like finding a crumpled love letter you wrote when you were eight buried in your sock drawer, i’ve found a new favorite film, something quite captivating and haunting, a 70s Spanish film called "the spirit of the beehive" (el esperitu de la colmena), set upon a time in the castilla plains at the end of the spanish civil war, we find ana, an eight year old, unable to forget “Frankenstein,” a movie she just watched in her village’s makeshift theatre, and determined to discover “the spirit” her older sister said she saw in the forest.

it’s oh so quiet, and i’ve been loving quiet movies lately, movies that don’t talk, but rather whisper in your ear, like kim ki duk’s “samaritan girl” and tsai ming liang’s “goodbye dragon inn.”

the director, victor erice, is a mysterious one, only three movies in the past thirty years, but his cinematographer, luis cuadrado, who sculpted this dreamworld even more so – he was going blind as he was shooting the movie.