Pan's Labyrinth - saw it yesterday

[YankeyMCC]

Well one thing I can safely say about it is "Boy that was kinda intense." I know there was one or two threads on this movie before and I seem to remember a few negative reactions.

I haven't decided fully how I feel about the movie but the fact that it impacted me and got me thinking about it and the themes contained in the movie already propel it to one of the better movies I've seen.

It certainly was dark but I like that. It certainly brought the time and place to life for me, at least the director's vision of that me and place since I don't know much about 1944 Spain and the Franco reign and the resistance against that reign.

For the most part the human characters were very real. In particular Doctor Ferreiro - now for those that saw the movie maybe that seems odd but here's why. For the first half of the movie, perhaps more - until his conversation with Mercedes (I'll get back to her) after visiting the resistance camp he seemed like just a flat throw away character that was just needed to fill some plot requirements. But by the end he became more complex and full even though we didn't learn all there was apparently to learn about him (he was not afraid for himself but for who exactly...?) and it occurs to me this is exactly how we see many people in real life. Most people just seem to fill in the needed roles in your life until some extraordinary event or series of events brings something out in them and your learn a bit about who they really are.

I don't thave many star or character crushes Eowyn from the LoTR movies is my current one but Mercedes is really giving her a run for her money. But not all the human characters were just realistic the Captain for instance may not be exactly a hard realistic human but he was - I think - a very effective character, an archetype reflecting the quality and quantity of the human evils of that time and place as perceived by the director.

And I liked how the mystical world drew no real distinction between the humans - those for and against Franco - they were all just mortals and even though the resistance was were the story led the viewer's sympathies it was more out of revulsion at the Captain and his forces than any shining moral example of the resistance and in fact the scene near the end where the resistance fighters walk around executing wounded Franco soldiers in the same manner that the Franco soldiers had "cleaned up" after they won a battle against the resistance showed that in war all sides are subject to moral questions about their actions.

I think some of the negative comments I saw here before had to do with the portrayal of the mystical world. To me it was effective if perhaps a bit thin. I'm not sure how I feel about the twist at the end, in that by the time of the show down between Ofelia, the Faun and the Captain over the baby boy I was convinced that the Faun and what he represented was evil. Then for it to suddenly turn out to have been just a test by benevolent beings might have been a bit of a forced unearned twist. I have to give that more consideration, perhaps it was a little forced but perhaps forgivably so.

Overall I think this movie is one of the best I've ever seen but I'm still processing.