This remarkable and touching film is seen as a highlight of Spanish cinema under Franco's dictatorship. Directed by the excellent, but largely unseen Victor Erice, this is a sensitive exploration of a child's discovery of death, and the relationship affected by the trauma of this discovery.
This film is, I believe, almost perfect. Erice's direction makes intelligent use of editing, with stunning cinematography and framing. The landscape is occasionally breath-taking and the performances universally brilliant - especially the incredible Ana Torrent in the lead role at the age of seven. Most remarkably for such a young performer is the sparsity of dialogue, resulting in the majority of emotions and meaning being conveyed through body language and sometimes simply expressed in her large, absorbing eyes.
The film moves at a gentle pace, following the various members of the family (mother, father Ana and big sister Isabel) as they go about their daily business in 1940s Spain. Father tends his bees and writes poetry. Mother writes letters to an unknown absentee and fingers the piano in a despondent way, frustrated and bored. Ana and Isabel run about and play, but after they see 'Frankenstein' at the travelling cinema, Ana becomes fascinated by the lonely creature and his death. They all live within a beautiful large country house, with little furniture, and honeycomb windows through which honey coloured light pours, resembling a beehive, whilst the family unit is presented as an intimate community, independent of the wider politics of the country.
Isabel teases Ana that she knows where Frankenstein lives, in an isolated house, where he seeks refuge. They travel out there but can not find him. Meanwhile, their father teaches them about poisonous mushrooms. When Isabel tricks Ana into believing she is dead, Ana rebels with anger and walks back to the house in the middle of the night. This time she discovers a runaway soldier lying low after he injured his ankle jumping from a train. Ana cares for him, bringing him food and tying his shoelace. She also brings her father's jacket, with his watch in one pocket, which later incriminates him after the authorities find the soldier and kill him.
There follows a superbly simple scene where the father opens his watch at the dinner table and it plays a tune. The look that passes between Ana and her father at this moment communicates the entire plot, even if she herself doesn't realise how much she's given away. The next day he follows her to the house, where she discovers the soldier's blood. The trauma of this discovery drives her to run away into the night and a massive search party is launched. During the night she encounters Frankenstein (resembling her father) beside a lake, in an intensely spiritual moment that does not feel out of place in the film. Then the next morning she is found and returns home completely changed, perhaps with a deeper spiritual understanding and unable to communicate with the rest of her family. In the final scene of the film she opens her bedroom window and says to the night that she can recall 'him' to her whenever she wants, then we hear the distant whistle of the train. Maybe tomorrow another soldier will be in hiding for her to go and visit, an allegory perhaps, for the persistant rebellion against fascism on a personal level. Her final defiant words of "I am Ana" would certainly suggest this.
I feel it's hard to do justice to this film. It's a magical piece that revels in the mystery of the world during childhood, and the strange draw that death can hold over humans; when Ana discovers a poisonous mushroom in the forest, she can't help but touch it; and when she believes Isabel to be dead, she plays with her loose limbs before running for help. It's an incredibly beuatiful film, shot by Luis Cuadrado. The script is so understated and affecting. Ana Torrent is incredibly endearing, yet puts in such a wise, intelligent performance. The first time I saw this film it was without subtitles but really that didn't matter, as the message within the film was easily conveyed by the superbly understood handling of cinematic language.
I strongly recommend you just see this for yourself and experience it's delights. It's definitely an art film and has a slightly slow start, but it really pays off. For me, this would have to be considered among the best films ever made (although there's quite a lot of films that could fit into that category)!
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