Pan's Labyrinth

[PotVsKtl]

So says doobie420.

[mozabilly54]

Originally Posted by doobie420

this was the first movie in a LONG time that actually gave me chills while watching it. the guy getting the broken bottle in the eyes and mouth, the stutterer getting the hammer across the face, general vidal getting his mouth slit open on side and getting a knife to the top of his mouth...all pretty brutal and well done, it definitely showed the brutality of the time. terrific movie, and guillermo del toro kicks ass.

That part with Mercedes and the knife grossed me out big time. And then the Captain stitched himself up, that was way gross.

[lust-e]

Saw it last week...surprisingly powerful and touching. The allegorical aspects of the labyrinth and the real world are poignant and really another extension of the theme War is Hell. The filmmaker seems to be asking the question...How can we hold on to our innocence when the world around us comes tumbling down? Maybe we can turn it into a fairy tale or maybe it really is a fairy tale and then he let's the viewer decide. Reminded me of Life is Beautiful and the book Life of Pi in that way. Regardless, go see it. You won't regret it, its a beautifully constructed film.

[Jenniehoo]

Lust-e that actually added a lot to the movie for me.

[PotVsKtl]

Saw this a few months ago... orgasmically soothing and rippling. The quantum touchability and satin-silky reacharound teared me up like a shattered coconut in a nest of vipers. The cinemagogue seems to be pondering the ponderousness of the age-old riddle...How can I get this fucking porpoise to hold still while I violate its gratifyingly mammalian nether regions? Brought to mind the Golden Girls and the dioramically rash-less novella Are You There God? It's Me, A Spider. In any instance, make haste to the magic lantern tent for a gander. It collects man-spunk in a slop-bucket.

[lust-e]

Originally Posted by PotVsKtl

Saw this a few months ago... orgasmically soothing and rippling. The quantum touchability and satin-silky reacharound teared me up like a shattered coconut in a nest of vipers. The cinemagogue seems to be pondering the ponderousness of the age-old riddle...How can I get this fucking porpoise to hold still while I violate its gratifyingly mammalian nether regions? Brought to mind the Golden Girls and the dioramically rash-less novella Are You There God? It's Me, A Spider. In any instance, make haste to the magic lantern tent for a gander. It collects man-spunk in a slop-bucket.

how old are you? get a life, child.

[adamnikyo]

haha. it's funny this happens every year.
and people always react the same. the internet is constant.

[ragingdave]

What are you guys talking about?

[mrpibb79]

Any movie even hinting at the possibility of eating babies is a winner.

[jaqomatic]

i loved this movie. it reminded me of edward scissorhands in a way. sort of like a modern fairytale

[ghettojournalist]

i thought of it as a lost grimm fairytale.
love it and will buy it immediately upon dvd release.

[CuervoPH]

I found a theater near me that is showing both this and "The Last King Of Scotland". (The stupid Regal Entertainment Group run theater nearest to me doesn't have either of them). I think I'm going to go on Sunday and catch both of them.

[mozabilly54]

I want to see the last king of scotland. Tell me how it is!

[dorkfish]

you're a pan flute lost in a maze

[chairmenmeow47]

Originally Posted by ghettojournalist

i thought of it as a lost grimm fairytale.
love it and will buy it immediately upon dvd release.

interesting way to put it. my uncle gave me a book of grimm's fairytales as a kid. that shit kept me up terrified under the covers for many a night!

[jackstraw94086]

This movie is severely disappointing. The new york times called it a faery tale disguised as a political allegory or vice versa. Faery tale perhaps, but there was no fucking significant allegory in it. Horseshit. An allegory is a figurative or abstract idea or message conveyed in either a unconventional or otherwise unfamiliar way. There was no message or idea. Someone in this thread menioned "war is hell". ya whatever. I would have thought more of this film had people not started with the bullshit about allegory. If anything the message of the film was the one her mother gave her when she burned the madrake root.

As far as the grapes go, Pot's right. It's just bad storytelling. Yablo thinks the director wanted her to behave irrationally. more horseshit. It wasn't just a lazy plot device. They could have gotten the monster to chase after her and pan to be pissed at her for some other reason, but they really wanted it to be this forbidden feast thing. If there was a reason to eat the food then it's the failure of the little girl to sell it. She made some slightly irritated faces while swatting away the cgi faeries, but she didn't look at all famished or confused. I rewound this a couple times to make sure I didn't miss something. I was thinking she must have been starving because she was sent to bed without dinner for soiling her dress, but at least a full day had passed since then (a full set of day scenes between then). And there was no reason for her to disobey the faery's advice about choosing the other locker. Nothing before that point had set it up, and nothing came of it later. More bad storytelling. Even the drawing of the future she saw in the book showed her opening the middle locker.

I was almost irritated by her leaving the chalk on the captains desk for no reason at all as well, but it didn't have a significant effect other than a cheap way to heighten tension so I dropped it.

My biggest problem was the ending. "you decided to spill your own blood instead of that of the innocent. That was the final task." Are you fucking kidding? Was something lost in the translation there? Is that all they could come up with? I tried to relate that to the other characters in the real world portions of the film. Was it about noble sacrafice? If so, that lesson was more meaningfully taught by Mr. Spock in Star Trek II. Nope, if it was meant to be related to the rest of the film it was far too subtle for it's own good. Also, why is her own blood not innocent enough? Was she out killing kittens in the scenes she wasn't in?

They didn't really develop what the big deal was about the baby brother was either even though they dropped hints about it. Near the beginning the the girl sees the carving on the obelisk and Pan tells her it's him and her, she asked about the child and he cuts her off.

In the end the film's just about a schizophenic kid with an asshole stepfather, just told with some amusing visuals.

[Yablonowitz]

I rewound this a couple times to make sure I didn't miss something.

You fucking thief.

[airguitarvet]

bootleg copy again. ha ha ha.

i loved it.

[schoolofruckus]

Jack, as you said, I think that your expectations may have been a little too high and far-reaching (as far as the political value goes) going in. I never got that the film was supposed to be a political allegory; I didn't really expect anything more of it than a faery tale. I thought the war material strengthened the faery tale for contrast purposes, and yes, it's clear that Guillermo del Toro sides with the rebels rather than the fascists, but I didn't gather that there as any more to it than that.

The plot holes you mentioned didn't bother me. I felt like the stealing of the grapes made at least some sense, as did her decision to use the other locker. Sure, she had taken orders from the faery throught much of the movie, but I thought she was established enough as an intransigent personality that it was justified. As this is just a faery tale, I was fine with suspending my disbelief on these points. And I don't think Ofelia's blood could qualify as innocent after she stole the grapes.

I agree with your final summation, although I think it's a little dismissive.

[aLexandRita]

All the tension while the guy was sewing his mouth together... I couldn't stop laughing hysterically... That was the best scene.
I particularly liked the monster, very scary.
The eating of the grapes was a cheap way of putting some action in the movie.

[aLexandRita]

I didn't trust Pan, the fawn, throught the entire movie and I thought he was bad because of what the nanny said about her grandmother telling her that fawns are bad. I thought it was good foreshadowing, but it ended up being nothing.

[summerkid]

Originally Posted by KungFuJoe

I'm not going to waste time with all the details here, but there are a lot of biblical refrences in this film that most people apparently didn't pick up on. Myself included, until further analizing it after a second viewing with my friend.

I loved this movie, but yeah there were a ton of biblical references. Fruit tempting a girl. The Paleman representing the Church etc etc etc.

The green dress reminded me of a green Alice in Wonderland dress.

I thought that since she chose the correct locker thing instead of what Pan told her, she assumed that the thing he said about not eating anything was wrong too. And that's why she went after those grapes. But I think if fairies are literally prying a grape off your finger and pleading with you not to eat those grapes, I'd listen. Or at least turn around to check on the monster.

The cheek stitching made me squirm and gave me goosebumps. GROSS! DAMN! Everybody was freaking out in the audience when he was stitching himself up. I felt my own cheek burn when he drank that alcohol ><

This movie was awesomely more interesting than a lot of shit that's coming out today. Even with the potholes.

[All That I Am]

Ok, I'm big time into mythology and its relation to real world situations.
There is a repeating scene in mythologies across the world of a monster that devours children,(ours is hansel and grettel). The monster is a symbol of a parent who up to a certaint point had controlled the child's life, and the escape from the monster is a symbol of the child comming to its own independent thinking.

I loved this movie, it was beautiful and hideous all at once and the direction was masterful. I loved the sense of depth in almost every shot. There was always something moving in the foreground or an insect or faerie flying from foreground to background.

[All That I Am]

The green dress reminded me of a green Alice in Wonderland dress.

Yes it was! And if you also paid attention she was wearing ruby slippers in the final scene of the movie.

[ahab117]

**SPOILERS**

the movie made me depressed, and I was pretty confused at the end, I thought she was just imagining things the whole time cuz at the end that fascist pig couldnt see the fawn adn the girl was just talking to herself, I thought it was like a fight club thing. When she dies I didnt really think she went to that 'magical kingdom' or whatever, but all my friends think im just a crackhead lol

It was a good movie though, screwed up, but good

[Mabdul Doobakus]

I wrote this somewheres else about the grape scene:

It's a fantasy. I don't think applying logic makes much sense here. For one, you could just assume the food had some kind of magic to it that put her in a kind of trance. She certainly looked/acted like she was in a trance. But, more importantly, if you think, as I do, that this is all going on in her head, then you understand that scene as a product of her imagination. And I don't think her imagination would be really doing its job if it just let her walk on out of there with no payoff after all that setup.


I don't think having her eat the grapes was "lazy", and I think it makes as much logical sense as it needs to.

[MusicIsMyBoyfriend]

I think the whole Grapes/ key in the wrong door thing have to do with her obeying or rather disobeying what she was told to do. Which I think was inevitably the point of all the tasks. Task one, crawl into this gross muddy tree and get dirty despite the fact that you know you are not supposed to get dirty before the big dinner that night. Task two choose the left door despite what the fairies told her and eat the grapes despite the threat of death just because they look so good. And the third task, refusing to let the faun spill the blood of your brother even though it meant possibly losing your place in the kingdom and resulted in her death. The Faun even makes a speech about how she's supposed to obey, but then we find out she's rewarded for not obeying, and that's the whole point. Not obeying whoever is giving you the orders may result in harder journey but at the end the reward is sweeter, and this I can see as a metaphor for the longsuffering, but at the end of the movie triumpant cause of the rebels. Also any inconsistancies in the make believe part of the plot can be put down to that of a child's imagination. We can't look at it and think that doesn't make sense cause it's not going to when seen from our perspective, but if you suspend reality for a moment and try to look at it for what it is the escapism fantasy of a little girl who reads too many fairy stories then it seems perfectly authentic to me. Anyway, I loved the film and became totally engrossed in it, thinking about going to see it again as I am sure there are some or the subtler points I missed the first time through.

[jackstraw94086]

Trying to tie the little girl's choices with the the Doctor disobeying the captain or even the rebels disobeying Franco is ludicrous. That analogy would require Pan to be an evil figure. He wasn't. There was no motivation. Without motivation there is hardly any plot. The film is ultimately uninteresting.

[dedzilla]

I <3 this movie. But I am a sucker for a pretty fairy tale with an unhappy ending. Although, one could argue the ending wasn't so unhappy (my friend and I argued about that for about 20 minutes after the show).