You got me stoned

What was a formative movie in your childhood? That film that stuck with you from the start. In a small village in a Spain just settling under the pall of franquismo, a traveling screening of James Whale’s 1931 classic Frankenstein immediately occupies a spot in young Ana’s psyche. Its events perplex her: why did Frankenstein’s monster kill the little girl, and why did the villagers kill him in retribution? These are events—paired with a powerfully empathetic portrayal by Boris Karloff—which provoke discussion to this day, so it’s no surprise this leaves an impression on someone who is just starting to think about the world when the world is going so wrong. Ana Torrent imbues this character with such haunting naïveté and vulnerability as she deals with the mundane, such as her lessons at school or her sister’s manipulations, or in how the Frankenstein story starts to insinuate itself into her life when a Republican soldier hides out in the building she believes houses a spirit. Flashes show the world in shambles, whether in the isolated and run-down town or in the shooting of the soldier and glimpses of investigation, but this film takes processing of the world through life and through art and turns inward, registering as a sort of inner collapse for Ana.

Centering on beehive imagery to suggest a sort of mindless, ordered toil—Ana’s father Fernando crafts a glass beehive in an attempt to better understand this but can only bring himself to repeat the same industrious description—Ana’s explorations are set against and contained largely within the colony of Franco’s Spain. The paneled windows of their home suggest they are just as entrapped as Fernando’s bees, and even the girls entering the schoolhouse evokes similar imagery. While Ana experiences a sort of inner awakening over the course of the arc, her sister Isabel seems to go the opposite direction. Isabel claims to know why Frankenstein’s monster drowned the little girl but never answers, and whereas the creature could be construed as a sort of tragic misunderstanding of the nature of life, her own manhandling of a housecat suggests more malevolent intent.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'Frankenstein'.

Voiceover narration begins.

Honeycomb windows in a scene.

BIG DRINK

Time passing in cuts over a still frame occurs.

Someone goes through the front gate of the family home.