Pan's Labyrinth--in wide release January 19th

[matrixman]

Have just watched the DVD.

This is (at times) a brutally violent movie. Agree with everyone here that this is most definitely not a "children's" fantasy movie - at least not in the way that Harry Potter is.

On the other hand, the cinematography also makes it a beautiful movie to look at. The saturated colours are an eyeful! And speaking of eyes, I agree too that the hand/eye creature was cool. It was one of the more interesting movie monsters I've seen lately.

However, I don't quite share Roger Ebert's glowing enthusiasm. I consider it an "okay" film but not a "great" one. The best thing about is that it tries hard not to be a saccharine Hollywood assembly-line product. If it has to resort to some nasty violence to achieve that, then so be it.

My main problem? I don't think the film is entirely successful in juggling the elements of "fantasy" and "reality." Roger Ebert in his review says the film was a seamless melding of the two; that may be so on a purely technical level in terms of how scenes change quickly from the fantastical to the mundane. But emotionally, it didn't fit together so neatly for me.

I think Pan's Labyrinth would have been more powerful as a straight "real-world" Spanish Civil War story because that was what gripped me most. The "fantasy" story almost felt tacked on. I did not care that the little girl happens to the reincarnated Princess of an otherworldly kingdom. So what? There was nothing about that kingdom to make me care about it. The real world story of a family struggling against an oppressive fascist regime is compelling enough to me. Why the need to squeeze in a fantasy subplot at all? It makes the film feel like it's got two halves competing with themselves for my attention.

Thinking along this line made me think how difficult it would be to make an emotionally convincing Thomas Covenant movie. Yes, that's right. If you're going to juxtapose the "real" world with a "fantasy" world on film, you'd better know what you're doing. If you're going to set up the real world struggles of a leper outcast from his community and then suddenly yank him into an alternate world, then you'd better make sure I care about that alternate world real fast or else I as the moviegoer will feel that I was cheated out of the "real story" and got a lame fantasy plot as a substitute. Which, I'm afraid, was a feeling I could not shake while watching Pan's Labyrinth.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

Really good film: ***1/2 out of ****, but I don't know if I have any interest in watching it again, which is a biggy for me...

[I'm Murrin]

This is on TV again tonight, reminding me that I love this film. The perfect traditional-style fantasy story. The symbolism - the image of a womb, reflected repeatedly, externalising the daughter's fears about the baby her mother is carrying, both literal risk (the complications, the captain's choice that the child should be saved at the cost of the mother), and emotional (the mother leaving behind the memory of the girl's father for her husband and this new child). The fantasy as literal and as the esape from literal reality - to a child, fairy tales are as real as this is for Ophelia.

[Avatar]

Funnily enough, I have it on DVD and just watched it again recently.

Still a great movie.

--A

[peter]

The man did good things with Hellboy 2 that in a weird way had the same 'look' in places as PL - just of to watch 'The Guard' which has won plaudits aplenty. Hope it lives up to it!

[I'm Murrin]

Yeah, Del Toro does fantasy well. Hellboy 1 was a little too much introductory and typical villain plot, but Hellboy 2 built a whole world.