Pan’s Labyrinth
POSTED BY: Finn mac Cumhal
UPDATED: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 23:32
VIEWED: 4025
PAGE 1 of 3
Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno)
I can’t remember why I didn’t go see this at the theater, but later when I viewed the trailer again, I can imagine that that must have been it. The trailer was really stupid, mostly because no one talked and the voice over embellished the story so much that it seemed a little uninteresting. The reason for the crappy trailer, I now know, was because this is a foreign film. I missed this magnificent film at the theater because the crappy trailer didn't want to reveal the Spanish dialogue? Anyone else miss this film?
Anyway, after reading some reviews, I decided to buy the film. I know nothing of Spanish and my Italian isn’t good enough to compensate, so I had to rely totally on the subtitles for meaning. I’m going to watch it a couple of times, time permitting, to make sure I get the dialogue right, but my initial impression is extremely positive. I would say that this movie is one of the best of 2007, probably second only to Terabithia (except that technically Labyrinth is a 2006 movie). Both Labyrinth and Terabithia are stories about coming to terms with the difficulties of adulthood, but in Labyrinth’s case those difficulties are the Spanish civil war and the horrific conditions set upon Spain by the Fascist leader Francisco Franco, making Labyrinth very dark compared to Terabithia.
The heroine is Ofelia, the bookish 10-year old daughter of the widowed pregnant newly wed wife to Vidal, a high ranking officer in Franco’s Fascist Spain. Ofelia is played by Spanish actress Ivana Baquero, and the camera adores her. She engrosses herself in books of fairytales to escape the horrors of the brutal Spanish Civil War in which her father was killed as a traitor, and she and her mother have been relocated to a remote bleak wilderness villa outside of Madrid. Although Ofelia, as a child, is not directly involved with much of the horrors that take place, and in many ways is quite protected from them, she is not unaware of the terrible conditions and senses the deep sadness in her mother. While exploring the woods around her new home she encounters the old ruins of a pre-Christian underground temple and meets a Faun that informs her that she is the lost princess of a magical and peaceful kingdom and that she must fulfill three tasks to return. Ofelia lives in two worlds, both deeply shrouded in sorrow. The “real” world of cold-blooded fascism that she desperately seeks to escape and the “fantasy” world of magical fauns, child-eating Pale Man and giant frogs, which in many ways in as putrid and evil, but in it she finds hope, something absent from the real world.
Captain Vidal is a high-ranking officer in Franco’s new Fascist Spain. He is a monstrous man, and perhaps the vilest villain in movies. His first introduction to Ofelia is a cold threat to a frighten girl. He beats in the faces of innocent men and kills remorseless. He takes sadistic pleasure in torturing prisoners. He is truly despicable, but not unfeeling. He does seem to love his new wife and unborn son, though his affection is not unconditional. He demands obedience to the Fascist order, and anything less is unworthy of life. But more then that he has found this brutal Fascist society as an outlet for his own sadism and narcissism. Some would say he may be a too evil to be believable, but I never had a problem believing that such a man could exist and probably did in Fascist Spain.
Throughout the movie you are enchanted by Ofelia’s sorrowful eyes and her desperate search for hope and disgusted by Vidal’s merciless, unremitting hate. Baquero plays Ofelia magnificently, never overreaching, always lost in the quite pathetic shock of a terrorized child but also with that spark of imagination and exploration, always hoping for freedom from the sorrow. The two, Ofelia and Vidal, seem separate entities but they are unwittingly embraced in battle of good vs evil, innocence vs. perversion. A battle that plays out in two separate worlds and only becomes apparent to the two in the end. And the end
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I missed it, mainly because it didn't get much pub. I have it now, via blockbuster, and am just waiting for a good time to toss it in the dvd player. Will comment afterward.
People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I loved it.
http://templetongate.net/panslabyrinth.htm
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I actually saw this one on the big screen, it took some doing to find a theatre running it, and I was kinda twitchy that things wouldn't carry so well in subtitles.
I need not have worried.
Finn hits it pretty good, overall, so I have little to add but I'll add it, I guess.
Not only the score, but the audio itself is of amazing quality, something a bit less noticeable but it adds well to a story that is throwback classic to when Faery Tales were actually scary.
Mariel Verdu? I think, was absolutely out-friggin-standing in a glorious piece of a rather different kind of heroism, she really shined as Mercedes, and one would hope she gets more work in the future.
All of the main characters were very striking, with excellent performances, but Mercedes stood out all the same.
This one is gettin bought and put on the DVD rack, and I can offer it no higher praise than that.
-Frem
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
You know, I think I might be one of the few people who wasn't ecstatic about it upon seeing the movie. Yes it was enjoyable, but not on the same level that everyone else puts it on. I kinda thought it was just another bit of garden variety fantasy with a nice bit of Spanish flavor attached to it.
Other than that, nothing to really write home about.
**************************************************
"And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? Each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame."
Loudon Wainwright III - "Strange Weirdos" off the "Knocked Up" soundtrack
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I actually like garden-variety fantasy. I pretty much flipped over the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings, but I have to admit, I have a hard time thinking of Pan’s Labyrinth as ordinary fantasy. It strikes me as fairly original.
It has certain similarities to Narnia, but they seem superficial. Both movies are set against the back drop of World War II and both are about children (child) escaping the harsh realities of war and struggling to negotiate the complicated arena of adults by retreating into a fantasy realm of imagination. I think though that Pan’s Labyrinth puts a much darker spin on the story and brings it up much closer to the reality part of the equation. Narnia was a metaphor, but Pan is a more explicit examination of a child’s imagination and retreat from reality. Narnia also had a much more optimistic and encouraging theme, where it is really hard to find much in Labyrinth that is too optimistic. Although it really depends, I guess, on how you interpret the ending.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I went to this movie with a friend. He was disappointed to discover it was subtitled.
It's Spanish! Well I am used to that. I see a lot of foreign and independent films. I only get upset if the dialogue is so much you end up reading and not watching the movie. This one was pretty good. The scenes, both in our world and the one Pan entered were to good to bury with dialogue.
An author can create a world with candy mountains and live with rainbows overhead or create a world that requires you to make choices that will effect you and the others around you. This is the true spirit of what fantasy is all about. Lessons in behavior, responsibility and what the real rewards are for your actions. Fantasies were written to teach children these lessons. I think adults should return to them over and over to see if their lives are on the right path.
This story put this together well. The adults are to blind to see their way through the Labyrinth. The child, who must face the trials and not let the adults around her cloud her judgement, is the only one who finds the right path.
"Pan's Labyrinth" may not be epic like "Lord of the Rings", yet it holds true to what good fantasies are all about.
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
And that, Traveler, I think says so much about why this film is so well worth seeing, it can be so many things to so many people ^^
I must confess, I hadn't looked at it that way at all, what I took from the film was much darker, and largely related to the brutal realities of life in Franco's Spain, What made Pan's Labyrinth 'good' fantasy to me was that the 'fantasy' elements were used so well to contrast and illustrate this shocking reality.
That the same film could leave us both seeing such different meaning, and presumably reading so much of it from a decidedly ambiguous, and hugely satisfying, ending, is quite the feat ^^
Just as a wee aside, completely different topic, foreign movies are a doddle, movie in one language, subtitle's in English is easy. I's watching an English movie, with English subtitles, to help my (Polish) flatmates make more sense of the dialogue, now that screws with your head 
Now I just need to get stuck into the box set, see if Cronos and The Devil's Backbone are on par. 'Backbone looks akin to 'Labyrinth in it's subject, but horror rather then fantasy. Looking forward to them, will report back, and hope no-one who has seen them spoilers them for me xD
They may think their sins are original, but for the most part they are petty and repetitive.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Hello Oddsbodkins:
We all come from different perspectives and see or read each story from our own experiences or expectations. My life has gone through so many changes that I may have seen this movie from many different points of view at different times in my life. I still think I would have liked it.
It was awhile ago since I have seen a foreign film. It was also Spanish. "All About My Mother".
Also subtitled. Not a fantasy, but a very different world from the one I live in.
I guess we are lucky to have theaters that will show these films. I suspect there are a lot of people who don't get the opportunity to see them.
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I’ve watched Pan’s Labyrinth probably a half dozen times this week, in many cases forgoing my normal evening ritual. I’ve really become captivated by the spirituality and the depth of this story. I’ve had a lengthy dialogue between some friends over email and other boards about this movie and I thought I would collect the gist of my thoughts here in an analysis of the Symbolism of Pan’s Labyrinth.
Take note of portion markings. Major spoilers abound.
Select to view spoiler:
What does it all mean?
[MAJOR SPOILER] The main protagonist is Ofelia. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there is a character named Ophelia, a young girl who is in love with Hamlet and hopes to marry him. But Hamlet rejects her and later kills her father, which drives Ophelia mad, because she is unable to cope. Ophelia dies when she falls into a brook and is unwilling to save herself, but in her view she is committing suicide to save herself from the torment set upon her by the chaotic lives of others. So Ofelia (the Spanish spelling of Ophelia) is a girl who, having grown up knowing nothing but war, is struggling to cope with the chaos set up her by others. In Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia struggles to escape a hopeless world, finding escape only in death.
[MAJOR SPOILER] Ofelia’s imaginative fairytale journey not only provides a mechanism to escape the harrowing world around her, but it will also help her to trust herself, and in doing so she will discover a hidden truth, lost in a world that has succumb to chaos. In the end Ofelia rejects her own fairytale world when she refuses to allow the Faun to sacrifice her baby brother. Ofelia has learned the lesson that no one else has taught her. The hidden truth that Ofelia learns is to rely on her heart and her conscience above her mind, to love her brother above her belief in fairytales, even though her fairytales are the only thing she has left to keep her sane. Sacrificing an innocent life for an ideology is wrong. This is a lesson her nemesis, Captain Vidal, cannot understand and cannot learn so he shoots Ofelia for disobeying. Not all heroes and heroines are fighters, like Mercedes. Sometimes a heroine is a child that learns a truth about humanity all by herself, even though nothing about her world suggests it.
[NO SPOILER] Ultimately, what this story means is that good is eternal. It exists, and even though no semblance of it can be found, a child can figure it out. So you see, while Pan’s Labyrinth may be disturbing and unnerving, underneath it all, it is a story about hope and faith. Good is always with us if we trust ourselves enough to believe in it.
The Fairytale
[NO SPOILER] Fantasy, good fantasy, is all about the symbolism. And all of Ofelia’s fairytale encounters are symbolic of thoughts and emotions awaking within her as she grows and learns.
The Faun.
“I've had so many names. Old names that only the wind and the trees can pronounce. I am the mountain, the forest and the earth. I am... I am a faun.”
-- The Faun
[NO SPOILER] The Faun is the old folklore. The cumulative knowledge of humanity passed down in its morality, ethics and wisdom. It is the natural conscience of man, those “unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven,” that Sophecles spoke of. Essentially, the faun is humanity and morality, inscribed in the folklore, religions and fairytales throughout history. It is neither good nor evil, but like knowledge, can be used either way, and often does not seem to be what it is.
[NO SPOILER] It also represents something about Ofelia. The Faun is Ofelia’s inner persona, the fear, the confusion, and the innocent knowledge that she has learned.
The Toad.
“Once upon a time, when the woods were young, they were home to creatures who were full of magic and wonder. They protected one another, and slept in the shade of a colossal fig tree that grew on a hill near a mill. But now the tree is dying, its branches are dry and its trunk is old and twisted. A monstrous toad has settled in its roots and won’t let the tree th
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME