Poking the Bear...
Alright...so I know this will likely bring about a slew of discussion...Admittedly this is something good that the movie was successful at doing (fostering discussion I mean), and I'm always down for some critical debate...but I've had a night to sleep on it...and now it's time to go into why I disliked the film "Pan's Labyrinth"...
I guess first of all I will begin by saying that the film is not "Badly Done"...my beef is not with the Look of the film, the atmosphere, the cutting, etc...My beef is with the story, how it is told, and the relationship between what it puts its audience through as compared to what major ideas the audience comes away with. In the end I feel the film was exceptionally, and blatantly manipulative in it's storytelling, puts it's audience through a very large amount of emotional, physical, and mental shock and pain, and only results in a mediocre and unrewarding summation.
So first...the style...which I can best describe as being repeatedly attacked by a series of increasingly depressing, and painful events and images, whilst only slightly being kept alive by the occasional morsel of hope which would repeatedly be dashed. For instance, you are given the hope that the magic root will help the mother to survive...then it get's killed and she dies horribly. You repeatedly watch the captain exercise a brutal disregard for life, and quite possibly the most self centered world view, and violent, deadly will to keep to it I have ever encountered. You are given the hope that Mercedes will kill him with her knife, thus preventing him from hurting more people. While she does hurt and disfigure him...he essentially recovers...and still manages to kill virtually everyone you care about... Essentially by the end of the film...seeing a horrible ending did not surprise me in the least...it was completely expected, and completely unsatisfying. In other words...by the end I thought everything became extremely predictable...whatever could happen to hurt the audience more...would inevitably happen...would it hurt to see the doctor die? Bang. How about the poor stutterer? How about a morphine overdose my friend... What about the little girl? Bang. Oh do you like the whole fantasy world? Well why don't we make you doubt if that even exists... So yeah...I felt completely manipulated into feeling like shit. Not something I generally like in a film, unless there's some sort of big payoff...which brings me to...
The issue of the balance of pain inflicted to the statement made by the film. Hurting the audience can be a useful tool, but I feel should be used sparingly and only in the case that the audience will get something rewarding out of it. For example let's look at "Schindler's List". All personal opinions on Spielberg aside, that film is gut-wrenchingly painful to watch, but in a meaningful way. The first time I saw the movie I left the theatre in a daze, and remained in a relative state of shock for the entire rest of the day. However I never questioned whether seeing the film was worth the pain I experienced in watching it. Why? Because I came away with a lot from the film. Those holocaust images will stay with me forever. I will always be aware of the kind of cruelty some people are capable, and the fact that such horrible things are in fact possible, even on a large scale. I also came away with the sense that in spite of all that, every single person who stands up against such injustice, while they may not have a happy ending themselves, can make a difference for good. The sense that as long as we all remember both of those things then at least one good thing has come out of it. We have the knowledge and the wherewithal to hopefully foresee, and prevent future Holocausts, and the idealism necessary to fight against them when they do occur. This, to me, is worth the pain of watching the film.
Now what did I come away with from this movie? Horrible things can happen, and even when there is hope they might get better, sometimes they get worse. And while in the end evil, is still stood up to and defeated, it doesn't undo, or make up for the horrors that have occurred. Revenge is unsatisfying, and bad shit happens, and doesn't always turn out happy.
I have two responses to this statement....1:DUH! I had no Idea that things didn't always turn out alright...and there was no other way to show me that than by metaphorically punching me in the gut over and over again... and 2. What a fucking defeatist and depressing message! What the hell do you accomplish by giving that message to people? Hmmm...Maybe now people will just not bother standing up against evil and injustice because they know that sometimes there's nothing you can do to make it better... Wow that's really the message I want to see future generations inundated with. I can not fathom putting an audience through all of the emotional turmoil of that movie to basically tell them "Shit Happens," I can get that message just as clearly from a bumper sticker on the back end of a pickup. Life under Franco sucked, and some of the terrible things that happened under his regime can never really be made up for. I already knew this, and it is no clearer to me know for having seen this film.
Now as for the issue of the ambiguity of whether or not the magic world exists. Well it's very ambiguous, but the way in which the world she goes to in the end was shot, leaves me feeling it's fake and that pisses me off. The problem is that it's in such a different palate, its sooo soft focus, and everything is tooo perfect. Up until the end there is nothing at all perfect about the magic world. All the creatures are kinda creepy looking, everything's dark, all is in clear focus, and the Faun is quite frankly, a little disturbing in his demeanor. Suddenly when we see the magic world in the end, the Faun is friendly and well spoken, the world is bright, radiant, and soft focused, and there are tons of normal looking human types... It doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel like the magic world we've been seeing bits of throughout the film. That combined with the fact that we know by the end that only the little girl can see the Faun and the Captain can't, means you cannot take it as a redemptive Christian/style allegory, where "at least you know she's in a better place." The fact is you don't. The only thing that even leaves you feeling there's at least a possibility that it was real is the flowering tree. But there's no way to know if that really means anything. Honestly if this is supposed to be a fairy tale, then at least give the sucker a concrete ending. Fairy tales are dark and I like them that way. But when you read Sleeping Beauty you are not left wondering if maybe she didn't really wake up, and the whole bit with the Prince is just a dream...
In the end perhaps my problem is I'm a bit too much of an optimist. I am a realist as well...I recognize that things don't always end well, and I do not always expect things to happen for the best...I just know that somewhere inside of me I honestly believe that there is a purpose, and perhaps a plan for everything, and something positive does come out of every tragedy. Consequently I want something that depressing to either give some sense of reassurance, or spur me on to do something. This film did neither, so why did I watch it? To get depressed. While yes, depressing things can be neat to watch...like Six Feet Under...but in the end if they can't do anything but continually weigh you down with depression...they don't have any sort of proactive idea...then I feel it just isn't worth it to watch them. (Hence why after 2.5 Seasons I stopped watching 6 Feet Under and haven't watched it since. It was good...but I just didn't want to come home, watch it and feel depressed anymore)
I guess first of all I will begin by saying that the film is not "Badly Done"...my beef is not with the Look of the film, the atmosphere, the cutting, etc...My beef is with the story, how it is told, and the relationship between what it puts its audience through as compared to what major ideas the audience comes away with. In the end I feel the film was exceptionally, and blatantly manipulative in it's storytelling, puts it's audience through a very large amount of emotional, physical, and mental shock and pain, and only results in a mediocre and unrewarding summation.
So first...the style...which I can best describe as being repeatedly attacked by a series of increasingly depressing, and painful events and images, whilst only slightly being kept alive by the occasional morsel of hope which would repeatedly be dashed. For instance, you are given the hope that the magic root will help the mother to survive...then it get's killed and she dies horribly. You repeatedly watch the captain exercise a brutal disregard for life, and quite possibly the most self centered world view, and violent, deadly will to keep to it I have ever encountered. You are given the hope that Mercedes will kill him with her knife, thus preventing him from hurting more people. While she does hurt and disfigure him...he essentially recovers...and still manages to kill virtually everyone you care about... Essentially by the end of the film...seeing a horrible ending did not surprise me in the least...it was completely expected, and completely unsatisfying. In other words...by the end I thought everything became extremely predictable...whatever could happen to hurt the audience more...would inevitably happen...would it hurt to see the doctor die? Bang. How about the poor stutterer? How about a morphine overdose my friend... What about the little girl? Bang. Oh do you like the whole fantasy world? Well why don't we make you doubt if that even exists... So yeah...I felt completely manipulated into feeling like shit. Not something I generally like in a film, unless there's some sort of big payoff...which brings me to...
The issue of the balance of pain inflicted to the statement made by the film. Hurting the audience can be a useful tool, but I feel should be used sparingly and only in the case that the audience will get something rewarding out of it. For example let's look at "Schindler's List". All personal opinions on Spielberg aside, that film is gut-wrenchingly painful to watch, but in a meaningful way. The first time I saw the movie I left the theatre in a daze, and remained in a relative state of shock for the entire rest of the day. However I never questioned whether seeing the film was worth the pain I experienced in watching it. Why? Because I came away with a lot from the film. Those holocaust images will stay with me forever. I will always be aware of the kind of cruelty some people are capable, and the fact that such horrible things are in fact possible, even on a large scale. I also came away with the sense that in spite of all that, every single person who stands up against such injustice, while they may not have a happy ending themselves, can make a difference for good. The sense that as long as we all remember both of those things then at least one good thing has come out of it. We have the knowledge and the wherewithal to hopefully foresee, and prevent future Holocausts, and the idealism necessary to fight against them when they do occur. This, to me, is worth the pain of watching the film.
Now what did I come away with from this movie? Horrible things can happen, and even when there is hope they might get better, sometimes they get worse. And while in the end evil, is still stood up to and defeated, it doesn't undo, or make up for the horrors that have occurred. Revenge is unsatisfying, and bad shit happens, and doesn't always turn out happy.
I have two responses to this statement....1:DUH! I had no Idea that things didn't always turn out alright...and there was no other way to show me that than by metaphorically punching me in the gut over and over again... and 2. What a fucking defeatist and depressing message! What the hell do you accomplish by giving that message to people? Hmmm...Maybe now people will just not bother standing up against evil and injustice because they know that sometimes there's nothing you can do to make it better... Wow that's really the message I want to see future generations inundated with. I can not fathom putting an audience through all of the emotional turmoil of that movie to basically tell them "Shit Happens," I can get that message just as clearly from a bumper sticker on the back end of a pickup. Life under Franco sucked, and some of the terrible things that happened under his regime can never really be made up for. I already knew this, and it is no clearer to me know for having seen this film.
Now as for the issue of the ambiguity of whether or not the magic world exists. Well it's very ambiguous, but the way in which the world she goes to in the end was shot, leaves me feeling it's fake and that pisses me off. The problem is that it's in such a different palate, its sooo soft focus, and everything is tooo perfect. Up until the end there is nothing at all perfect about the magic world. All the creatures are kinda creepy looking, everything's dark, all is in clear focus, and the Faun is quite frankly, a little disturbing in his demeanor. Suddenly when we see the magic world in the end, the Faun is friendly and well spoken, the world is bright, radiant, and soft focused, and there are tons of normal looking human types... It doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel like the magic world we've been seeing bits of throughout the film. That combined with the fact that we know by the end that only the little girl can see the Faun and the Captain can't, means you cannot take it as a redemptive Christian/style allegory, where "at least you know she's in a better place." The fact is you don't. The only thing that even leaves you feeling there's at least a possibility that it was real is the flowering tree. But there's no way to know if that really means anything. Honestly if this is supposed to be a fairy tale, then at least give the sucker a concrete ending. Fairy tales are dark and I like them that way. But when you read Sleeping Beauty you are not left wondering if maybe she didn't really wake up, and the whole bit with the Prince is just a dream...
In the end perhaps my problem is I'm a bit too much of an optimist. I am a realist as well...I recognize that things don't always end well, and I do not always expect things to happen for the best...I just know that somewhere inside of me I honestly believe that there is a purpose, and perhaps a plan for everything, and something positive does come out of every tragedy. Consequently I want something that depressing to either give some sense of reassurance, or spur me on to do something. This film did neither, so why did I watch it? To get depressed. While yes, depressing things can be neat to watch...like Six Feet Under...but in the end if they can't do anything but continually weigh you down with depression...they don't have any sort of proactive idea...then I feel it just isn't worth it to watch them. (Hence why after 2.5 Seasons I stopped watching 6 Feet Under and haven't watched it since. It was good...but I just didn't want to come home, watch it and feel depressed anymore)