Pan's Labyrinth
I saw the movie Pan's Labyrinth tonight, spanish "El Laberinto del Fauno".
I should also say don't read this if you haven't seen it yet, since I'm not into keeping secrets.
I don't know if I can offer any sort of review or organized reflection on the movie, but I'll say it was moving, and sad. It was a very convincing play between a brutal real world and a magical one, a place where you live forever and there's no pain.
The stories within the movie show the underworld, but otherwise the movie takes place almost entirely within our world. There are some trasitions - crawling into a dying old tree into a space far to large, and drawing a chalk door into some strange world with a monster frozen at a table of food. The movie is played to not be clear if anyone besides ofelia could see anything she sees - whether insects that turn into fairy people, or the faun itself - shown in a near final seen as invisible to the captain at least.
The ending is sad for me, as a nonbeliever (in any "safe" afterlife) that perhaps she's just imagined everything and she really did just die a tragic death moments before she could have lived and her murderer slain.
I wonder about her trust of the Faun, his story that she's the reincarnation of the daughter of the king of the underworld, and that she could return. A small part of me questioned if he had an agenda to trick her. The only real harm is he is willing to sacrifice her newborn half-brother to bring her to the underworld. First I wonder about this amoralism. Second in result, the baby is saved, and her own blood sacrificed allows her to enter the kingdom.
The immoral captain is shown in brutal violence - killing a young man and his father, captured and suspected as spies and after he kills them, find evidence their stories were true - they were hunting rabbits for food. The he gets angry at his men for not searching them before before bothering him. What do you do with such guilt discovering your rash judgments were incorrect? I mean certainly a strong "sample" of what real brutality looks like.
I thought the Faun's judgement on Ofelia, when she ate two grapes in the magic room after being told to eat nothing, was strange. He claimed she blew it and could never return to the underworld, and then changes his mind apparently, as if it was his own choice. I only figured she'd be in trouble because two of the fairies were eaten to defend her. Well, lots of room for guilt at least if you happen to think fairies "have souls" or a consciousness of life and death. She didn't seem to cry or reflect on their demise.
No more time tonight. A moving tale, not quite deep enough for me, but I am impressed. I mean I have a caution about magic the film did not fully take, but it pushed the limit boldly and necessarily to belief in something that I couldn't believe in myself.
The merging a hard world and myth was a worthy attempt, hard for me to imagine either world in our "advanced one", but dark corners in me wonder what horrors the future can bring, and the movie makes me think we have both more strength that we know and more weakness/darkness that we care to admit in the light.
I appreciate a movie that reminds me of these thoughts.
I should also say don't read this if you haven't seen it yet, since I'm not into keeping secrets.
I don't know if I can offer any sort of review or organized reflection on the movie, but I'll say it was moving, and sad. It was a very convincing play between a brutal real world and a magical one, a place where you live forever and there's no pain.
The stories within the movie show the underworld, but otherwise the movie takes place almost entirely within our world. There are some trasitions - crawling into a dying old tree into a space far to large, and drawing a chalk door into some strange world with a monster frozen at a table of food. The movie is played to not be clear if anyone besides ofelia could see anything she sees - whether insects that turn into fairy people, or the faun itself - shown in a near final seen as invisible to the captain at least.
The ending is sad for me, as a nonbeliever (in any "safe" afterlife) that perhaps she's just imagined everything and she really did just die a tragic death moments before she could have lived and her murderer slain.
I wonder about her trust of the Faun, his story that she's the reincarnation of the daughter of the king of the underworld, and that she could return. A small part of me questioned if he had an agenda to trick her. The only real harm is he is willing to sacrifice her newborn half-brother to bring her to the underworld. First I wonder about this amoralism. Second in result, the baby is saved, and her own blood sacrificed allows her to enter the kingdom.
The immoral captain is shown in brutal violence - killing a young man and his father, captured and suspected as spies and after he kills them, find evidence their stories were true - they were hunting rabbits for food. The he gets angry at his men for not searching them before before bothering him. What do you do with such guilt discovering your rash judgments were incorrect? I mean certainly a strong "sample" of what real brutality looks like.
I thought the Faun's judgement on Ofelia, when she ate two grapes in the magic room after being told to eat nothing, was strange. He claimed she blew it and could never return to the underworld, and then changes his mind apparently, as if it was his own choice. I only figured she'd be in trouble because two of the fairies were eaten to defend her. Well, lots of room for guilt at least if you happen to think fairies "have souls" or a consciousness of life and death. She didn't seem to cry or reflect on their demise.
No more time tonight. A moving tale, not quite deep enough for me, but I am impressed. I mean I have a caution about magic the film did not fully take, but it pushed the limit boldly and necessarily to belief in something that I couldn't believe in myself.
The merging a hard world and myth was a worthy attempt, hard for me to imagine either world in our "advanced one", but dark corners in me wonder what horrors the future can bring, and the movie makes me think we have both more strength that we know and more weakness/darkness that we care to admit in the light.
I appreciate a movie that reminds me of these thoughts.
posted by Ares Olympus at 11:40 PM
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