Pan's Labyrinth

I spoke too soon about cringing at the gutty stuff. It seems the fates have decided to call my bluff and in Pan's Labyrinth have thrown another gruesome series of iniquities in my face. I'm sensing a trend. But I'm on the last chapter of an epic novel about ancient Japan, and my nerve for violence is like concrete. Bring it on, Hollywood. After 9/11, we were barraged with a wave of fantasy films. Now they've turned dark. Actually what really turns my stomach is that more people will be distressed by the (actually relatively tame) torture scene at the end of Pan's Labyrinth's second act, than at the constantly rising death toll at the beginning of the second act of the Iraq War.

Sergi Lopéz plays Capitán Vidal, a storybook brute of a commanding officer. Despite some hints that maybe there's a man inside this shell of evil, we're left only with his trail of horror. It's the status quo for conventional entertainment. Leave out the challenging psychological stuff and substitute with POWERFUL IMAGES (i.e. Good vs. Evil). Mainstream audiences are seemingly able to endure mass amounts of violence, death, and pessimism, but are we really that incapable of negotiating conflicting moral issues? I mean, please, I would have been perfectly satisfied accepting that the commander was a sound, reasonable man inside, but due to the pressures of his position...etc. Oh well. Same old, same old. Lopéz always makes a perfect bad guy, though, doesn't he?

Despite my reservations about considering this film at all mature, I'm definitely impressed with the art direction. Guillermo del Toro deserves a lot of credit for both his images and sounds. I call to attention El Fauno himself, brittle in both mind and body. The asymetry was astounding, the facial expressions subtly brilliant, and the creaks and cracks of his age-old limbs captivating. I don't even like CG. What I did appreciate was the use of sets, costumes, makeup, and models in conjuction with a cohesive and well-planned CG scheme. Also Doug Jones nearly revises his (and del Toro's) Hellboy creation. Excellent.

I'm not convinced, though, even after tearing up a little at the end (But, really, I cry during previews when the music swells. I'm just a sucker for the stuff). I know I always compare everything to earlier, better films, but when there's so many good ones most people have never even heard about, what else can I do? In this case it's Víctor Erice's 1973 masterpiece, The Spirit of the Beehive. It's the story of a young girl experiencing the horrors of post-war Spain through dark fantasies known only to herself. Weird, I know, but does it sound familiar? Erice's main character, Ana, is slightly younger, and according to a recent article in the New York Times, still at a normal age where fantasy and reality cannot always be separated. Likewise, from Ana's perspective Good and Evil are also up for interpretation. Del Toro tosses this idea aside in favor of a non-thinking tear-jerker that isn't as original as its graphic-novel-reading audience would have us believe.