Bee Season (film)
| Bee Season | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by |
Scott McGehee David Siegel |
| Produced by | Albert Berger Ron Yerxa |
| Screenplay by | Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal |
| Based on |
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg |
| Starring |
Richard Gere Juliette Binoche |
| Music by | Peter Nashel |
| Cinematography | Giles Nuttgens |
| Edited by | Lauren Zuckerman |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Fox Searchlight Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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104 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Hebrew |
| Budget | $14 million |
| Box office | $6,856,989 |
Bee Season is a 2005 American drama film adaptation of the 2000 novel of the same name by Myla Goldberg. The film was directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel and written by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal. It stars Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche.
Saul Naumann (Gere) is a somewhat controlling Jewish husband and father. A Religious Studies professor at UC Berkeley, Saul wrote his graduate thesis on the Kabbalah. Because he was a devout Jew, his wife Miriam (Binoche) converted to Judaism when they married, and he nurtured his son Aaron (Max Minghella) as a traditional studious Jew like himself. When daughter Eliza (Flora Cross) wins her class spelling bee, they embark on a course of Kabbalah study to help her win. The film follows the family and the spiritual quests upon which they journey, in large part because of Saul: Miriam's attempt to make herself whole, Aaron's religious uncertainty, and Eliza's desire to be closer to her father.
Miriam lives a secret life throughout her entire marriage to Saul, trying to fulfill the religious idea she learned from him, tikkun olam, or "repairing the world" and "reuniting its shards." In momentary flashbacks by Miriam, we glimpse a scene of a crashed car with shattered glass, apparently the basis of an underlying hurt she has been suffering since childhood, perhaps the death of her parents. The beautiful life she had before the accident, symbolized by the kaleidoscope she always carried as a child, through which she was presented with its beautiful view of the world, is suddenly shattered when the accident occurred. Thereafter, seeking to restore the broken shards, Miriam compulsively creates beautiful light gathering objects (sometimes stealing them) and storing them in a secret warehouse.
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Wikipedia