Sunday, February 11, 2007
Pan's Labyrinth
I really liked Pan's Labyrinth. I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" it but I thought it was great.
By that I mean that it portrayed such misery and brutality that calling it enjoyment would not be right.
The story takes place shortly after Franco's fascists have taken over in Spain in 1944. At the time there were still pockets of resistance to the regime.
I've known for a long time about the dreadful brutality that was done by Franco. In the movie all of the evil is personified in the character of the Capitan. He does not hesitate to murder or torture anyone who he thinks might be a threat. A hungry father and son are captured while they are out rabbit hunting. The capitan beats the son to death in front of the father and then he shoots the father. After both are dead he looks in the sack they were carrying and finds the rabbits. He tells the cook to prepare them for dinner.
The main character is a little girl whose widowed mother is pregnant with the child of this evil capitan. The mother and daughter are brought to the military encampment so that the capitan can obtain his heir when the child is born. At one point in the movie he says to the doctor "If you have to choose, save the baby."
The little girl retreats into a fantasy world that she creates from the fairytales that she has been reading. The characters in her fantasy world are not beautiful--the fairies look like insects, the faun is a spooky goatlike creature--the land of the fantasy is a grey and ominous ruined well and an ancient tree stump populated by an enormous toad and hundreds of huge beetles. Even though the fantasy world looks scary it is not nearly as terrible as the real world she is escaping from.
The story does not have a conventional happy ending but it is a perfect portrayal of Spanish fatalism.
From the very beginning we know that things will turn out badly. For example, Franco remained in power until the 1970s. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to watch the tragic story unfold.
By that I mean that it portrayed such misery and brutality that calling it enjoyment would not be right.
The story takes place shortly after Franco's fascists have taken over in Spain in 1944. At the time there were still pockets of resistance to the regime.
I've known for a long time about the dreadful brutality that was done by Franco. In the movie all of the evil is personified in the character of the Capitan. He does not hesitate to murder or torture anyone who he thinks might be a threat. A hungry father and son are captured while they are out rabbit hunting. The capitan beats the son to death in front of the father and then he shoots the father. After both are dead he looks in the sack they were carrying and finds the rabbits. He tells the cook to prepare them for dinner.
The main character is a little girl whose widowed mother is pregnant with the child of this evil capitan. The mother and daughter are brought to the military encampment so that the capitan can obtain his heir when the child is born. At one point in the movie he says to the doctor "If you have to choose, save the baby."
The little girl retreats into a fantasy world that she creates from the fairytales that she has been reading. The characters in her fantasy world are not beautiful--the fairies look like insects, the faun is a spooky goatlike creature--the land of the fantasy is a grey and ominous ruined well and an ancient tree stump populated by an enormous toad and hundreds of huge beetles. Even though the fantasy world looks scary it is not nearly as terrible as the real world she is escaping from.
The story does not have a conventional happy ending but it is a perfect portrayal of Spanish fatalism.
From the very beginning we know that things will turn out badly. For example, Franco remained in power until the 1970s. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to watch the tragic story unfold.
# posted by blue-foot Sue @ 4:06 PM 
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