Bee Season (film)
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Bee Season is a 2005 feature film based on the 2000 novel by Myla Goldberg. The film was directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel and written by Naomi Foner.
Synopsis
Gere plays a somewhat controlling Jewish husband and father Saul Naumann who is a Religious Studies professor. His wife Miriam (Binoche) converted to Judaism when she married him. Saul nurtured his son Aaron (Minghella) into a traditional studious Jew, and he tries to pull his daughter Eliza into the teachings of a Kabbalah writer.Saul is a professor at UC Berkeley (although the particular courses he is seen teaching are unnamed in the film) who wrote his graduate thesis on Kabbalah. The film follows Saul's family and the religious quests they all head out on because of him.
Miriam lives a secret life throughout her entire marriage to Saul, trying to fulfill the religious idea she picked up from him, tikkun olam. She takes the meaning of "repairing the world" and "reuniting its shards" literally and slowly collects trinkets she finds beautiful (sometimes breaking into people's houses and stealing them) in a warehouse, trying to hold the light of God in them. Saul's son, Aaron, grows unsure of the Judaism foisted on him by his father and becomes a Hare Krishna in trying to find a faith he personally believes in, after meeting a woman named Chali in the park. Before Eliza's participation in spelling bees, Saul and Aaron were very close, and they would often have discussions about Judaism and play music together. While trying to help Eliza, Saul spends less time with Aaron.
At the center of the film, Eliza becomes Saul's newest religious project. Saul's graduate thesis was on a particular Kabbalah writer who believed that careful analysis of words could lead to contact with God, and without his knowledge Eliza has won the district spelling bee. Upon learning of her success Saul takes control of Eliza's life, trying to coach her with the Kabbalah teachings he knows so well (humorously ending up much like the controlling parent's stereotypically seen in childhood competitions like spelling bees, though with different reasons). Eliza manages to do so well at spelling because visions appear to her and help with the word, no matter how difficult, if she focuses. In the final scenes, however, Eliza purposely misspells the word origami (a word she had practiced with Saul the night before) to come in second at the National Spelling Bee.
While the literal plot simply follows a girl from a somewhat dysfunctional family moving through the world of competitive spelling, the actual plot of Bee Season is a much more complex one on personal religious views. Saul can be seen a Kabbalistic figure himself, desperately trying to become closer to God, though instead of using knowledge (as one does in Kabbalah), Saul uses each of his family members to deepen his own religious sense (an act finally uncovered by Aaron near the film's end). Meanwhile, his wife, Miriam, is caught stealing and is sent to a mental institution. The relationships between all members of the family have gone from relatively close and warm to very strained.
The movie generally follows the plot of Goldberg's novel, but with some notable changes. In the novel, Eliza did not get second place in the national spelling bee, though she did well. It was not until months later, when it came time at her school spelling bee to make her second attempt at the National Spelling Bee, that Eliza decided to get a word wrong on purpose. Also Chali, the woman who introduces Aaron to the Hare Krishna religion in the movie, is actually a man in the book. Instead of being a college professor, Saul is a cantor in the novel.
Cast
- Richard Gere – Saul Naumann
- Juliette Binoche – Miriam Naumann
- Flora Cross – Eliza Naumann
- Max Minghella – Aaron Naumann
- Kate Bosworth – Chali
Post-release
As of January 29th, 2006 Bee Season had taken in a gross in the United States of only $1,177,082 with an opening American weekend of $120,544.[Business details for Bee Season] for IMDb, retrieved March 24, 2006 Bee Season's only award nomination to date is a Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards Young Actress nomination for Flora Cross.[Awards details for Bee Season] for IMDb, retrieved March 24, 2006 The DVD was released April 4, 2006.[Bee Season: DVD]
References
External links
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