Pan's Labyrinth
Dave and J watched Pan's Labyrinth this evening (big screen size courtesy of the work projector - yay). And what a film. It was beautiful and amazing, extremely dark in both the fairy tale and real life aspects. The film is set during the Spanish civil war where a young girl (Ofelia) and her pregnant mother go to live with the mother's new husband, a captain in Franco's troops, on the front line.
Ofelia's reality starts to change when she finds fairies and a faun in a labyrinth near the outpost they are living in. Meanwhile, she is having to deal with the excessive cruelty of the man her mother has married. This is not a film for children, instead it is a film that shows the madness and cruelty of civil war, and the depths of hatred and violence that a man with no conscience can sink to. The Captain is a cruel and violent man, and he treats Ofelia's mother as merely an incubator for his son.
Ofelia is given tasks by the faun she discovers in the Labyrinth as he has told her that she is heir to the kingdom beneath. These tasks bring her into contact with magical and macabre beasts in some terrifying scenes. The beasts and fairies are not at all Disney-like, they are much more like Brother's Grimm, or scary stories that nurses used to tell their charges to make them behave.
There is a hell of a lot of violence in this film, but none of it seems gratuitous. It just seems to fit the time period and shows the inhumanity of war, especially civil war where the community is essentially fighting itself. The Captain is portrayed as a moral-less psychopath and is incredibly intimidating. He does however get his comeuppance.
The ending of the film is shocking, but not unexpected - it is after all directed by Guillermo del Toro. I had heard a bit about this film, as it has a cult following, but what I didn't realise was that it is not dubbed - it's in Spanish with subtitles which I actually find better than dubbing.
Definitely worth a look if you like dark fairy tales, but be prepared, it's certainly not just a fantasy film.
We also saw James Bond Casino Royale which has to be the oddest James Bond film, I have watched. It really didn't fit the usual mould, and I really can see why people raved about it.
Ofelia's reality starts to change when she finds fairies and a faun in a labyrinth near the outpost they are living in. Meanwhile, she is having to deal with the excessive cruelty of the man her mother has married. This is not a film for children, instead it is a film that shows the madness and cruelty of civil war, and the depths of hatred and violence that a man with no conscience can sink to. The Captain is a cruel and violent man, and he treats Ofelia's mother as merely an incubator for his son.
Ofelia is given tasks by the faun she discovers in the Labyrinth as he has told her that she is heir to the kingdom beneath. These tasks bring her into contact with magical and macabre beasts in some terrifying scenes. The beasts and fairies are not at all Disney-like, they are much more like Brother's Grimm, or scary stories that nurses used to tell their charges to make them behave.
There is a hell of a lot of violence in this film, but none of it seems gratuitous. It just seems to fit the time period and shows the inhumanity of war, especially civil war where the community is essentially fighting itself. The Captain is portrayed as a moral-less psychopath and is incredibly intimidating. He does however get his comeuppance.
The ending of the film is shocking, but not unexpected - it is after all directed by Guillermo del Toro. I had heard a bit about this film, as it has a cult following, but what I didn't realise was that it is not dubbed - it's in Spanish with subtitles which I actually find better than dubbing.
Definitely worth a look if you like dark fairy tales, but be prepared, it's certainly not just a fantasy film.
We also saw James Bond Casino Royale which has to be the oddest James Bond film, I have watched. It really didn't fit the usual mould, and I really can see why people raved about it.