The difference between children and adults may be in age, perhaps in their physical condition, or in different ways of seeing the world. Victor Airy, who went through the Spanish Civil War and dictatorship, like many other directors who have lived through the war, tries to see the adult world through the eyes of children.
The film "The Ghost of the Hive" itself is full of political metaphors, although art can not be completely separated from politics, but political appeals are not a single element of art, every time I see a film full of political metaphors, I try to dig into the film elements inside, it must first be a film that can be interpreted, in order to carry its political demands.
The Beehive Ghost
As a result, the film serves as a window that provides a way to watch, just as the "transparent hive" provided in the film becomes a carrier that carries the different perspectives of adults and children.
glass
The first appearance of the hive in the film, accompanied by the deprivation and production of the hive by adults, is then transformed into a transparent hive in a glass container, which combines display and ostentation, like a commodity, just the product of adult lust.
Adults then define the bees in the hive: they perform non-stop useless labor and then die quietly.
The strength of an adult is enough for him to control and observe effortlessly, to treat bees, to treat children, all he has to do is observe and then define, the perspective of adults and children is like being isolated by glass, although they meet, they cannot communicate.
In the shot of the picture, a family never appears in the same shot, and the jumping of the single shot creates a wonderful sense of separation, which makes people doubt the accuracy of the film itself in time and space, and the sight and communication between children and adults seem to really not exist.
Lots of single shots
Through various means, the director has created a gap between adults and children. In the eyes of the child, the outside of the hive is a world that he cannot understand, he only dares to look, but does not dare to explore the unknown world in front of him, or what happens outside the hive has nothing to do with the child, but the adult, habitually comes to the window, looking at the unknown world in front of him, but comments, just like his comments on the hive.
Behind this adult and child perspective, there seems to be the director's understanding of the Spanish Civil War and politics.
honeycomb
The bees in the hive have a natural connection with the children in the film. They grew up in their own families, never left, and the range of children's activities is so limited, many 80s and 90s may be able to recall their childhood, never went abroad, never collapsed, perhaps in a few years their range of activities and places to explore are so limited, those unknown areas outside the "hive", it seems that there is infinite power to swallow you up.
The famous horror film "Frankenstein" at the beginning of the film is another metaphor for the perspective of children. The ignorance of the little girls in Frankenstein is actually more like the display of another worldview, that is, the world of children's perspective, in which adult strife and moral ideas do not work for them.
As the child who watched the film said, there was no murder, the little girl did not die, all this is false. Before the film begins, the host of the film says something similar. After all, when the film first appeared, a video of a train entering the station scared away many viewers, and the director emphasized the falsity of the film while also hinting at the gap between children and adults deliberately "arranging" stories.
Children only focus on what they see in front of them, while adults cling to fantasy, a vacuous "soldier" in the film supports this story line, for their mother, this "soldier" is the sustenance of love and hope, and for their father, this soldier is an "imaginary" love enemy, and for children, this fleeing soldier is just an ordinary person, a wounded person, regardless of moral good or evil and emotional representatives.
Fleeing soldiers
This scene is very similar to the relationship between the little girl in Frankenstein and the villagers in Frankenstein.
When we observe the main core of the film, the relationship between adults and children, and then look back at the hidden political demands behind it, we may be able to interpret it like this: the people (children) have no interest in the stories made up by politicians (adults), and they only care about what happens around them.
Ghosts and children
The film creates a boundary between the two through a large number of sounds and the isolation of the picture, and behind this story, the director's appeal is hidden, but this appeal is always only part of the film, just like adults and children, how to watch, is another question thrown by the director to the audience, this question, can only be left to the audience to answer.