On DVD: Pan's Labyrinth

[Sara]

I'm trying to come up with something that hasn't already been said about Pan's Labyrinth, and by people much more eloquent and knowledgeable than I when it comes to the craft and art of movie-making. However, I suspect that's an utterly futile hope, so I'm just going to ramble on and hope I stumble across a decent thought or two along the way.

If you're a fan of beautiful and intelligent filmmaking, you should see this movie.

If you have an interest in fairy tales, words, and the power stories can hold, you should see this movie.

If you enjoy getting the wits scared out of you, you should see this movie.

If you like films that can explore pertinent social issues like fascism and the dangers of blind obedience without leaving you bruised from a barrage of anvils, you should see this movie.

One thing that I feel is important to note up front: Pan's Labyrinth earns its R rating. Both the real and fantasy worlds depicted contain their fair share of brutality, which del Toro depicts with unflinching honesty. Yet the violence never seems gratuitous, nor is it the slightly-romanticized, exquisitely choreographed kind of mayhem we so often see in American films these days.

The premise is, like any good fairy tale, pretty simple: a bookish young girl, Ofelia, and her mother Carmen travel to the Spanish countryside to live with Carmen's new husband, Captain Vidal, for the duration of Carmen's pregnancy. The setting is fascist Spain, 1944, and Vidal, certain that Carmen is carrying a boy, wants to be certain his son in born in safety and seclusion. With both her mother and Vidal focused on their child, Ofelia is drawn into two worlds: that of the servants of the estate, embodied by the kitchen maid Mercedes (the amazing Maribel Verdú, who gradually becomes the heart and soul of the film); and a fantastic world of fauns, fairies, monsters, and magic, where she's told she is a princess who must prove herself worthy of her royal heritage.

Given the darkness and harshness of Ofelia's reality, it's little wonder her fantasy world is both escape from and a reflection of the violence all around her, from the rebels hiding in the countryside awaiting their chance to strike at one of Franco's most honored soldiers to the very real peril her mother's and brother's lives are in due to Carmen's increasingly difficult pregnancy—a danger compounded by their isolation from any sort of professional medical facility.

I'd be remiss in singling out Verdú, tremendous as she was, as the rest of the cast—in particular Sergi López as Vidal, Ariadna Gil as Carmen, Álex Angulo as Dr, Ferreiro, and the luminous Ivana Baquero as Ofelia—turns in stellar performances from start to finish. And the amazing work of Doug Jones as both the Faun and the still-giving-me-nightmares Pale Man is almost in a class by itself. Just imagine wearing a full body suit (which, in the case of the Faun, includes false legs you have to pretend to be putting your weight on and motors on the top of the mask to lend motion to the ears), essentially inventing the inhuman movements of a creature who doesn't exist, and delivering crucial dialog in a language you don't speak, all to bring life to characters utterly integral to the movie—and all the while knowing only a handful of people will even recognize, much less acknowledge, the magnitude of what you've achieved. It's dancing backwards while wearing high heels... to the power of a million.

What else can I say? The visuals are spectacular, the music's haunting lullaby will stay with you for days, and I suspect you'll never look at a stick insect in quite the same way again.

So go. Rent Pan's Labyrinth. You won't regret it.

[leftylady]

I did not see Pan's Labyrinth at the theaters and haven't yet seen the dvd, but I can vouch for the awesomeness of the soundtrack by Javier Navarrete. I first heard it at the official web panslayrinth.com The entire soundtrack is accessible there.

I also have the cd soundtrack with liner notes on how the music was created for the film. The director wanted a lullaby to be recurring theme - a child's dreams which became nightmares. It's quite haunting.

leftylady

[Sara]

leftylady said:

I did not see Pan's Labyrinth at the theaters and haven't yet seen the dvd, but I can vouch for the awesomeness of the soundtrack by Javier Navarrete. I first heard it at the official web panslayrinth.com The entire soundtrack is accessible there.

I also have the cd soundtrack with liner notes on how the music was created for the film. The director wanted a lullaby to be recurring theme - a child's dreams which became nightmares. It's quite haunting.

leftylady

In the extras that come with the 2-disc special edition del Toro spends some time discussing the music and how the lullaby developed. He said that Navarrete was extremely reluctant to compose anything that sounded like a melody, something del Toro said he's found to be common among accomplished composers (and other artists as well)—they feel in order for their work to be perceived by others as important it can't be simple. So Navarrete would send some music, del Toro would want to add a few more notes, Navarrete would maybe add one more, and so on. The acid test, for del Toro, was whether the tune was hummable—and whether his wife and daughter liked it. He knew they'd finally succeeded when his daughter asked if he'd give her the mp3 of the latest incarnation so she could download it to her iPod.

There's also a brief but very cool feature that traces the various iterations of the lullaby theme, from a whistled melody to Mercedes' hummed version to her humming combined with orchestration.