Pan's Labyrinth

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Why is that?

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http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

I think adi was being sarcastic.

Finally got around to seeing the movie out of sheer bordem, but what i got...i did not expect. That was an amazing movie. The picture, the script, the storyline, everything. I liked it alot.

Thanks for the great revie Yods, I only saw this movie recently, at times it was shocking, cruel and lovely. I couldn't stop watching it, loved it

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Gonna pick this up on DVD as soon as I can. I love it.

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Δύο άτομα. Μια μάχη. Κανένας συμβιβασμός.

Great movie.
I actually thought it was a kids movie at first but it most definately isn't.
Funny how the scariest scenes were the real world stuff and not the fantasy world.
(well, except for that one baby-eating creature with eyes in his hands )

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Fear the Probe!

Why in the hell do people like this movie so much? I felt ripped off. A cheap marketing gimmick to get people to watch it. Does the toad stand for anything? Does that hairless freak stand for anything? This movie could have been a million times better. Let the toad stand for something that's going on in "real" life and then have the girl do to the toad what she would want to do in real life. Damnit. To me, there was no connection between what was going on between the two worlds - and I don't count her tasks as a connection. Am I watching a movie about a captain, am I watching a movie about a girl's fantasy, am I watching a movie about a girl that's trying to escape reality by making a fantasy world? I didn't like it and I don't like it.

"That was weird. This is boring. That was weird. That was kind of interesting. This is boring. I don't care. That was weird."

That was my internal dialog while I was watching this movie.

Well you're a simpleton so I'm not surprised.

The captain and the girl are foils for each other.

The mean guy made fun of me today.

YES!! I am really happy to see someone else say this. I thought the movie was overall interesting, and fun (with bouts of "painful") to watch. But it could have been a mind-bender if there had been symbolism instead of just yucky stuff. All the other elements were in place.

I may be way off base here, but do you mean symbolism that connects the fantasy world to the real world? If so, wouldn't that sort of deplete the purpose of the film? I don't know about you, but I wasn't sure if the entire fantasy aspect was all imagined or real...symbolism that stems in the real world would have kinda spoiled the romantic aspect of the film, would have made it clear that it was all imagined.

Can you elaborate a bit?

First off, you get gut points for posting this. Kudos for that, if only because it should lead to an interesting discussion.

That said, I think people like it for many reasons, one of the primary ones being that it's genuinely unique. That's saying a lot these days. That, and the film is, at times, just lovely to look at.


I've got to agree with adi on this one: this was probably deliberate, as it creates some ambiguity about whether or not the world was make-believe. It also made the viewer long for the fantasy elements as much as Ophelia did. It might have gone a bit too far (I could've done with a more balanced mix), but it does serve a purpose, and so I can't really bring myself to fault the film for it.

Ambiguity? If that were the case I wouldn't have minded, I probably would have liked it. The only problem with that is that it seemed to have broken too many rules that the movie it self made. At one point you are lead to believe it's real and then for no reason it's not real. This is one reason why I liked The Fountain so much, all the stories worked together. I'm probably getting off point. I lost my company car keys and now my boss is on his way to my house with another set... he's probably happy.

If I wanted to watch a kids movie about some girl fighting monsters, I'd go rent that movie. If I wanted to watch a war movie I'd go rent that movie. If I wanted to watch a movie about a girl that's trying to escape a war struck environment I'd rent that movie, but there's no way I'd ever want to rent a movie with two stories, one for kids and one for adults, that don't even have anything to do with each other.

And, the last part with the girl, the faun, and the captain should be concrete evidence that the whole thing wasn't real... BUT, it still goes on to show you what happens to this girl... WHY? WHY MAKE ME WATCH THAT?! You just showed me how the whole fantasy THING WASN'T REAL! THEN YOU'RE GONNA' MAKE ME WATCH HER?! I ALREADY PUT THE FOOT REST DOWN ON MY RECLINER! I'M READY TO GET SOME WATER! I'M SITTING UP IN MY CHAIR ALREADY! I'M READY TO GO! YOU LIED TO ME!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

Your thoughts?

I don't have a problem with a mix of genres in a film, if it works. Why should we have to separate 'war film' and 'children's fantasy'? It is much more interesting to see a film like this. And despite featuring a child, I didn't think the fantasy sections belonged in a 'children's film'. They were as dark and horrible as the 'real' sections.

And you're upset because a fantasy isn't real? What were you expecting, a documentary about giant toads and baby-eating fauns...? Of course it isn't real. But within the terms of the film it is real enough to Ofelia, and that is all that matters.

Em, actually, if you go under the premise that it's all real and that she's a princess from a different world, it would be perfectly sensible for the common people not to be able to see these fantastic creatures that inhabit the other world.

Also, as was explained over and over again, the two stories fit perfectly together because they accentuate one another; the real world is brutal and ugly therefore the fantasy land becomes all the more desirable to the girl. I don't know about you, but just like the girl, I too wanted to escape in the fantasy land...and was all the more sympathetic to her escapism... This is a critique of war first and foremost...it would have been an entirely different film if there was no juxtaposition of these two worlds. You wanna watch a classic fairy tale, you rent Wizard of Oz or Narnia (even though the latter was actually very similar in premise to Pan's... with regards to war).

So yeah, you basically missed the entire point.:-/

No. I didn't miss any points. I just don't agree with your take on the movie.

I can see your point here: if the fantasy land were all easily relatable to elements of Ofelia's real world, then we'd just as easily draw the conclusion that it's all surreal and she made it up. But having NO relationship between the two felt disjointed to me - like I was getting jerked between these two storylines, the minute one got interesting I find I'm in the other. That would have been ok had there been a better payoff at the end, but when the end mercifully rolls around (I say mercifully because OMGZORZ this was violent), we're left with the question of "was it real?". This was Del Torro's intent in the end of the film, but to go through so much with just that at the end was a bit "pfft", it seemed to me. I guess I DID miss the point, because I'm left wondering what he set out to say.