- I was told there were Nazis in this movie. There were only Franco’s general and his fabulous band of fascists, which while nearly as awesome is not the same thing. I just really enjoy Nazis as The Ultimate Adversary™ in movies so I was sort of looking forward to that angle.
- The real-world storyline involving Ophelia and her mother moving to some Spanish mill to join The Captain, whose child Ophelia’s mother Carmen is pregnant with, is alarmingly bleak. [Although I suppose that makes sense, given the context.] Carmen reminds me of Rose’s mother in Titanic, oddly enough. Ofelia has not taken kindly to her new surroundings and Carmen tells her she’s not the only one who has had it rough; there’s no real sense of love between Carmen and The Captain and you get a real sense that she’s had to make some pretty uneasy choices in hopes for a better life for her daughter and unborn child.
- The little girl who played Ofelia was fantastic. Ofelia is an incredibly brave little girl but she still manages to keep a sense of wonderment about her, despite how desolate her waking life is. She’s got a head full of fantasy but keeps two feet firmly on the ground. This kid is kind of awesome.
- Captain Vidal as a sadistic fascist for the win. He’s like Ralph Fiennes’ character in Schindler’s List; he’ll kill someone without thinking twice just to make a point about how his orders should be followed the next time the same situation arises. His rather sick view of his wife as a vessel for the unborn child he prays is male is actually rather frightening, especially as Ofelia overhears him talking to the doctor about choosing infant over mother if there are complications during the delivery. You sort of want the baby to be born female just to piss him off. The sad part is he’s so awful that even when something really awful happens to someone who he actually cares for, it’s hard not to think “Ha! Serves you right, asshole.” Captain Sadist finds out that the doctor who has been helping his wife through her difficult pregnancy has also been helping the rebels hiding
on Dantooinein the forest, he shoots him dead. Of course, two seconds later a couple of servants come running, shouting that they need a doctor because Captain Sadist’s wife is in a really bad way. You feel bad that she ends up dying but satisfied at the same time because Captain Sadist might have prevented it if he weren’t, you know, such a sadist. - I didn’t find this movie to be overtly violent in general — especially considering that most of my favourite movies are pretty violent — just that the violence is personal in nature and done one on one. I think this is why I usually cringe at trauma to the head in movies; it’s personal in that it’s about disfigurement and transformation by one person to another for reasons beyond just doing one’s duty in the course of battle. So in this film there’s a scene where one of the rebels is captured by Captain Sadist and tortured for information. The best (i.e. worst) torture scenes are always the ones that rely on psychological torture first; Captain Sadist goes through his various Instruments of Destruction one by one, explaining to his prisoner what each of these items will do to him, all while maintaining a relatively friendly demeanour about the whole thing.
Later on, Captain Sadist finally realizes that one of the servants in his household is actually the sister of one of the rebels and she’s been smuggling food and medicine to him and his compatriots. Captain Sadist then begins to repeat the torture sequence all over again, but while he’s going on and on about his Instruments of Destruction, the servant has time to undo the ropes that bind her (with the knife she keeps rolled in her apron at all times) and attacks him while he has his back turned. Not only does she stab him twice* but her third strike lands inside his mouth and against his inner cheek, but doesn’t cut; she pauses long enough for you to realise what she’s going to do and then she slices right through his cheek, extending the opening of his mouth by about two inches. Holy CRAP. Captain Sadist is, predictably, a real tank and SEWS UP THE WOUND HIMSELF. I love people like that.
* Her first strike is apparently just a deep cut on his back, but he turns around and she then stabs him in the chest, which you’d think would, I don’t know, kill him? No, apparently not. He’s seriously fine in the next scene, just with a really bloody shirt and a giant opening in his face.
- Ofelia’s fantasy world is like Alice in Wonderland for a really depressed mind. There’s nothing in it that makes her happy, no promise of anything good at the end of the three tasks the Faun has assigned to her, and so it’s depressing that her psyche has made up this rather harrowing universe as an escape from her otherwise equally harrowing life.
- I really hate fairies. I’m glad these ones were sort of dirty and rather stick-like rather than pretty and glittery, though.
- I think my favourite scene was the second task where Ofelia was to get the knife from behind the little locked door. I think I had been expecting this movie to be more surreal than it was — for no reasons other than that’s what I wanted, I guess — and this is the only fantasy sequence that was truly weird. [Fauns evidently breed familiarity and we have goddamned Mr. Tumnus to blame.] That scene is very Tim Burton, actually, with shades of Beetlejuice all over the place, although I think this was accidental because I didn’t see it listed as one of the movie connections on the IMDB page for this movie. I don’t know if drawing a door on a wall and having it open to another dimension is a staple in the fantasy genre, but Alec Baldwin definitely does it in Beetlejuice to similar effect; I kept expecting Ofelia to add a doorknob when her chalk outline didn’t immediately give way to reveal a secret world. The Pale Man she encounters in a vegetative state at the fully loaded buffet is KILLER (pictures here and here, just for a visual reference of AWESOME). He keeps his eyes on a plate in front of him and when someone takes even the smallest piece of literally forbidden fruit from his table, he wakes and instead of putting his eyes on his face, he presses them into holes in his HANDS. He’s just so gross and yet clearly the best fantasy creature I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.
- Is it anal that I hate that the subtitles didn’t use Oxford commas? It probably is.
- There was a lot of reproductive imagery in this movie, particularly of the female kind.
- The mandrake was the cutest thing EVER.
- I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an openly problematic pregnancy on screen before. Usually the Bad Stuff happens during labour, and you see midwives running around with bundles of bloody sheets so that the audience knows Something Is Terribly Wrong. This movie actually showed Carmen standing in her night dress, the front of the gown just absolutely soaked in blood and crying to Ofelia to go get some help. Very, very alarming stuff.
- I loved how the opening sequence was Ofelia’s death played backwards, the blood from her nose slowly receding back into her head. I’m not 100% sure on this, but I think even the sounds of her shallow and near-death breathing were played backwards.
- I don’t think the ending is terribly ambiguous; it seems pretty obvious to me that it was all in her head, especially given the shot of her talking to the Faun while Captain Sadist doesn’t see her talking to anyone at all — you know, the standard way you show someone is obviously hallucinating. I think the little bud that appears on the tree at the end doesn’t signify that Ofelia’s underworld actually existed so much as it reveals the potential for intellectual and emotional escape by those capable of imagination. Which is to say apparently this film encourages hallucination, I don’t know.
Pan’s Labyrinth
FABULOUS.
IMDB Plot Synopsis In the fascist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world.