Pan’s Labyrinth
September 20th, 2006
Of course: the evil stepfather was a fascist! Guillermo del Toro mashes up fairy tales with the Spanish Civil War; the villain is With a Friend Like Harry’s Harry (Sergi Lopez) as evil stepfather in a captain’s uniform vs Maribel Verdú, the teenager-devouring doomed hottie from Y Tu Mama Tambien in a role straight out of For Whom the Bell Tolls, along with a secret garden, golden keys, magic chalk, mandrake root, and gnarly CGI creatures that Terry Gilliam only wished he’d had the budget for in The Brothers Grimm. The plot ends up not quite as fresh as I would have wished, but then again, there are only so many ways to make myths new (they’re supposed to tell the same story.) Some of the images–liquor seeping through the gauze on a stitched-up face, fairies chomping down on raw bacon, the Cronenbergish pale man with eyes in his hands, others I won’t spoil–are bound to haunt my dreams.
Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006. ****
September 27th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
[…] I’m not sure what I was thinking–I must have rented this Wesley Snipes/Vampire thing to counteract NYFF-induced art house overload, or perhaps to get a better grip on director Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, which is showing at the festival and which I liked a lot. Either way, I suppose filmmaking for 12-year-old boys has come a long way–but it’s still filmmaking for 12-year-old boys. […]
October 12th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
We saw this again yesterday, and I’ll take back what I said about the plot–it’s plenty fresh, within the confines of the monomyth. This time, it struck me as both more cruel and more hopeful than the first time around. This is going to open after Christmas, and it’ll be interesting to see how Picturehouse is going to market it, or what kind of rating the MPAA will slap on it. It’s certainly not a children’s movie by modern standards. Then again, by those standards, the Brothers Grimm are way too grim for children, too.
Marcy adored it.
October 24th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
[…] Pan’s Labyrinth. Guillermo del Toro’s masterful fairy tale won’t be out until after Christmas, but this is one film you should feel free to get excited about early. […]