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BPAL Madness!
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My thoughts on Pan's Labyrinth

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smallvoice

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I will be generous with the spoiler tags, for those who plan on seeing it. First, I'll do generalizations:

 

It is visually stunning. There's no denying that.

 

The cast is amazing. I need to watch more foreign films, because it cemented my belief that I just don't have an understanding of interpersonal relationships anywhere but where I've lived. In other words, not all the interactions translate into my sphere of understanding, if that makes any sense. It's like anger in anime always seems way, way overdramatic and over-done to me. . . which is a bit of a simplistic way of putting it, but that's all I can really say about it right now.

 

It isn't what I was expecting from the trailer I saw- but I read enough reviews to know it wasn't exactly what I was expecting anyway, but it still wasn't what I was expecting.

 

It seemed a little... scattered? Thematically, I mean. That could be my lack of understanding (as mentioned above) in part, but not wholly. And here is where I get into spoiler tags. Note: A lot of this is critical because I think a lot of the good has been advocated already, but I did really enjoy the experience.

 

Spoiler

 

I am probably in the minority here, and I realize that.

 

I was originally under the impression that it was a fantasy movie, sort of in the vein of Labyrinth, Willow or Legend. Then I was under the impression that it was a movie about blurring those lines between fantasy and reality. I'm left feeling like it wasn't a faerie tale, and it wasn't religious and it wasn't historical, and it sort of needed to define itself.

 

If it was a fable, it wasn't a good one, because the "moral of the story" kept changing- it could've been about faith, but the last test was to not have faith, so that's not it.

 

There were too many stories crammed into the movie, and they didn't feel cohesive to me. It sort of felt like they were all neglected; like they didn't have enough time to get to any of them completely.

 

I would've preferred more focus on the fantasy aspect, obviously. I would have been happy, though, if any one aspect had been central, rather than all of them seeming peripheral.

 

Also, looking at it from a historical standpoint- from what I understand, there were no good guys in that war, so I felt a little uncomfortable with how sympathetic the "outlaws" were made to be. (Isn't that essentially Stalin's camp?) I appreciate how unflinching and stark the film was about it, but it seemed like it was mis-represented a little bit, perhaps.

 

Finally, since I'm not in a place where I can coherently express myself, I have a teensy bone to pick.

 

That awesome, awesome scene for her second task? The guy with his eyes in his hands? That pissed me off. This chick crawls into the belly of a tree, with bugs crawling all over her, to look for some toad and feed some rocks to, just because the faun told her to. But when he makes it really clear that the one thing she can't do while she's in the second task is eat, she falters? It's not like she's starving. Her family is well taken care of on that front. And it's not like she's never read a faerie tale! She's obsessed with them! So she should freaking know better! But she still eats! That was so infuriating to me. At least there could have been some clever trap for her to walk into, but it was just straightforward. "Ho-hum. I think I'll pluck some dinner off this table where this freaky guy is sitting with his eyeballs on the plate... mmm." No. Not believable. That girl knows better. Anyway, I'm going to end this here. Heh.

 

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I totally agree with you on all points, particularly the one about there being no 'good' guys in the Spanish Civil War. That boths sides did irreprehensible things and it was just a nasty situation with no one ultimately right.

 

That being said, I still liked experiencing the movie and think it's cool that it's nominated for so many Oscars.

 

Another issue I had with it is it kept spoon-feeding the audience certain things.

 

Spoiler
Like the whole similar-looking antibiotics vial, and how the doctor used the same ones as were found at the camp of the rebels. The used so much over-explanation in the dialogue and the screenshots, I was like WE GET IT ALREADY.

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