Wow! This film was brilliant.
I have to admit from the start that I wasn’t a huge fan Guillermo Del Toro’s previous effort, Hellboy. I liked the visual style and some of the characters and story, but overall it didn’t click for me. I also didn’t care much for Blade II. It was a visual effects overload and the story, even though I am a HUGE vampire fan, didn’t intrigue me much at all. I don’t know if I actually DISlike either of these movies, but I can’t say that I like them.
I DEFINITELY can’t say the same for Pan’s Labyrinth. I LOVED this movie. I hadn’t really heard much about it, but the previews looked visually awesome and it was getting pretty good reviews (though I didn’t actually read any of them). Still, something drew me towards this movie. I got the inkling to go see a movie after work today, and it was between Pan’s Labyrinth and Children of Men (which I hear is also excellent). I picked PL; I don’t know why. When the movie started, I was slightly disappointed that it was subtitled. I don’t mind subtitles, but I read slowly, so I sometimes feel that I am missing the visual part of the film to read the dialogue. Thankfully, there isn’t a lot of dialogue, or at least not long bits of dialogue.
This is a faerie tale, in the true sense. I’m no expert. I’ve never actually read any Grimm tales, but I know they aren’t all bright and happy like the Disney version portray them to be. PL is dark. It is gloomy. But despite that it is very vibrant. The visuals and effects/costumes are beautifully menacing, and yet they don’t look like they are created or pull you out of the experience at all. Quite the opposite, they seem to draw you in and feel quite natural.
I don’t want to give away much of the movie because I was fooled as to the path this film took. It is the story of a young girl named Ofelia in war-torn 1944 Spain. Her pregnant mother has remarried to a captain in the fascist Spanish army. Ofelia is an avid reader of faerie tales, presumably to take her mind off of the horrors of war which surround her. In her new home in the countryside, she herself becomes drawn into a faerie tale of her own.
As I said, this isn’t your Disney faerie tale. It is quite graphic and disturbing and violent. And tragic. There were a few instances in which I was cringing from the graphicness of the violence (yet no gore). One scene in particular was quite frightening. I fear that saying any more will give too much away.
When the ending came and I realized what I had just seen I was stunned. It was beautiful … and brilliant. It all made sense. Well, almost all; I have to look up some information on mandrake root. I left the theater completely satisfied with this movie and actually recommended it to a couple who were having doubts as to whether they would like it.
And yet one thing bothered me: I can’t see an American filmmaker or studio having the guts to make a film like this.
This post was last modified: 01-19-2007, 11:58 PM by jimbow8.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. ... The piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
~ Howard Phillips Lovecraft