You Might Miss Bowie's Bulge

Pan's Labyrinth is an amazing film, and surprisingly, not for the reasons that I thought it would be. It is a highly visual movie, that is true, but the visuals are not as spectacular as you might be led to believe. For one thing, the movie is incredibly dark, and at parts, hard to discern everything within a scene. For another, we actually see very little of the "fantastical" which would seem so apparent from the advertisements (and the title). A remarkable feature of Pan's Labyrinth is the absence of much labyrinth.

But those are merely the negatives, and I will use a word like "merely" because in the end, that is all they are. Any movie will have parts you don't like, or don't agree with - that is the nature of stories in general. I feel that this movie is so engrossing though, that you find it hard to come out of the theatre not feeling moved. I know as I left, the woman sitting down the row from me was crying. I don't know if it's necessarily a "crying" movie, but it definitely affects your emotions.

I'm sure people will go and praise Guillermo del Toro until they are blue in the face, and perhaps rightly so. He has put together a masterpiece of cinema, that doesn't give too much, but gives more than enough (by now, you might have noticed I'm big on the paradoxical statement; I'm realizing I might be turning it into a cliché, for my part). Now, too often directors get praise where it is not necessarily due, which would be the case in this movie, because although the parts were well-acted, there was nothing especially amazing about them, either. This could simply be what it means to be "well-acted" (as opposed to "over-acted", which many people, including myself, sometimes fall under the spell into believing they are seeing great acting). But it is just as important to credit the writer, who in this case, happens to also be del Toro.

One facet of foreign films that I've noticed is that they seem to be less dialogue driven than films made originally in English. I'm not sure if that is just an illusion from having to read sub-titles, but I have to applaud the simplicity of it. As a writer, I know how easy it is to become verbose, and this is not always a positive (it should be noted that it is not always a negative, either, despite the disparaging connotations). Pan's Labyrinth does not fall into this trap, and the dialogue, while terse, comes off as real. Especially when you realize that all the people are intensely lonely, and you understand that the need for speech is unnecessary.

One actor who deserves mention is, of course, the little girl who plays Ofelia, Ivana Baquero. It is easy to heap praise upon a child-actor in a leading role, but if you understand how hard it is to actually act, you would know that someone who hasn't practiced their craft too long is at a great disadvantage. Baquero is amazing, playing a character who is both a child and an adult, innocent and yet worldly.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the movie was the violence. I do not think this detracts from the movie at all, because the topic is inherently violent (as were fairy tales in general). Set during the Spanish Civil War, there is a viciousness displayed on both sides that at first made me cringe. Captain Vidal is cold and cruel, but not completely sadistic. He gets pleasure out of others' pain, but pain is not his only motivation. Still, he dispenses pain like candy on Halloween, and he receives plenty in turn. Practically no one escapes pain and violence, and del Toro graphically and candidly shows us this. So yeah, don't be fooled that this is a children's movie. I didn't notice when I went to see it, but it is very, very Rated R. There's some cussin', too (which is slightly disconcerting, because reading "fuck" and hearing it are two very different things).

In a way, it reminds me a lot of the movie Labyrinth, although it has far less fantastical creatures (such as the one mentioned in the title of this post), but the plot is almost reversed. Now, the goal is to enter the labyrinth. If I had to think of a movie that it more closely resembled, I would think Life is Beautiful. With the combination of fantasy and escapism in a similar setting, there are lots of points of connection. The fact that both movies are incredible, I think, shows that such a comparison is not a bad thing. Still, all the comparisons in the world would not do the justice of seeing it for yourself. So do yourself a favor, and see it in the theatre. It's money well-spent.