Pan's Labrynth (El Laberinto Del Fauno)

QuantumBalance · Post by **QuantumBalance** » 19 Apr 2007 19:03

Anyone seen it? Wow!

Outsider · Post by **Outsider** » 19 Apr 2007 19:40

Yeah! So good. I just wish I hadn't had to pee really bad... I didn't want to get up and miss anything, but it made it just a little tougher to really enjoy the movie. Damn.

I love a good fairy tale: the way the story has a simple structure that is easily recognizable and comparable with other folkloric tales, charming... and yet interwoven with that dirty reality of a poor country being brutally dominated by fascists...

The scene where the maid cuts that guy... man, what a sinister look!

And in the end, you're never really sure it didn't all happen the way she saw it...

I wonder how it was received in Spain?

QuantumBalance · Post by **QuantumBalance** » 19 Apr 2007 19:56

Muy bueno!

Muffinman · Post by **Muffinman** » 19 Apr 2007 23:21

Best fantasy movie I've ever seen!
This was the only movie I've seen where I actually felt like I was there -- amazing! I kept telling people to see Pan's Labyrinth over 300. It was sooooo gooood. I can't wait to see it again. SO happy and nice and fairytaley, but also so dark and uncensored!

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 20 Apr 2007 07:14

Did we get this movie in Australia before you guys did? Didn't it come out in January?

Anyway I thought it was enjoyable, but fairly unoriginal and predictable. I think a comment one critic said was; "Too violent for children, too simple for adults." That's a little how I felt. Good movie, but over rated.

300, on the other hand, has probably the worst dialogue of any movie ever. My brother and I spent most of the movie laughing at how cheesy everything sounded.

jon · Post by **jon** » 20 Apr 2007 07:51

Madness!

Ners · Post by **Ners** » 20 Apr 2007 11:33

I really liked the movie, the bottle beating scene was pretty painful, I loved how the cruelty around the girl transformed into her fantasy world, making it so twisted (pale man ftw

). I definitely recommend it.

Szymon KaÅ‚wak (Ners)

Dave Da · Post by **Dave Da** » 20 Apr 2007 12:54

dude...
One of my things other than footbag is movies.

The part where he beats that guy in the face with the bottle... I was like holy shittt

Moxie · Post by **Moxie** » 20 Apr 2007 16:01

Ners wrote: loved how the cruelty around the girl transformed into her fantasy world, making it so twisted

I completely agree.

I enjoyed the movie. I have always liked the Grimm Brothers' style of dark cruel fairy tales, like when the step sisters cut their toes and heals off to try to fit into Aschenputtel's shoe.

I was a little disappointed with the movie though, because I was looking forward to it so much. I'm sad about that, and I know if I had heard a little less about it the movie beforehand it would have felt more amazing to me.

Edit: [Moved to A&L]

Burrin · Post by **Burrin** » 22 Apr 2007 15:35

Is this on dvd or something yet? Just wondering to lazy to look it up. :[

dyalander · Post by **dyalander** » 22 Apr 2007 18:51

I enjoyed it on the whole.

And in the end, you're never really sure it didn't all happen the way she saw it...

But then what about the first person shot from the General dude's perspective in which she is clealry alone and the faun is not there?
This shot indicates at the very least that the fantasy elements cannot be accessed by just anyone. That is to say, even if they do exist as the girl experiences them, then they are not open to everyone.
I'd need to watch it again to get a better idea of where the film stands with respect to this ambiguity. My feeling was that it leans towards the idea that its the girls way of dealing, not an actual world as real as that of the war.
The point, I guess, remains the same though, that is, it doesn't matter if the world is as the girl sees it or not - because it matters to her. Although if you consider the world of her fantasy does exist (as far as the film is concerned) there is the potential for the film to be suggestiong something about the difference between having an open mind or a closed one, particualrly with respect to nature. It'd be speaking to the tradition which sees in children an idealised innocence which allows them to see the truth. I'd like to watch it again to explore this more closely.

Outsider · Post by **Outsider** » 23 Apr 2007 07:40

dyalander wrote:But then what about the first person shot from the General dude's perspective in which she is clealry alone and the faun is not there?
This shot indicates at the very least that the fantasy elements cannot be accessed by just anyone. That is to say, even if they do exist as the girl experiences them, then they are not open to everyone.

I don't remember that scene in particular, but, as you said, the scene sounds like its still open to interpretation.

I was thinking of a few other scenes and story elements in particular, such as the mandrake root under the bed. There really was a root under the bed, the mother's condition really did seem to improve (as reported by the doctor) while the root was there, and deteriorated after it was gone...

And, I don't remember it quite as clearly, but didn't they confine the little girl to the servants' quarters, under guard, at one point? And she had to escape from that room. As I recall, they suggested that she used the chalk to make her own doorway. If I remember correctly, this was only suggested, and they didn't actually show her using the chalk to make a door on that occasion. None-the-less, she did manage to escape unnoticed. They could have shown her using the chalk and creating a magic escape-hatch, but then, that would have been too unambiguous. I like the mystery of it all, and they were obviously trying to preserve that uncertainty about the fantasy elements. They did a good job of it. The fantasy part of the story, it seemed to me, was completely logically consistent, right down the very end, even if all the clues were almost totaly ambiguous. There's really no certain give-away for either side of the fantasy/reality debate, I think.

dyalander · Post by **dyalander** » 23 Apr 2007 17:55

The shot I'm talking about is at the end when the General dude chases her into the labyrinth. The faun asks for the baby... when the general finds her, there is a shot from where he stands and the girl is alone talking to nothing.
The mandrake root is definitely there but its not necessarily magical nor is it necessarily alive in the way she sees it to be.
When she escapes from confinement I think she is shown to draw a door, they don't show her go through it.

I think there is a difference between ambiguity and incoherence and there is a fine line. I'd need to see it again and watch more closely.

I compare it to Kubrick's Shining, which is a totally coherent though still suprememly ambiguous film. The Outlook hotel is clearly haunted - Jack is let out of a room locked from the outside by a spectre. With this it's indisputable that the Hotel is haunted (in Pan's Labyrinth the girl's escape is no where near as definite with regard to exactly how she did it, it remains only suggested) The ambiguity lies in the extent to which Jack is complicit in the haunting - ie, does the hunting drive Jack mad, does it play upon elements already present in Jack's personality, is it no more than the final straw on an already cracking psycho?
Similiarly in Pan's Labyrinth I don't think it matters either way whether or not all the magic is real. It is or it isn't, but regardless, the central elements of the film remain - the violence and horror of the civil war, the innocence of the child caught up in it. The tragedy of the film remains powerful regardless of whether or not the magical underworld actually exists because at the very least, we can be sure that the underworld exists to the girl.

QuantumBalance · Post by **QuantumBalance** » 23 Apr 2007 20:20

When the general throws the mandrake root in the fire everyone hears it scream and then the mom dies giving birth?! Coencidence?!? I think not!

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 24 Apr 2007 08:33

Lol.

The fantasy of the story is clearly just that, fantasy. The story loses all meaning if the events are real. It is only a poignant movie if the fantastic elements were just that. The movie loses all meaning if those events were real.

I can't believe there is even debate about that issue. The fantasy doesn't make any sense if it wasn't fake. Why was the girls mother, who, according to the fantasy, has no relation to her, or to the kingdom, the queen at the end of the movie?

The fact that she was making up this world around her to deal with the horror of reality is what makes it a powerful film.

dyalander · Post by **dyalander** » 24 Apr 2007 17:45

Right, but I can completely understand why there would be debate about whether or not the film portrays the fantasy world as equally real to the rest of the film. The film is not so simply a independent third person perspective of events. It necessarily takes up the view-points of key characters. When taking up the perspective of the girl (not in the first person, but in an aligned third person) then it presents the fantasy world as real. When taking up other character's perspectives the fantasy world is presented differently - often not even in play.
More importantly, even though you're right and the film works best if the fantasy is just that, it still must be considered to be real to the girl - to that end, the film sometimes supresses the reality that frames the fantasy and relegates it to the level of fantasy - i.e. it doesn't show the girl ever having to admit to herself for a moment that the fantasy is not real, so, for example, when she escapes the room she draws her chalk door, and we don't see her have to admit to herself its not a real door and escape some other way, the film hides this in its cuts. Since the film so carefully presents the fantasy as real for much of the film, because much of the film is the girls perspective, its completely understandable for many viewers to also take up the perspective of the girl and consider the fantasy to be real. However it demands that you ignore key elements of the film making such a reading incomplete.

Dave Da · Post by **Dave Da** » 25 Apr 2007 06:24

my assumption is that at the end she does in fact die, and that the whole fantasy she has been living in/depicting through her imagination has became real as in the fact that she dies and goes to her own type of Heaven. Although the Mother she knows as her mother isn't really her mother. She is the closest thing she has to that. Thus making her the Queen of her fantasy. Her Mother also dies in the movie and goes to "heaven" when in fact in the little girls minds goes to her heaven as the queen of the fantasy world.

mc · Post by mc » 22 May 2007 08:19

i've seen this up until the point where the faun is angry at our hero, I hope to watch the rest of it tonight. This movie was wonderful eye candy. Simple story, no character development as far as I can tell, but it was a hoot to watch. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of it.

Dave Da · Post by **Dave Da** » 22 May 2007 09:40

Go by the DVD it came out a week ago!!!

Switch Kicker · Post by **Switch Kicker** » 23 May 2007 05:04

Jeremy wrote:Lol.

The fantasy of the story is clearly just that, fantasy. The story loses all meaning if the events are real. It is only a poignant movie if the fantastic elements were just that. The movie loses all meaning if those events were real.

I can't believe there is even debate about that issue. The fantasy doesn't make any sense if it wasn't fake. Why was the girls mother, who, according to the fantasy, has no relation to her, or to the kingdom, the queen at the end of the movie?

The fact that she was making up this world around her to deal with the horror of reality is what makes it a powerful film.

Untrue. The weird looking baby thing that made her mother healthier. Explain that if it was fake in the story.