Pan's Labyrinth

[tealin]

I’ve been looking forward to Pan’s Labyrinth more than any other movie this winter, which is always a bad thing when it comes to unrealistically high expectations. The trailer was the first in a few years to give me chills, there was a teaser poster by Mike Mignola, and the animation/entertainment community was abuzz about it for quite a while before it opened here. So, upon seeing it? Well … it was different from what I had expected, but not a disappointment. I had expected a whimsical dark fantasy with a framework of gritty realism; what I got was ghastly realism with a frame and occasional interruptions of whimsical dark fantasy.

There are no spoilers in the following unless you want to read them:

I usually don’t read reviews of movies I want to like, or at least that I want to go into with a mind not already tainted by criticism, but I’d wish I’d read a few of this one because it was a lot more violent than I was expecting. I mentioned in my Children of Men review that I haven’t really watched TV news for the last five years or so and this may have erased what was previously pretty effective desensitization to the depravity of mankind. I used to be able to watch very violent things without turning a hair, even sometimes finding grisly humour in such films. Even recently, I was a firm believer that showing acts of brutality happening offscreen was much more effective and less likely to look ridiculous than seeing them plainly in view, as more was left up to the audience’s imagination, which could often be much worse than anything you’d manage to put on film. However, there is something about the unabashed savagery of these films that is worse than anything I could imagine. I would be hard-pressed to envisage exactly what it would look like for someone’s face to get smashed open by a bottle but Mr del Toro graciously showed me. (I must admit, though, that under the revulsion, a significant part of me was wondering how on earth they did that, and another part wondered just how much force was necessary to smash the facial bones so completely.) My imagination would have been strained to accommodate all the shooting deaths present in this film but it was spared the work by clearly seeing everyone get shot, and then get shot again just to make sure they were dead. Perhaps these two films are merely at the forefront of a movement to make violent death more shocking to people desensitized to what one normally finds in movies, or perhaps Señors Cuarón and del Toro are just particularly gifted in providing their characters with a horrific onscreen demise, but this month of movie watching has been the most grisly I can remember. Looked at from a filmmaking perspective, though, they were extremely successful: if the goal of a director is to manipulate the emotions of his audience, both of them do this incredibly well. Had I not been so involved with the movies the brutality would probably not have been so shocking. In fact, for comparison, there was a trailer for a horror flick attached to Pan's Labyrinth, which was full of blood and death, but it was practically comical. In Pan's Labyrinth itself, by about the halfway point, I was almost pleading with the director, ‘Please, do you have to show this one too? Can’t you do a few offscreen? Is it absolutely necessary to be this cruel?’ If that’s not emotional involvement, I’d like to see what is. And, in retrospect, having my normally dormant emotions yanked around like that was, in its horrible way, entertaining. I just wish they’d been yanked in more directions than ‘aghast.’ It might have made the ‘aghast’ more dreadful by comparison. All the same, despite my personal feelings on the matter, I have to give Mr del Toro significant credit for having a movie with so much wanton destruction in it and yet not making it seem like it was grisly death for the sake of grisly death. I can’t imagine every last one of the characters who died gave their life to advance the plot, but for all the killing it never felt gratuitous. That’s a fine line to tread and it was done so expertly.

Wow, that was long.

Before I ramble any further, I should, perhaps, delineate the basics of the plot, so those who haven’t seen it will have some idea what I’m talking about.

It’s 1944 and the fascist government in Spain has got its hands full fighting the Resistance, which is hiding in the woods and mountains and generally being a hassle. Ofelia travels with her pregnant mother to live with The Captain, who has just become her stepfather, at his base in an old mill in the forests of Galicia. Shortly after arriving, and learning that the Captain is a really horrible person, Ofelia is led to the centre of an ancient labyrinth by a mantis-like insect that she believes is a fairy; here she meets a Faun who has been waiting for her because – behold! – she is the reincarnation of the princess of the subterranean kingdom who wandered off so many years ago. He gives her a magic book and instructs her to do the tasks assigned to her before the moon is full so that the portal to the underworld can be reopened and she can regain her rightful place. Here begins The Plot. It alternates between Ofelia's life amongst the characters at the mill and her various fantastical tasks. The mill is besieged by the Resistance, the Captain struts and shoots his way around with a minimum of conscience, Ofelia’s mother’s pregnancy gets complicated, and things get increasingly ugly, making the motivation to retreat to the wonderful underground kingdom all the stronger.

The writing is surprising. Most of the movie is not spent on Ofelia’s quest to regain her throne but on the events at the mill and the characters involved in them. They’re an interesting batch of characters to be sure, and their story is as interesting as Ofelia’s (in a different way, of course) so even though they have very little to do with the central drive of the plot they never really feel like a distraction from it. Instead it feels a bit like you’re watching two movies with a character who moves between them within the shared setting. Neither one ever gets dull, and we never stay in one too long without an appearance from the other. Both are visually rich; the fantasy world in a wonderfully but believably fantastical way, the real world in a deliberately ugly and mundane way, at least in the manmade settings. I have to give special note to the Faun, as he is one of the coolest designs ever, having exactly the right mix of creepy and appealing, of alien and familiar, of menace and warmth ... and the costume and effects were absolutely flawless. Not to mention the acting job. I wish there had been more Faun in the movie. I don’t know what more he would have done or how one would excuse his prolonged presence, but ... he was cool. The remainder of the cast not in a crazy amazing half-CG costume was also very good at their jobs, inhabiting the roles of their characters, however small, with commendable confidence and clarity.

At this point my brain is starting to dissolve so I now abandon all pretense of structure and fall back on lame bullet points. Spoilers will be in white text so if you’ve seen the movie (or don’t mind it being spoiled) highlight the gaps and you’ll be able to read it. (Cunning!)
- Allow me to be even more personal in my judgment here: I am a huge sucker for underground resistance type storylines. Something about a group of dedicated individuals working for a noble cause against overwhelming odds and doing so in a subversive, non-confrontational way really sucks me in. This said, and despite the incredible coolness of some of the characters involved, I just didn’t feel that sympathy for the Resistance in this movie. Maybe this is because the movie wasn’t about them, so we didn’t see things from their point of view ... but if you’re going to kill them all, at least let them grab my sympathies so their sacrifice can be cathartic. At the very least, give them a rousing theme song and attractive yet ultimately pathetic idealism!
- The writing and acting in this film were good enough that instead of thinking of things I would have done differently if I were the director, I was thinking of what I would have done if I were the characters. If I were Mercedes, I would have finished off that good-for-nothing psychopath while I was at it, for the good of my friends, my country, and the world, and to cement my place as Woman of Cool. If I were Ofelia I would NOT HAVE EATEN THE BLOODY FOOD ARGH DUUUHH. I also would have forgotten about the stupid eyedropper and just tipped the bottle of sedative into the Captain’s glass. Not enough to change the flavour of the drink but enough to lay him low, and it would have taken a lot less time than drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop. If it’s the same medicine of which Brother Cadfael tells his patient to only have two drops and no more, then that much of a dose ought to do him in, yes? Or at least knock him out for a few hours, not have him staggering around following me with a gun. And I would keep that magic chalk.
- The stuttering Resistance guy would have been played by Lee Ingleby if this were a British production.
- My favourite music comes from Galicia (or is at least written in Galician-Portuguese) and now I know the place is as beautiful as the music it spawned.
- The weakest point in the movie was when Ofelia ate the food of that baby killer creature. There was no good reason for her to do it. She might have been under some sort of spell, but she didn’t look it ... maybe it was too subtle for me to pick up on. I just remembered today that at one point her mother punished her by sending her to bed with no dinner, but  was that the same day? She hadn’t shown any signs of hunger before randomly deciding to eat a grape. And then another one. You’d think, if the one person you know who has any sort of experience with such matters says ‘don’t eat anything – really, don’t eat anything’ she could wait five whole minutes until she got back to the real world and grab something from the kitchen. It’s not like they’re short of food at the mill. I appreciate the drama added by having to escape the baby eater, and it would have been really disappointing to have him just sit there the whole time and not get to do his eye trick or be all menacing, I just wish her eating had had some sort of believable motivation behind it.
- As for the ending, I shall direct you to SydPad’s review, because she addresses it better than I could. Read the comments, too. Yes, that’s it exactly.

Pan’s Labyrinth, much like Children of Men, really got me thinking about the mess this world is in, my innate and consuming cowardice, and made me extremely grateful to live in a part of the world where I can get up in the morning, go to work, draw all day (in theory), come home, eat dinner, and procrastinate on doing anything useful for a few hours before going to bed – all without expecting to be shot, stabbed, tortured, blown up, poisoned, or have any of these things happen to the people around me. It was also odd to reflect upon the nature of escapism, how this sort of movie is its own sort of escapism but instead of taking you away to a happier place or a reality where everything gets sorted out and ends better than it started, it takes you somewhere even more messed up and horrible than the world you’re trying to escape. I could go on about this, but I’ve had a number of late nights and you’re probably all bored by now anyway. Maybe another day, if anyone’s interested.

I can't vouch for a lack of spoilers in the comments, so read them at your own risk.

Comments

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I went to see that a while ago (came out in the autumn here) and, due to my ridiculously overactive imagination, was checking the shadows for the Pale Man for at least a week afterwards.
The Pale Man was the thing with eyes in its hands, in case you couldn't work it out. Lanky pale naked things tend to freak me out. That bit had me hiding behind my coat.

The Faun I liked. I was expecting him to be the King of the Underworld, rather than the King's messenger.

The part with the broken bottle had me behind my coat as well, come to think of it.