Review of Bee Season (2005) by Michael D — 13 Jan 2008

Who knew that a movie about a spelling bee could be such a profound, deep, and intelligent spiritual experience!

A truly great film in all aspects: directing, acting, dept of field (perfect), writing, lighting, and much more. The editing wasn't perfect and sometimes it dragged the story into unneeded confusion, but in the end, it was all clear, and it was all powerful. This movie truly requires a spiritual involvement and I have a spiritual love for this film! Regardless of what religion you associate yourself with, for the 1 hour and 44 minutes of Bee Season, you have to put yourself into the Kaballah as much as possible, and be open minded to the results. Once one does that, Bee Season soars as a film.

But even if that can't be achieved, there's alot more to the movie that can be recomended. There's a deep level of family realness here; along with a drama about personal fulfillment. There's a scene involving contact with God that I found breathtaking and SPIRITUAL. I've never felt as if characters in a film could show me their meeting with God until "Bee Season." I saw a brilliant representation of that in this well-crafted, creative film. This really makes me want to read the book.

A truly earth-shattering, challenging yet sweet, eye-opening, encouraging, unconventional take on life and its several beautiful aspects. It's a weird movie, and I can't pinpoint EXACTLY what it was about, but that's not really a big deal for me, because the movie created a Godly sense of perfection that comes closer than any movie I've seen to portraying meeting God on film--and not just in that one scene, but the whole movie, the whole spelling bee process was all one big attempt at becoming one with conversing with this being no one knows all about--God. And Richard Gere, who I'm not a huge fan of, gives a fantastic performance. Everyone does. I loved "Bee Season." I just loved it. I can't say these words enough: It was a SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE. Not religious, but spiritual. And as it became a spiritual journey, a spiritual experience, a spiritual truth, a spiritual encouragement, a spiritual realization, a spiritual testament--it never pushed that element so much where we felt bamboozled as an audience. It tried, but never tried too hard. It was all very, very natural. Spiritual, Spiritual; Mystical. Just fantastic.