Bee Season Review

[krsna]

 

BY: GADADHAR DASA

 

 

 

Nov 12, USA (SUN) — I recently went to see Bee Season, starring Richard Grere. The long awaited film that employed over 40 devotees from Berkeley and LA temples. Last year ISKCON Berkeley approached me to help with the dealings between the Temple and this troupe of Hollywooders because I had just graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in Cinema and they thought I would be helpful.

 

 

When I received the script, I was a bit taken back by the Buddist/Hindu concoctions that were emanating from the pages, but I took it as a challenge and an opportunity to preach.

 

 

I ended up giving them back a completely revised edition of the Hare Krishna scenes. They sent them back to me with what they thought would be satisfactory, but actually they only used maybe 2 or 3 lines that I had written. They said they wanted to "preserve the beauty of the scene".

 

 

We went back and forth a few times until we came to a pretty good explanation of what Krishna Consciousness is all about, but nothing that I wrote ended up in the final cut. I would say they used maybe 30% of what they filmed. They filmed two kirtan scenes and they only used a small portion of one of them. They filmed Srila Prabhupada rising and embracing Aron (Richard Gere's son in the Film), but they cut that scene also.

 

 

On the good side of things, they have a large picture of Srila Prabhupada on the wall of the temple they built in Oakland. Aron chants the entire Holy Name very clearly on beads and the kirtan lead by Lokanatha prabhu is very nice. Kuva prabhu greets Gere at the temple door and they dub his voice in (in order to avoid paying him for speaking lines). He says "Haribol" and his expressions were quite good. When Chali (Aron's Hare Krishna girlfriend) comes down the stairs with Aron, Kuva is in the back peering curiously into the uncomfortable situation. They asked me to make a Srila Prabhupada T-Shirt so that the audience would know that Aron didn't give up his Krishna Consciousness, but the T-shirt isn't on long enough for anyone to catch it.

 

 

My impression is that it is very successful in spreading the Maha Mantra to millions of people across the world and it is also favorable to Srila Prabhupada's movement.

 

[Guest guest]

ROGER EBERT rates the movie an A:

 

"Bee Season" involves one of those crazy families that cluster around universities: An intellectual husband who is clueless about human emotions, a wife who married him because she was afraid to be loved and he didn't know how to, a son who rebels by being more like his father than his father is, and a daughter who retreats into secret survival strategies. There are many movies about families sharing problems; in this one the members are isolated by them. They meet mostly at meals, which the father cooks and serves with a frightening intensity.

 

Like many families without centers, this one finds obsessions to focus on. Saul Naumann (Richard Gere) is a professor at Berkeley, specializing in Jewish theology and the Kabbalah. His wife Miriam (Juliette Binoche), emotionally wounded by the early loss of her own parents, slips into the homes of strangers to steal small glittering things. Their teenage son Aaron (Max Minghella) watches his father intimidate students with icy theological superiority, and does the one thing best calculated to enrage him; he joins the Hare Krishnas. Their daughter Eliza (Flora Cross), who is about 12, seems to be trying to pass as unobserved and ordinary, but her inner life has a fierce complexity.

 

The father teaches Judaism and follows its forms, but his spiritual life is academic, not mystical. What no one in the family perceives is that Eliza is a genuine mystic, for whom the Kabbalah is not a theory but a reality. One of the things that Kabbalah believes is that words not only reflect reality, but in a sense create it. God and the name of God are in this way the same thing.

 

How could this association enter into the life of a 12-year-old in a practical way? Eliza finds out when she enters a spelling bee. Because she exists in the same world with words, because words create her world, she doesn't need to "know" how to spell a word. It needs merely to be evoked, and it materializes in a kind of vision: "I see the words." Although this gift gets her into the national finals, "Bee Season" is not a movie about spelling bees. It is a movie about a spiritual choice that calls everyone's bluff; it involves the sort of refusal and rebellion seen in that half-forgotten masterpiece, "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" (1962).

 

Eliza is at the center of the film, and Flora Cross carries its weight in a performance of quiet compelling wisdom; the foreground character in the early scenes is Saul, the father. The members of his family swim in and out of focus. He is proud that Miriam is a scientist, in the sense that "my wife is a scientist," but does he know what enormous secrets she keeps from him? He is proud that his son is a gifted musician, and joins him in violin and cello duets. But Eliza is essentially invisible to Saul, because she has no particular accomplishments. Only when she wins a spelling bee does he start to focus on her, "helping" her train, pushing her to the next level, sitting proudly in the audience. He is proud not so much of her as of himself, for fathering such a prodigy.

 

The performance by Flora Cross is haunting in its seriousness. She doesn't act out; she acts in. She suggests that Eliza has grown up in this family as a wise, often-overlooked observer, who keeps her own counsel and has her own values, the most important being her autonomy. In her father's manic kitchen behavior as he prepares and serves unwanted meals, she sees people-pleasing that exists apart from people who are pleased. In her fellow contestants in the spelling bees, she sees the same thing: Young people who are devoting their lives to mastering useless information for the glory of themselves and their parents. Yes, it is necessary to be able to spell in an ordinary sort of way, but to be able to spell every word is to aim for perfection, and perfection will drive you crazy, because our software isn't designed for it.

 

The movie, directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, is based on a novel by Myla Goldberg, unread by me. They made "Suture" (1994), a film about "identical" brothers played by actors of different races; you can deal with this apparent inconsistency by saying it doesn't matter -- but in that case, why doesn't it? And their powerful "Deep End" (2001) starred Tilda Swinton as a mother scarcely less secretive than the Juliette Binoche character here.

 

Neither prepares us for "Bee Season," which represents Eliza's decision to insist on herself as a being apart from the requirements of theology and authority, a person who insists on exercising her free will. This is a stick in the eye of her father. When people say they are "doing God's will," I am struck by the egotism of such a statement. What Eliza is doing at the end of "Bee Season" is Eliza's will. Does that make her God? No. It makes her Eliza.

 

 

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051110/REVIEWS/51019003

[Guest guest]

http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/beeseason/

[krsna]

 

 

 

Dear Prabhus and Maharajas,

 

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. FYI, below please find a statement prepared by the N.A. Communications department in response to the opening of the Bee Season film. It has been sent to selected contacts in the secular media already.

 

on behalf of ISKCON Communications N.A.,

your servant,

Vyenkata Bhatta dasa

 

On November 11, 2005, Fox Searchlight released the film Bee Season nationwide. The film, which is based on the 2001 novel by Myla Goldberg, stars Hollywood veterans Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche. The story focuses on Saul Naumann (Gere), a Jewish religious scholar who attempts to mold his daughter Eliza (Flora Cross) into a Kabbalah prodigy when he discovers she has an uncanny ability to spell. At the same time, Saul’s son Aaron (played by Max Minghella) embarks on a spiritual quest which culminates in his joining the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement. The filmmakers consulted with ISKCON members in Berkeley, California, and featured several practicing devotees in scenes depicting Krishna worship services.

 

On behalf of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, we appreciate the filmmakers’ sincere efforts to accurately depict the Hare Krishna movement. At the same time, we are concerned that, despite those efforts, viewers and members of the media may misinterpret some of Aaron’s actions to be representative of ISKCON policies or beliefs.

 

 

In the film, Aaron falsifies a high school permission slip and surreptitiously stays at the Hare Krishna temple; in real life, ISKCON maintains a rigid policy that requires minors to provide written parental consent before they may stay at a temple. Interfering between a child and his or her parents, no matter how eager the child is to take up Krishna practices, is unacceptable and strictly prohibited. Unlike virtually all of the Krishna devotee characters depicted in the film, most ISKCON members today do not live as monks and nuns within temples. Along with their families, they live, work, and go to school in the general community, practicing Krishna consciousness in their homes and attending services at the temple on a regular basis.

 

Bee Season raises important questions about family obligation, freewill, personal choice, control, understanding, and religious pluralism. The film does so while examining two popular, but often misunderstood, religious traditions: Kabbalah and Hare Krishna. We hope that audiences will appreciate the complexity of these questions, rather than vilify religious traditions that they may know little about.

 

For more information about the Hare Krishna movement, please visit www.iskcon.com

[Guest guest]

 

<h1>Y E S</h1>

 

Just saw it, and it wasn't easy. The movie is so boring to the average shot-em-up crowd that it played in only one theatre in the entire province of Ontario in Canada - like one out of many hundreds of screens. But the trip to Toronto was worth it just to see the kirtan rip up the screen.

 

Unhappy people, grey scenes, grey clothes ..... and then bang ... deliriously happy devotees in wild colours singing and dancing with joyous abandon. The kirtana was intermingled back and forth with a scene about the kaballah which I thought showed the validity of Caitanya's mission.

 

The movie spoke of God and mysticism which was positive. It possibly suggested that while parents have given up on finding God, their children still have the innate need to find Him, and find meaning in this world.

 

It ran only one week here, so I imagine it will be at Blockbuster next week, and cheap used copies should be available for sale in a few weeks.

 

Unfortunately it will not be a popular movie. Those who see the kirtan will see the real thing, and tasting the pudding is the best sales pitch. Those fortunate few have my blessings.

 

gHari

[Guest guest]

 

I Liked It ....... Review - Bee Season

 

 

But then religion is my life. I imagine that people more addicted to this world would have found the movie a little too dull, motionless - yet not notionless or emotionless. They are real people, highlighting and reflecting real problems in our own lives.

 

While parents may have given up the quest to find God, children still share the innate need to find Him, and find meaning in this crazy world. The two kids in this movie take the initiative and take steps toward God before our very eyes.

 

I especially appreciated how the family's grey world, filled with unhappiness, stilted relationships, grey scenes, and grey clothes was so vividly contrasted with the joyous abandon of the singing and dancing of the colourful Hare Krishna assembly. Collating those ecstatic chanting scenes into the main Kaballah scene was sheer movie magic, making it a truly elevating experience.

 

What was missing in the family was God, and the two kids had each discovered that in their own paths before the movie ended. I'm not sure the audience understood.

 

But then, that's the movie through my rose-coloured glasses. And I will buy the DVD, if only to recapture the magic of the Kaballah-Krishna scene.