“Why did he kill the girl, and why did they kill him after that?”
The “he” is Frankenstein’s Creature played by Boris Karloff in the original Universal Studios production of Frankenstein. Ana is a seven-year-old girl sitting among what seems like the entire population of a very small Castilian village in Spain at the dawn of the Franco dictatorship who is absolutely entranced by the film. She’s asking her slightly older sister Isabel to explain the infamous scene in the movie where the Creature is moved to replicate the little girl’s throwing of flowers into a lake where they float. Only she doesn’t float and her drowning is misinterpreted by the villagers as murder and, well, you know how things turn out after that what with the torches and pitchforks and vengeance and stuff. Isabel doesn’t really know herself and her reply is that neither of them are killed because it’s a movie and in a movie everything is fake, but this doesn’t even come close to satisfying a sensitive soul like that belonging to Ana. It is from this point that the narrative proceeds in a strictly allusive and symbolic way that, like Isabel, offers no answers capable of satisfying everyone. Each viewer is encouraged to interpret the film’s message and meaning. Each viewer becomes Ana.
“If you're not sure that a mushroom is good, don't pick it. Because if it's bad, and you eat it, it's your last mushroom and your last everything else.”
Their father is imparting utilitarian information about mushroom consumption to Ana and Isabel, but as with everything in this film the scene operates on more than one level. While there is most assuredly nothing more going on here than a father giving useful information to children in order to protect them health and potentially their life, the scene eventually becomes more mystical and is notable for the absence of the wife/mother. Neither father nor mother are particularly doting parents as their marriage seems well past its high point. Dislocation, alienation and isolation is thwarting the family unit and there is in this scene a vaguely sinister suggestion that the father is passing along information to his daughters that is not shared with his wife. Not for any nefarious purpose; it is not suggesting that he plans to keep his wife ignorant of the poisonous mushrooms specifically, but rather that it is just single item in a laundry list of knowledge that patriarchal men don’t share with wives, but do share with blood lineage.
“It’s me, Ana. It’s me, Ana.”
Ana, dissatisfied with Isabel’s dismissal of what she has seen on-screen with her own eyes as simply fake, continues pressing her sister to explain why the Creature killed the girl and why the villagers killed the Creature. After telling Ana one last time that it’s a trick, she suddenly changes course and convinces her little sister that the Creature is not dead because she herself has seen him. Sensing that Ana will finally be satisfied and that she will quit asking questions and she can finally get to sleep, Isabel elaborates by concocting on the spur of moment a brilliant tale: the Creature is spirit who only comes out at night in the disguise of a monster, who can’t be killed, and who can be summoned at will by simply closing your ideas and calling to him with the mantra quoted above. This is how the film ends with Ana still fervently believing the Creature is a spirit that can be summoned. It is, as the entire film has been, not the sort of stuff made for those demanding easy answers. The ending is not a tidy one that wraps everything up, makes everything clear, and punctuates its meaning and message.
