Pan’s Labyrinth
POSTED BY: Finn mac Cumhal
UPDATED: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 23:32
VIEWED: 4025
PAGE 2 of 3
OK, I saw the movie. Subtitles didn't bother me a bit. Found 'em kinda fun, actually. The movie ? Slow. Graphic. Violent. Dark. Sad. This ain't Shrek. Parts were visually interesting, imo, but wow...what a downer of a movie.
Select to view spoiler:
The little girl gets SHOT and dies! How fuckin sick and twisted is that ? I got the distinct impression that the entirety of the fariy tale story this was only in her head, as she tried to escape the cruelity of the real world.
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. "
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Quote:Sounds like you didn’t care much for it? It was slow, graphic, violent, dark and sad, very sad. It’s also blatantly political. All of which, may set the film outside or at the fringe of what many people like in their fantasy.
Originally posted by AURaptor:
OK, I saw the movie. Subtitles didn't bother me a bit. Found 'em kinda fun, actually. The movie ? Slow. Graphic. Violent. Dark. Sad. This ain't Shrek. Parts were visually interesting, imo, but wow...what a downer of a movie.
Also I should revise my recently overstated position on Vidal. I think I’ve been convinced that Vidal is a little too one-dimensional. He comes across as too evil to really be real. I think if the watch-thing had been expanded on to give some context to why he is the way he is, it would have made a lot of difference, but it’s not evident enough, and that does hurt the film’s sense of balance.
That the film was in Spanish was a big plus. The alternative would have been that the film was in English with Spanish accents, but since the story is set in Spain with all Spanish characters, it really doesn’t make much sense that they would speak English. Frankly, I’ve become increasingly sensitive to this, partly because Mel Gibson has shown me that the original languages can add a lot more realism and authenticity to a film then it detracts from the meaning. So that all the characters in the film spoke Spanish felt much more like a product of the setting then where the film was made.
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Select to view spoiler:
The little girl gets SHOT and dies! How fuckin sick and twisted is that ? I got the distinct impression that the entirety of the fariy tale story this was only in her head, as she tried to escape the cruelity of the real world.
Select to view spoiler:
Killing Ofelia was pretty bent, even though it seems pretty critical to the story.
Killing children on screen has been a taboo in film for a very long time, but recently, it seems that this has become more tolerable, maybe even acceptable. I’ve not seen the recent Pirates of the Caribbean film, but a friend was telling me that a young boy is hung in the first few scenes, and this is supposed to Disney.
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
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Bizarrely, I recently bought this DvD when I was on holiday. I sat down and watched it yesterday.
For AGES, one of my friends on this site recommended that I watch it. I love foreign language movies. It is a cracking movie. Although, if I were to nit pick, I felt that the direction/plot maybe lagged slightly in parts. On the plus side though, it's enchanting, gritty and dotted with dark humour throughout. The sfx and creature make up is gorgeous to look at. The musical score caught my attention too.
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Quote:There actually were some pretty confusing issues with the story.
Originally posted by CosmicFugitive:
Bizarrely, I recently bought this DvD when I was on holiday. I sat down and watched it yesterday.
For AGES, one of my friends on this site recommended that I watch it. I love foreign language movies. It is a cracking movie. Although, if I were to nit pick, I felt that the direction/plot maybe lagged slightly in parts. On the plus side though, it's enchanting, gritty and dotted with dark humour throughout. The sfx and creature make up is gorgeous to look at. The musical score caught my attention too.
First of all the movie is politically naïve. It depicts the Fascists as the unparalleled bad guys, but fails to provide the same context into the rebels. In the movie, there is no origin or base of operations for the Rebels. They simply appear out of the woods to fight evil. Now one explanation for the naïve way the story is told is that Ofelia is naïve, and therefore the story as seen through her eyes is distorted by her innocent ignorance.
I think it over emphases the fantasy of fairytale narrative, and as a result it undermines Ofelia’s fairytale world making her seem something of a crazy person, even for a weird child.
Select to view spoiler:
The ending of the movie is confusing too, because Ofelia, after insisting that her brother stay with her, when faced with the questionable motives of the Faun, which she perceives to be a friend or mentor, but willingly gives up her little brother with no struggle to Vidal, whom she knows to be an evil man. Ofelia was courageous and heroic for taking her brother and escaping Vidal, but turns him over without a fight. The moral is do the right thing when faced with the easy option of disobeying a friend, but do the wrong thing when faced with a man with a gun? How is that courageous or heroic? So the story undermines the heroine by presenting her as holding a double standard. Vidal shoots Ofelia, which in a way is fitting because she has abandoned virtue.
I don’t think this was a mistake or an oversight in the story – I think it was deliberate, because Ofelia’s little brother represents the Christ Child. Ofelia’s refusal to abandon her brother to the capricious whim of the Faun, but quickly turn the child over to the brutal Fascist with a gun is making a statement about a perceived hypocrisy in the Church. Del Toro is saying that the Church claims to be protecting virtue by refusing the old religions or more generally guarding morality, but then submits to the ruthlessness of totalitarian statism. Once again it is somewhat of a naïve perspective.
A problem emerges however, when Ofelia is praised for her righteous decision. She goes to heaven or some parallel and is rewarded for her decision, which is very confusing, unless her accent into heaven is just sarcasm or satire, perhaps speaking to the way the church supposedly presents itself as righteous despite its perceived hypocrisy.
The ending gets messy if you try to think too hard about it. I’m not sure Del Toro really thought it threw all the way either. I prefer my perhaps overly simplistic interpretation to this naïve and confusing one.
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
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Quote:
Sounds like you didn’t care much for it? It was slow, graphic, violent, dark and sad, very sad. It’s also blatantly political. All of which, may set the film outside or at the fringe of what many people like in their fantasy.
It wasn't what I had hoped. Of course, I wasn't sure what I was expecting, other than something non-Disney-esque.
Select to view spoiler:
The death of a child in a movie is rare, but the murder of a child.... wow. Can't think of too many instances where that happens. In 'Pay it Forward', we see a young boy get tragically killed - by another youth. I can't recall any 'on screen' scenes were an adult kills a child, though there are countless attempts and/or references made through out film history.
I guess what really made it such a downer for me was the notion that EVERYTHING the little girl experienced from the very start of the movie quite possibly was all in her head, and she simply dreamt up this fantasy world to escape the real one. To me, that underlying theme remains one of hoplessness for the rest of us, and even if we can develop
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. "
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I guess you have to look at the Spanish Civil War and see how sick and cruel it was. Franco's air force, actually German and Italian, bombed a city into ashes. A prelude to what was about to happen to the rest of Europe.
The point is the city had no military value. No industry producing weapons of war, no large scale military forces stationed near. They simply wanted the rebels to know what they could do. This was an attack on the people. With their city burning down around them the people ran in to countryside to escape. There was not going to be any escape. As they entered the open fields outside the city the bombers came down and strafed them with their machine guns.
The Spanish Civil War was a warning of what was to come, but the adults ignored it and we ended up with one of the most horrific wars this world has ever known.
This story comes from that background. They did not hold back on the cruelity. It is hard to think a movie would have such evil, but it actually existed.
In Schindler's List we see a very young girl in a pink coat running through the streets of the ghetto she is being driven from. We finally find her body piled with the rest of the people who were shoot down and then set on fire.
There are writers, producers and directors who are not afraid to show how cruel the human being can be. The sad part is not that these films are made, it is sad that it is true.
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler
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In every group of people there is good and evil. I'm sure the allies had their share of tyrannical figures. On every battlefield and on every side there are good and bad soldiers. The English are renowned for their late adjustment to modern tactics. They send men in charging waves toward machine gun posts. None returned. And our precious America. The only Country to ever use a Nuclear Weapon in wartime. How many innocents did that little beauty wipe out? We'll never know. Millions likely. Remember that history is written by the victors and is biased as hell.
It's All Gravy Baby!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Greystoke:
In every group of people there is good and evil. I'm sure the allies had their share of tyrannical figures. On every battlefield and on every side there are good and bad soldiers. The English are renowned for their late adjustment to modern tactics. They send men in charging waves toward machine gun posts. None returned. And our precious America. The only Country to ever use a Nuclear Weapon in wartime. How many innocents did that little beauty wipe out? We'll never know. Millions likely. Remember that history is written by the victors and is biased as hell.
It's All Gravy Baby!
How very even handed, do you intend to make a point along with your insight?
They may think their sins are original, but for the most part they are petty and repetitive.
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Quote:The Franco government was responsible for a lot of atrocities during and after the Spanish Civil War, but so were the Rebels. It’s naïve to present that history as if the Fascists were evil and the Rebels were good. It was never that simple. First of all, the Franco government was not the same thing as the Nazi government – a similar totalitarian ideology for sure, but Spain did not practice ethnic cleansing the way the Nazis in Germany did. You can’t draw a conclusion about Spanish Fascists based on images of Nazi ethnic cleansing, but popular culture has painted fascism and fascists with the broad Nazi brush. So when Pan gives us a fascist, we are predisposed to assume he’s evil. It’s stereotypical, not historical. Spanish Rebels were largely Communists supported by Stalin, a lot of them were actually directly aligned with Stalin, and were responsible for a lot of atrocities as well. So if we are supposed to paint the Fascists with the Nazi’s brush, wouldn’t it be only fair to paint the Rebels with the Stalinist brush? If the Spanish Rebels had gained control, it’s hard to imagine that conditions would have necessarily been any different. So the Rebels are stereotypes as well. You can’t take the historical balance in the movie as literal.
Originally posted by traveler:
I guess you have to look at the Spanish Civil War and see how sick and cruel it was. Franco's air force, actually German and Italian, bombed a city into ashes. A prelude to what was about to happen to the rest of Europe.
The point is the city had no military value. No industry producing weapons of war, no large scale military forces stationed near. They simply wanted the rebels to know what they could do. This was an attack on the people. With their city burning down around them the people ran in to countryside to escape. There was not going to be any escape. As they entered the open fields outside the city the bombers came down and strafed them with their machine guns.
The Spanish Civil War was a warning of what was to come, but the adults ignored it and we ended up with one of the most horrific wars this world has ever known.
This story comes from that background. They did not hold back on the cruelity. It is hard to think a movie would have such evil, but it actually existed.
In Schindler's List we see a very young girl in a pink coat running through the streets of the ghetto she is being driven from. We finally find her body piled with the rest of the people who were shoot down and then set on fire.
There are writers, producers and directors who are not afraid to show how cruel the human being can be. The sad part is not that these films are made, it is sad that it is true.
I have to admit, my initial view was to accept Vidal’s character without question. I have no doubt that men like Vidal existed in Fascist Spain; I have no doubt that men like Vidal exist in every country, but just because someone is a fascist doesn’t make them evil. So Vidal needed something else to support his behavior to make him feel more real, and as it turned out, there was such a thing, but it was not expounded on enough, in my opinion. The watch that Vidal carries with him was given to him by his father who was killed in Morocco as a soldier, but we don’t know enough details about that, other then that Vidal is uncomfortable admitting it. The watch obviously symbolizes mortality, and this could have been used to give an insight into why Vidal is the way he is, and it’s unfortunate that they missed that opportunity. At the very least, it would have provided some balance to show the innocent people dead on the train that the rebels bombed. It’s difficult to believe that you can blow up a train and not kill anyone. Once again I have no doubt that there were good rebels, but they didn’t give as balanced a picture as they could have, and by making Vidal so flat it just emphasizes this imbalance in the politics of the movie. I like that the Rebel’s were good guys (perhaps it’s the Browncoat in me), but I don’t like that
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:Select to view spoiler:
I guess what really made it such a downer for me was the notion that EVERYTHING the little girl experienced from the very start of the movie quite possibly was all in her head, and she simply dreamt up this fantasy world to escape the real one. To me, that underlying theme remains one of hoplessness for the rest of us, and even if we can develop
Select to view spoiler:
This is what I meant by emphasizing the fantasy of the fairytale narrative. There were several scenes that suggested that the fairytale narrative or even the entire story was all in her head. That undermined the credibility of the heroine, leading to the impression that she was crazy. It wasn’t necessary, for instance, to show Ofelia standing alone in the Labyrinth, emphasizing that the Faun was all in her head.
I’ve watched this movie over a half dozen times now I guess and I think I can finally see all sides to it. I still think that my interpretation is the best (certainly the most optimistic), but I think I can see your view as well. As I said how one interprets the ending will shade their whole view of the movie.
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
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