Pan's Labyrinth
Jan. 20th, 2007 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sechan19In Franco's Spain, a young girl is on her way - with her very pregnant mother - to join her stepfather at his army outpost. He is a sadistic captain in Franco's army fighting a deadly war with the rebels that live in the surrounding woods. On route their convoy stops to give the girl's mother air and the girl wanders down the road a ways, discovering a piece of stone that has broken off from a carved totem of some kind. The girl replaces it and it is by this action that the faeries know her for the long lost daughter of the king of the underworld, and so begins her journey to undertake the three tasks that will open the portal and take her home to her true family.
This tale is interspersed with the story of the rebels who fight against Franco's regime, with the cruelty and strangeness of the captain the girl's mother has married, and with themes of courage and sacrifice. It is beautiful, frightening, and intensely graphically violent. Written and directed by the man who helmed such projects as Mimic, Blade II, and Hellboy, who could expect anything else. (Although, amusingly, I would estimate about 85% of the packed audience at the theater were completely and utterly taken aback by the gut-wrenching horror sequences.)
Pan's Labyrinth has many things to recommend it - not the least of which is gorgeous filming and acting - but what I loved most about the film was the leading way the narrative brought the audience to a single, shinning point of beauty. Beyond its overlapping themes of choice and consequence, cruelty and kindness, courage, sacrifice, failure, and fear, was one of the most sublime depictions of the notion that dying is easy while living is hard - not for the faint of heart, you might say, nor for the weak in spirit.
Dr. Ferreiro, Mercedes, and Ofelia were the brave, the strong, the true, and my life will be all the richer for spending a bit of my time in their company.
This tale is interspersed with the story of the rebels who fight against Franco's regime, with the cruelty and strangeness of the captain the girl's mother has married, and with themes of courage and sacrifice. It is beautiful, frightening, and intensely graphically violent. Written and directed by the man who helmed such projects as Mimic, Blade II, and Hellboy, who could expect anything else. (Although, amusingly, I would estimate about 85% of the packed audience at the theater were completely and utterly taken aback by the gut-wrenching horror sequences.)
Pan's Labyrinth has many things to recommend it - not the least of which is gorgeous filming and acting - but what I loved most about the film was the leading way the narrative brought the audience to a single, shinning point of beauty. Beyond its overlapping themes of choice and consequence, cruelty and kindness, courage, sacrifice, failure, and fear, was one of the most sublime depictions of the notion that dying is easy while living is hard - not for the faint of heart, you might say, nor for the weak in spirit.
Dr. Ferreiro, Mercedes, and Ofelia were the brave, the strong, the true, and my life will be all the richer for spending a bit of my time in their company.
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Date: 2007-01-21 09:14 am (UTC)