The Beekeeper (1986) - film review

A 60 year old man, Spiros, decides to take up bee-keeping after retiring from his post as a schoolteacher.  Having separated from his wife and attended his daughter’s wedding, he travels around Greece in his lorry filled with beehives.  On the way, he meets a rebellious teenager who, despite the age difference, finds herself drawn to him.  Although he initially rejects his young companion’s advances, Spiros finds her attractive and their mutual isolation creates a strong bond between them...

Often overlooked, The Beekeeper is one of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos’ most profound works and features a harrowingly poignant performance from Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni.  With its long takes and unhurried pace, the film is likely to be unbearably slow for most cinema audiences, but for those who have the patience it is an eye-opening and profoundly humanist work.  The expressive cinematography makes what little dialogue there is in the film virtually superfluous: it is too easy to read the sense of suffering and regret simply from the actors’ portrayals and their bleak post-industrial surroundings.

The film’s central theme is how two diametrically opposed spirits – a world-weary retired teacher and a pleasure-seeking adolescent – can make contact as a result of a natural animalistic attraction and a shared sense of isolation.  The two characters have very little in common, yet they are drawn together by a force which neither can control or rationalise, a fundamental unconscious desire to be loved.   Ironically, there is little passion in the film – all emotions are tightly suppressed and it is the lack of emotion which makes the film so intensely poignant and bitterly realistic.

© James Travers 2002

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