Pan's Labyrinth
lynnoxford and I saw Pan's Labyrinth yesterday, with much excitement. The short, non-spoilery review is that it was beautiful, grotesque, artistically solid, and not what we were expecting. Lest I mislead anyone, I will add that, though I would recommend it (mostly for the sake of the first three adjectives just listed), I do not do so unambiguously.
Given ayelle's review, however, I might change my mind about that if I'm able to talk with her about it. I did pick up on some of the references, but I know a missed a number, and more allusion always makes me happy. There are certainly enough layers and allusions that I would see the movie again, to try to pick up more.
As lynnoxford says, it is a war movie with fairy tale elements; as such, it was also darker than we expected. The fairy tale was lovely, and satisfyingly disturbing, to my mind. The characters were great, and the real life story was compelling. One of my favorite parts of the movie was that real life was genuinely more fascinating and compelling than the fairy tale.
The reason I can't entirely recommend the movie is because --- I did not enjoy the ending. Now, usually, when I object to an ending, it's because I think the screenwriters fell down on the job. That's not what happened here. This ending is artisically valid. I can respect it. In fact, if I respected the ending less, I could rewrite it in my head and be almost perfectly satisfied with the movie. In Stage Beauty and MirrorMask, I felt that they just got the endings wrong. De Toro didn't mess up his ending. He chose and he knew what he was doing; and that makes the entire movie less enjoyable and more disturbing in ways I'm not sure I like.
(And now I will try to analyze the ending and what it did to my conception of the movie. There were a lot of things I liked about the movie, but this is what I feel like talking about.)
Option A) A part of me feels like the ending was glorifying the afterlife, which I can't handle. I don't know why that affects me as much as it does. I also don't know why "fairy tale" is suddenly translated into "afterlife" at the very end.
Option B) The ending could also be deeply tragic. I can accept and appreciate the tragic in the movie, and in some ways that's the ending I prefer. But there's a catch -- a tragic ending means she died, period. If she died, that means that the fairy tale was not real. I want the fairy tale to be real in some sense.
Can't think of other ways to read the ending. Typing this out, I have the sense that either I'm thinking too hard about it, thinking too narrowly about it, or that I'm missing something. Anyway, it was a very well done movie. I'm a little self-conscious about spending so much time on the last minute, but, um, that's the part that stuck the most.
Given ayelle's review, however, I might change my mind about that if I'm able to talk with her about it. I did pick up on some of the references, but I know a missed a number, and more allusion always makes me happy. There are certainly enough layers and allusions that I would see the movie again, to try to pick up more.
As lynnoxford says, it is a war movie with fairy tale elements; as such, it was also darker than we expected. The fairy tale was lovely, and satisfyingly disturbing, to my mind. The characters were great, and the real life story was compelling. One of my favorite parts of the movie was that real life was genuinely more fascinating and compelling than the fairy tale.
The reason I can't entirely recommend the movie is because --- I did not enjoy the ending. Now, usually, when I object to an ending, it's because I think the screenwriters fell down on the job. That's not what happened here. This ending is artisically valid. I can respect it. In fact, if I respected the ending less, I could rewrite it in my head and be almost perfectly satisfied with the movie. In Stage Beauty and MirrorMask, I felt that they just got the endings wrong. De Toro didn't mess up his ending. He chose and he knew what he was doing; and that makes the entire movie less enjoyable and more disturbing in ways I'm not sure I like.
(And now I will try to analyze the ending and what it did to my conception of the movie. There were a lot of things I liked about the movie, but this is what I feel like talking about.)
Option A) A part of me feels like the ending was glorifying the afterlife, which I can't handle. I don't know why that affects me as much as it does. I also don't know why "fairy tale" is suddenly translated into "afterlife" at the very end.
Option B) The ending could also be deeply tragic. I can accept and appreciate the tragic in the movie, and in some ways that's the ending I prefer. But there's a catch -- a tragic ending means she died, period. If she died, that means that the fairy tale was not real. I want the fairy tale to be real in some sense.
Can't think of other ways to read the ending. Typing this out, I have the sense that either I'm thinking too hard about it, thinking too narrowly about it, or that I'm missing something. Anyway, it was a very well done movie. I'm a little self-conscious about spending so much time on the last minute, but, um, that's the part that stuck the most.