Your heart completely goes out to the eight young competitors in Spellbound (2002); it really does. They're so filled with hope and belief--so industrious in wonderfully individual ways in their quest to win the 72nd National Spelling Bee--that wishing that each and every one of them could win becomes inevitable. And maybe, this irresistible documentary suggests, they already have.
These eight were part of a group of 249 who came out of some 9,000 school and city bees to qualify for the 1999 finals in Washington, DC. While a contest where the aim is correctly spelling words like "lycanthrope" and "cephalalgia" may not sound compelling or even particularly humane, director Jeff Blitz, producer Sean Welch (who together served as the film's camera crew) and editor Yana Gorskaya prove to us that it is.
Blitz and Welch spent a good deal of time selecting the kids they would focus on, a process that pays off exceptionally well. The group settled on is so engaging and so diverse--from different economic strata, family structures and areas of the country--that they effectively (and intentionally) provide a vibrant cross-section of America today.
The competitors highlighted are uniformly bright kids simply in love with big words for their own sake. The still-stunned parents of one child, for instance, remember her at age two-and-a-half saying, "I have no opportunities," before she knew the meaning of the word. Though there are exceptions, most of the parents, far from being whip-cracking stage managers, are rather astonished at offspring willing to chain themselves to dictionaries for hours a day to learn the really hard words.
Just as important, the other thing these kids have in common is a charming inability to be other than themselves. Old enough to spell well but too young to have mastered dissembling or guile, they can't hide their feelings, can't disguise who they are and, thanks to the rapport the filmmakers achieved with them, they truly open their lives and thoughts to the camera. Because we come to know these kids and appreciate their honesty, it's especially involving to see all the emotions--from joy to relief to stunned disbelief--come tumbling across their faces.
Though the National Bee has been understandably characterized as "a different form of child abuse" by a speller's parent, Spellbound is quite clear and unapologetic about the value in what might seem a valueless exercise.
For these contestants, for the most part, are not just memorizing; they are learning meanings, getting familiar with other root languages and, most important of all, participating in an arena where hard work and intelligence actually pay off--even if, obviously, they can't ensure victory.
At the end of the day, these children all seem better off for the time they put into the competition, as we are better for watching what the experience did for them. At a time when so many in this country are at odds about what represents America at its best, it's refreshing and then some to see a film that everyone can agree is an example of exactly that.