving religious transcendence and as a teenager rebelling against his father. But there are scenes missing that might clarify just which is the more significant motivation. Aaron is alternately a true believer seeking religious enlightenment and an impulsive teenager who follows a hot girl into a cult like behavior that he knows will really irk his devout father. The film is far too vague about Aaron's true motives for us to care why he does what he does.
As for Miriam, the film never thoroughly examines how she is affected by her daughter's success and her husband's subsequent obsession. Though we are often diverted to scenes of Miriam sneaking into strangers homes and stealing shiny trinkets the movie never bothers to explain how this behavior relates to the rest of the film. Is it a cry for help or attention? Is it mental illness? How is Miriam's troubled behavior related to Saul's obsession with helping his daughter win the spelling bee?
Though the plot of Bee Season flows from Saul's actions, the focus of the film is Eliza and her unusual gift with words. Eliza does not so much spell the words given to her as experience them in her mind . In the spelling bee scenes Eliza closes her eyes and the words begin to materialize around her in special effects renditions of the words themselves. Given the word origami, Eliza imagines a paper bird alighting upon the individual letters which she repeats aloud. I suppose this is an indication of some kind of divine intervention but how do you explain how she had this gift before she began studying kabbalah with her father.
In Myla Goldberg's novel it is Eliza's narration that binds these various plot strands together. Her first person perspective guides us through the motivations of the other characters and clarifies the narrative. In the film however, co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel begin with Eliza's narration then quickly abandon it. Bee Season is the rare film that could benefit from narration which often is a screenwriting crutch and in the wrong hands a hack device. The plot of Bee Season is so convoluted and obtuse that only narration could bring together these diverging stories.
12 year-old Flora Cross delivers an extraordinary performance in Bee Season. Her halting voice always just above a whisper and her often downturned gaze hide a spark of ingenuity that provide the few remarkable moments in this otherwise unremarkable film. Cross is riveting in a calm and assured veteran performance from a 12 year-old girl in her first starring role.
If only the rest of the film had been as focused and engaging as Cross. Unfortunately Bee Season can't pull itself together. The script introduces one plot then abandons it to begin another one only to abandon that shortly after. Plots like Miriam's kleptomania are introduced, forgotten, returned to and yet never connected to the rest of the film. Aaron's flirtation with the Hare Krishna is dropped in on but by the end of the movie is all but forgotten.
And somehow through it all, despite his not being a bad guy, all of the family's troubles are heaped on Saul whose sin seems to be that he is too loving and too attentive. Saul could be a little more benevolent in giving attention to each of his children equally and not just when one child meets his various obsessions but for the most part he is shown as a great guy and a caring dad. Gere gives a strong performance but as written the character is basically untenable.
For Bee Season to work Saul has to be a sort of villain. Not exactly a menacing presence but distant, overly driven, a little selfish. Character traits that could help us understand why his family, save Eliza, resents him so much. Without some sharper edges on Saul it's hard to believe the family would fall apart as they do.
It is fair to wonder if the novel Bee Season was simply unadaptable. So much of the family troubles are internalized which is well translated in the written word. But translating inner monologue to outward action is not simple. Movies require a level of explanation that can be difficult to define. How much is too much or too little explanation is impossible to calculate. In the end Bee Season comes up short and it's a shame because the performance of Flora Cross is so good I really wanted to like and recommend this film. But I can't.
