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| Subject: Re: Pan's Labyrinth | |
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Author: Mr. Bungle |
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Date Posted: 08:04:44 09/21/07 Fri Author Host/IP: NAT31.tulsa.cc.ok.us/199.245.163.1 In reply to: Kylopod 's message, "Pan's Labyrinth" on 05:02:08 09/21/07 Fri This was battling it out for the best of 2006 along with The Fountain and to a lesser extent Children of Men (though on repeated viewing CoM lost a little luster) in my fantasy Oscars. As the second part of his unfinished Spanish Civil War trilogy, Pan's Labyrinth bears some stylistic and narrative resemblance to his also excellent The Devil's Backbone, but seems like a step forward when factoring in the fantasy elements and how it moves from Backbone's creepy ghost story to horror that is not at all supernatural. I was also stunned when it was over (to be honest, the end still puts a bit of a lump in my throat). > >I thought it was going to be a children's film. >Apparently many other people made that assumption; it >was falsely advertised in some places, and parents >ended up bringing their kids to see it, a bad mistake. >It almost makes "Temple of Doom" look like "Mary >Poppins." hahaha.... >By the middle of the film, I had very little idea >where the story was going--which is pretty amazing, >since the basic plot elements are highly derivative, >and there's a heavy use of foreshadowing. The movie is >just so raw and brutal that just about anything can >happen. It somehow departs from a standard formula >where we can easily predict each character's fate. We >know that at least a couple of characters are going to >die, but we have a hard time figuring out who among >the others will survive. Del Toro is just so goddamn good at that. Not that every movie of his is a masterwork (Mimic?) but he brings a deft assuredness to everything he touches. As a cinematic visionary he sees the whole so completely that he's right up there with Jackson and Spielberg, and given more time and the right material he could wind up being the Mexican Kurosawa. >The movie's fantasy themes are a reversal of the norm. >In most stories of this kind (e.g. "Peter Pan"), the >child escapes into a fantasy world as a way of >avoiding the shades of gray found in the adult world. >Here, it's just the opposite. The girl's stepfather is >an utter monster of a human being, an army captain who >has no compunction about cruelly killing innocents in >his quest to uproot Spanish guerillas. (Some knee-jerk >right-wingers, ignorant of the film's historical >context, have called the film Communist propaganda.) I gotta admit I had to hit up Wikipedia for some background on the Spanish Civil War, but even then I don't think you could say he was picking sides as he shows some of the rebels being nearly as ruthless (well, not as much as the Captain). As to the subversion of the fantasy elements, it's hardly surprising since the guy has steeped himself in lore and fable all of his life (you should see the notebooks he keeps, they could feature as a prop in one of his own films). >People like the father really existed during World War >II. He isn't even charming, which makes us wonder what >the mother ever saw in him. The girl's real father was >his tailor, and after the father died he impregnated >the mother. Presumably she was attracted to his sense >of order and power, though I have a more sinister >theory. He seems not to care one whit about her >failing health. All that matters to him is that she >delivers a healthy baby so that he can achieve his own >immortality, which parallels what the girl is seeking. I think she just wanted to make sure her child grew up on the winning side. > >He is so uncompromisingly evil that, in some ways, he >seems more like a fairy tale character than any of the >creatures she encounters in the labyrinth. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this guy isn't necessarily evil. He's convinced he's right. He's got a job to do, and he thinks he's acting in the best interests of the country; he will do what ever it takes to see that through to the bitter end. The only problem is that it's born out of a virulent self-interest, and a black hole where his moral center should be. I think this makes him more unnerving and dangerous, because evil has supernatural connotations (as I think you noted), but being a leader blind to the realities of you actions because the you are so focused on your goal seems all too real. I think we've got a guy in office like that now. >One thing the movie doesn't do is create a full >magical world. Huh? The labyrinth is never explored in any >detail. Because it's the product of her mind. Nothing more. The faun is the only creature we get to know >in any measure. He has her perform a set of tasks of >the sort you might find in a role-playing adventure >game, but they seem to serve no purpose other than to >test her character. There's a lot of symbolism in the >story, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. When >it comes to storytelling, symbolism cannot stand on >its own; it always should be held up by a narrative >that makes sense on a literal level. The fantasy >sequences here never totally come together in a >cohesive way. I see what your getting at but that points to the question you seem to care little about, whether or not the fantasy elements of the film are just a product of how the girl is dealing with the fucked up realities around her. Granted the film doesn't really want to answer that either, but I think it gives you enough to draw the conclusion. I think the fantasy elements are an allegory for her fear, her inability to deal with how much she hates her life (outside of her mother and unborn sibling), and possibly mental illness, which is exactly why I found the resolution so moving. >I am less inclined than some other viewers to probe >the question of whether the girl's fantasies are real >or not. (A third possibility is that the girl has some >kind of psychic premonition, since many of the >real-world events seem to happen after being >foreshadowed in the fantasy sequences.) I'd call that a fourth possibility. As with "The >Wizard of Oz," we take the fantasies to be real while >they occur, but the possibility that they exist only >in the girl's mind simply gives the story an added >psychological dimension. It is on that level that the >movie succeeds so brilliantly: we can believe that a >girl in these dreaded circumstances would create such >a fantasy, though it's a rather different sort of >"escape" from what we're used to in this genre. Couldn't agree more (mostly). How come it took you so long to catch this? Mr. B [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Re: Pan's Labyrinth | Kylopod | 14:51:44 09/22/07 Sat |
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