I’ve been meaning to post about this wonderful movie for a while now, but haven’t had the time. Truth be told I’m pretty short on time right now, but as I’m reformatting the work laptop I think I can safely say I’ve got half an hour to waste on something.
I went and saw Pan’s Labyrinth at the new Dendy cinema complex in Canberra the other day and, well, damn it’s the best movie I’ve seen in ages…
Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro delivers a unique, richly imagined epic with “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a gothic fairy tale set against the postwar repression of Franco’s Spain. Del Toro’s sixth and most ambitious film, “Pan’s Labyrinth” combines the historic and moral themes of his acclaimed Spanish Civil War ghost story “The Devil’s Backbone” with the protean visual creativity and gripping dynamics of such previous films as “Hellboy” and “Blade II.” Harnessing the formal characteristics of classic folklore to a 20th Century landscape, del Toro delivers a timeless tale of good and evil, bravery and sacrifice, love and loss.
- Hollywoodjesus.com
Pan’s Labyrinth follows the story of a young girl Ophelia, who a Faun and some Faeries believe is the long lost daughter of the king of the fairytale world who had escaped long long long ago and now has found her way home. Ofelia wants to believe the Faun and fairy so much that she takes on a series of tasks to prove her worth, meanwhile in her other life her mother is pregnant and very ill, her new father is the captain of a fascist regime in the Spanish civil war and her new friends in her new home re mostly rebels fighting against her new and brutal father.
The movie puts these two stories, one of fantasy and the other of war and bloody violence side by side to create a masterpiece of storytelling, don’t get me wrong, event the fantasy is dark, but then again I guess in dark times even one’s dreams become dark. Fantasies are only really beautiful in Disney animations, back in the day they were ambiguous, bloody, frightening and beautiful at the same time…
As time goes by you quickly realise that every character is basically being asked “who are you really?” and, character by character we are shown, the captain who is cut like a pig and cares only for his immortality through his son, the mother who cares for her daughter, the maid who’s love for her brother has her stand up for the rebels, and the daughter Ofelia who is asked “who are you really? Ofelia, step daughter of the brutal captain, or a member of the resistance, or are you the true daughter of the king searching for a way home?”
If you get the chance please do yourself a favour and go and check i out, (but I doubt it’s a movie for most youth groups or children)