"Spellbound"

Blitz makes a sharp contrast between the two girls' different worlds, but he doesn't do them the disservice of assigning false weight or virtue to one world or the other. Emily's parents don't need Emily to do well in the bee. But you can see that they're excited that she has the opportunity to compete; they can't help being proud of her. The comfortable beauty of their home doesn't automatically make them villains, even though it's obvious that a girl like Angela could benefit enormously from winning the national bee (the prizes include scholarship money), while Emily will do just fine without it. "Spellbound" is a straightforward picture, but not a simplistic one. Blitz made it on a relatively small budget, doing his own camerawork, and the movie's co-producer, Sean Welch, did the sound (after getting a crash course from one of Blitz's friends). But what Blitz and Welch don't have in money they make up for a hundredfold with good intuition, zeroing in on just the right details -- funny ones, telling ones and some that are extraordinarily moving. Most of the kids who strike out in the bee have a sturdily cheerful attitude about it, at least in front of the camera. But one of them, and I will not reveal who, is so disappointed -- and possibly simply embarrassed at having mangled her word -- that she averts her face from the camera and crumples into her mother's arms. Blitz doesn't push the moment; his camerawork is direct and intimate without being intrusive. But he does make us feel the significance of what's happening. We don't pity this young girl (what we've seen of her earlier doesn't allow for that), but it's impossible not to feel how piercing her disappointment is.

Blitz may be exhilarated by the concept of the bee (which, incidentally, is televised on ESPN each June, an enthusiastic, if not wholly realistic, suggestion that etymology can be just as thrilling as NASCAR racing). But he's not oblivious to the stress it causes the children in the heat of competition. Even the ones who derive some enjoyment out of the event seem a little relieved when they strike out, some of them skipping a little or waving cheerfully as they strut off the stage -- they know that at last the pressure is off.

I can relate at least somewhat to their anxiety: After winning my school bee in eighth grade, I went on to the regional bee in my area. But I never made it anywhere near the National Bee, striking out on my first word in the regional competition, "hyperbole" (which, as a colleague of mine pointed out, is an ironic word for a future critic to have missed, but there you go). I was relieved to be done with the whole thing: The eighth-grade version of the person I would eventually become thought that spelling bees were decidedly uncool (though, as I recall, none of my classmates ever teased me about it -- in fact, they were pleased and excited for me).

But I did walk away with a Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, bound in brown leatherette with my name spelled on the front in gold, which long ago began to fall apart but which I still use almost daily. I'm grateful to have it by my side right now to locate words like "hellebore" (a genus of herbs of the buttercup family), "terrene" (an adjective meaning mundane or earthly), "logorrhea" (excessive and often incoherent talkiness or wordiness) and "kirtle" (a tunic or coat worn by men in the Middle Ages), all words that stumped me as I watched "Spellbound."

But what about "clavecin," "helioplankton," "cabotinage" and "opsimath"? They're not in the Little Dictionary That Could, which is comprehensive enough to include most of the words you're likely to encounter in an average day, but not big enough to include some of the real doozies thrown out to the contestants in the national bee. Like Blitz, I salute the kids who studied those particular words or didn't, who spelled them correctly or missed them. And I encourage them to look forward to a future in which they always put the proper number of M's in "accommodate" and never forget the A in "temperament." Even if they never need to dredge up "hellebore" again.

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