Well, it is the closing film at the New York Film Festival. Technically this happened on Sunday - October 15th but I got home too late to post. The two weeks seem to have flown by. Highlights tomorrow.
PAN' LABYRINTH
Director: Guillermo del Toro, Country: Spain/Mexico, Release: 2006, Runtime: 112 min.
Hieronymus Bosch meets Hans Christian Anderson
Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is traveling with her pregnant mother to meet her new father in the countryside of worn-torn 1940s Spain. Spain has yet to join the fighting in World War II. Franco's dictatorship has resisters fighting in the hillsides and mountains. Captain Vidal is the father of Ofelia's unborn half-brother. He rules with an iron fist and blood-thirsty cruelty. Ofelia soon finds herself pulled into the labyrinth nearby where she meets a rather obtuse fawn. He tells her she is the lost soul of the princess and should she pass three tests, she can come back to the underworld kingdom and live forever in happiness. Her first task requires her to travel through the roots of a huge tree and feed an evil toad three magical stones to release the tree from the toad's death-grip. Mud and cockroaches don't stop this brave girl. Her next quest involves entering a world through a door drawn with chalk. The very scary and disturbing creature guarding this world has eyes on a plate. The thing comes to life when children don't behave ... and the results are reminiscent of Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son. As Ofelia struggles to survive in her new world, Mercedes, a servant of Cpt. Vidal, works to help the resistant fighters and her brother hiding in the forests around them. This tale intertwines ideas related to heroicism, resisting political elitism, and old-fashion fairy tales. In this world, nothing is sprakly, reassuring, or certain. Children see and suffer unbearable things, people die, and there are no easy answers and no solutions without sacrifice. Ofelia's story has more similarity to the Hero's Journey than Disney fare. The visuals are stunningly creative, texturally rich, and disturbingly graphic at times. You can hear the whole audience squeem in their chairs when one charater sews up their own face! These are what del Toro called "walk out scenes" where he realizes some won't stay through the moment. But like the leg in the woodchipper in Fargo, del Toro uses distrubing visuals where they are needed. The bruatilty he exposes reflects the unhuman treatment the controling class has inflicted. This film wowed me. It is daring, edgy, and simply fantastic to watch. The subject matter and characters are heandled in a way that no American film would touch - putting a child in real danger is simply not done here. Del Toro has acheived a wonderful balance with only a hint of sentimental, happy-ending sweetness to the story for which I will forgive him. So if you dare, take a walk through this wild world and you just might learn something about imagination, inspiration, and heroics. And it all comes together around a little girl struggling against that pivotal moment when we lose our spirit to the drudgery and limitiations of adult thinking.
preceded by
LUMP
Faye Jackson, UK, 2006, 12 min.
Simple tale of a young woman who keeps having to have a surgery because a benign fibroid lump keeps reappearing. This unsettling repetative problem turns creepily disturbing during the last graphic scene where she actually becomes 'aware' of what the doctor is actually doing while she is asleep on the operating table. Jackson nicely captures the lack of control one feels at the mercy of the medical system and she taps into fears most women have lurking around in them somewhere.
PAN' LABYRINTH Director: Guillermo del Toro, Country: Spain/Mexico, Release: 2006, Runtime: 112 min.
Hieronymus Bosch meets Hans Christian Anderson
Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is traveling with her pregnant mother to meet her new father in the countryside of worn-torn 1940s Spain. Spain has yet to join the fighting in World War II. Franco's dictatorship has resisters fighting in the hillsides and mountains. Captain Vidal is the father of Ofelia's unborn half-brother. He rules with an iron fist and blood-thirsty cruelty. Ofelia soon finds herself pulled into the labyrinth nearby where she meets a rather obtuse fawn. He tells her she is the lost soul of the princess and should she pass three tests, she can come back to the underworld kingdom and live forever in happiness. Her first task requires her to travel through the roots of a huge tree and feed an evil toad three magical stones to release the tree from the toad's death-grip. Mud and cockroaches don't stop this brave girl. Her next quest involves entering a world through a door drawn with chalk. The very scary and disturbing creature guarding this world has eyes on a plate. The thing comes to life when children don't behave ... and the results are reminiscent of Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son. As Ofelia struggles to survive in her new world, Mercedes, a servant of Cpt. Vidal, works to help the resistant fighters and her brother hiding in the forests around them. This tale intertwines ideas related to heroicism, resisting political elitism, and old-fashion fairy tales. In this world, nothing is sprakly, reassuring, or certain. Children see and suffer unbearable things, people die, and there are no easy answers and no solutions without sacrifice. Ofelia's story has more similarity to the Hero's Journey than Disney fare. The visuals are stunningly creative, texturally rich, and disturbingly graphic at times. You can hear the whole audience squeem in their chairs when one charater sews up their own face! These are what del Toro called "walk out scenes" where he realizes some won't stay through the moment. But like the leg in the woodchipper in Fargo, del Toro uses distrubing visuals where they are needed. The bruatilty he exposes reflects the unhuman treatment the controling class has inflicted. This film wowed me. It is daring, edgy, and simply fantastic to watch. The subject matter and characters are heandled in a way that no American film would touch - putting a child in real danger is simply not done here. Del Toro has acheived a wonderful balance with only a hint of sentimental, happy-ending sweetness to the story for which I will forgive him. So if you dare, take a walk through this wild world and you just might learn something about imagination, inspiration, and heroics. And it all comes together around a little girl struggling against that pivotal moment when we lose our spirit to the drudgery and limitiations of adult thinking.
preceded by
LUMP
Faye Jackson, UK, 2006, 12 min.
Simple tale of a young woman who keeps having to have a surgery because a benign fibroid lump keeps reappearing. This unsettling repetative problem turns creepily disturbing during the last graphic scene where she actually becomes 'aware' of what the doctor is actually doing while she is asleep on the operating table. Jackson nicely captures the lack of control one feels at the mercy of the medical system and she taps into fears most women have lurking around in them somewhere.
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