The Beehive
There are not a lot of bees in this movie, despite its title. Keep in mind, however, that the title refers to the spirit of the hive and not the bees. While there are a few quick shots of literal beehives, symbolically speaking the beehive is the home of the family at the center. Notice how the windows and glass doors features the familiar hexagon shape seen in a honeycomb. And the light filtering through captures that honey-hued gold of the interior of the hives. This situates the four members of the family as the bees who are each going about their own, interacting enough to remind us they are family, but working individually for the sake of the family unit without connecting as individuals.
Ana
Ana is the spirit inside that beehive of the family’s home. Her imagination has been ignited by seeing the film original Universal Studios film Frankenstein and everything has changed for her. The how remains enigmatic but the fact that everything has changed is marked by the questions she keeps pestering her older sister with about why the Creature kills the little girl and why the villagers kill the Creature. These inquiries into the nature of society represent the spirit that is now unleashed inside that beehive.
Frankenstein: The Movie
The film commences with the arrival and unloading of the actual canisters of film containing the print of Frankenstein which will be screened for what seems like the entire village. While every is caught up in the story, it is little Ana who is most impacted. To a not insignificant degree, this movie is fundamentally about the power of film to transform lives.
Isabel
Of course, the power of film to transform lives is limited. Not everyone is affected by the power of the movies quite so profoundly. Isabel is the symbolic incarnation of that type. She lacks her younger sister’s sensitivity and her persistent use of her own imagination as a means to thwart Ana’s spirit inside that beehive casts at least tangentially in the role of antagonist. Since the film is widely interpreted as an allegory about the fascist oppression of Spain’s dictator, Franco, this subtly suggests that to a point Isabel is the spirit of fascism within the home.
Frankenstein: The Character
It is not Dr. Frankenstein in the movie who captures Ana’s imagination, of course, but rather the Creature that he brings to life. The Creature seems capable of killing but also of being killed and Ana is having trouble reconciling and explaining what seems to be a paradox to her. The motivation to kill another living thing is beyond Ana’s ability to understand and there is the suggestion that this is really the first time she had been presented with the concept of death at all in any way that she can relate to. All she really knows for sure is that death is out there lurking beyond the safe confines of her beehive—and even that security is destroyed when Isabel plays the cruel trick on her of pretending to be dead. She sees only the result of Dr. Frankenstein’s dark magic, the Creature, is this understanding of mortality and not the mad scientist himself. In this respect, the symbolism of Mary Shelley’s character might be more appropriately termed Dr. Franco-stein and the Fascist Creature.
