SpringWidgets Fandango.com Boxoffice Top 10 Fandango?s Top 10 Box Office Movies!
SpringWidgets Spiritual Insight in Movies All other considerations aside, how spiritual is a movie? The scale rates from profoundly spiritual (5) to not at all spiritual (1). Courtesy of HollywoodJesus.com.
Eliza Naumann has no reason to believe she is anything but ordinary. Her father Saul, a beloved university professor, dotes on her talented elder brother Aaron. Her scientist mother, Miriam, seems consumed by her career. When a spelling bee threatens to reaffirm her mediocrity, Eliza amazes everyone: she wins. Her newfound gift garners an invitation not only to the national competition, but an entrée into the world of words and Jewish mysticism that have so long captivated her father's imagination. But Eliza's unexpected success hurls the Naumann family dynamic into a tailspin, long-held secrets emerge and she is forced to depend upon her own divination to hold the family together.
Release Date: November 11, 2005 (limited) Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures Director: Scott McGehee, David Siegel
Screenwriter: Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal Starring: Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Flora Cross, Max Minghella, Kate Bosworth Genre: Drama MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements, a scene of sensuality and brief strong language) Official Website: FoxSearchlight.com/BeeSeason
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, a scene of sensuality and brief strong language. Runtime: 104 min. For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM, and MPAA.ORG. Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG
Everyone in the film is in search of
some spiritual fulfillment. BEE SEASON
We see a brief scene of Aaron chanting in the Krishna temple. Saul teaches Eliza a Kabbalistic exercise designed to clear her mind to be receptive to God. Later, she does this on her own to reach a major (and scary) mystical state.
Eliza Naumann spells words. Lots of words. Hard words. Long words. And with an effortlessness and understanding that surprises everyone around her. Her teachers, her fellow students. But especially those closest to her: her father, mother and brother. The people whose lives Eliza’s newfound genius will irrevocably change. BEE SEASON is the kaleidoscopic portrait of a modern American family whose picture-perfect surface conceals an underlying world of secret turmoil.
As Eliza Naumann (FLORA CROSS) trains for the ultimate test of her spelling powers -- the pressure-packed National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C -- her family simultaneously begins to fall apart. Indeed the more amazing the words are that Eliza learns to spell, the more communication seems to break down all around her. Her father Saul (RICHARD GERE), a religious studies professor, sees something transcendent in Eliza’s magical gift, and begins to teach her the secrets of Kabbalah. He becomes obsessed with her victories, living vicariously through her path to God. Her mother Miriam (Oscar winner JULIETTE BINOCHE) finds Eliza and Saul’s shared focus a painful reminder of the connection she once had with her husband and her own parents, who died tragically when she was a young girl. Meanwhile, Eliza’s older brother Aaron (MAX MINGHELLA), once her father’s favorite, rebels against his withdrawal of affection, experimenting with other religions, and eventually seeking out a connection with a beautiful Hare Krishna (KATE BOSWORTH). With her family disintegrating before her young eyes, it’s up to Eliza -- and an unexpected act of selflessness and love -- to put the broken pieces of her world back together.
At the heart of BEE SEASON lies a powerful thread of modern American family life: the yearning for perfection. On the surface, the Naumann family appears to be ideal – upper middle-class, highly accomplished, deeply spiritual, and seemingly tightly knit. But the film gradually reveals that the picture-perfect family is, in fact, comprised of individuals on disparate (and often desperate) paths toward their own notions of transcendence – quests that lead them to pursue intense and even dangerous spiritual experiences. Eliza’s unlikely emergence as the ‘family star’ has the effect of tearing the fragile fabric that has thus far held them together. Through the glare of approbation that her anomalous spelling genius has brought her, Eliza nonetheless manages to discern that it’s up to her to restore what has been shattered – a feat she accomplishes through an act that can be interpreted either as a reclaiming of her self (and a tacit rejection of God’s voice), or, alternately, as a selfless channeling of God’s profound love.
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Everyone in the film is in search of 
