Bee season

by Junius

Bee Season is a film that can be seen with pleasure, though it is more of a short story than a novel. The title comes from the now more than ever popular spelling “bees”; but it is a family—a hive of four busy people—that is the real subject.

I don’t think that the academic world has ever been glamorously portrayed. It gives one a glow. It’s Berkeley, California, under beautiful skies. Professor Richard Gere of the Department of Religion has hi class enthralled: “God held the crystal in his hand, but he wanted more. His need produced the Big Bang that blew the crystal apart into many pieces. It is the job of God’s creatures to draw the pieces together into a whole crystal again.”

Prof. Gere lives in one of the refurbished old mansions of Oakland, a city which has become a prime place to live through the efforts of Mayor Jerry Brown, who is personally thanked in the film’s credits. It is well known how he has raised up Oakland to be the kind of place where he himself can enjoy living and which our Berkeley professor can feel is right for his lab scientist wife and his son and daughter. The shattered pieces of Oakland are being put back together. It gets an “A”—literally—in the opening credits of Bee Season.

One is set for a domestic comedy, for Gere is at his charming best, especially in the kitchen. But we know—or are shown it—that being a charming intelligent, caring, creative father isn’t enough. And why wouldn’t it be enough? Because nothing is ever enough. Perfectin in a father means there’s just more for a sensitive teenage son to resist. Or his creativity pushes the person most inspired by it, a devoted wife, into extreme measures to seek the crystal pieces. And an eleven-year-old daughter has to take it on herself to dramatically restore the family to ordinariness. This is “origami” spelled with a “y”. All perfect Ph.D fathers should see this film.

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