Sunday, October 4, 2009

Pan's Labryinth: My Impression

For some reason I had this movie confused with another movie that had to do with a girl talking to fairies and being a part of an imaginary world. So when I began the movie, I had the plot of that movie in my mind. That movie WAS a childrens movie. This movie definitely isn't. Wow is it intense. Almost everything in the movie can be picked apart and debated about. Everything has multiple meanings. Was it real or imaginary? Did good or bad win in the end? Is disobedience always the answer? What IS perfection and why do people strive for it?

Let me tell you one thing: I really, REALLY hate the captain. He brings all of the violence into the movie. Even from the very beginning, you can see he's a time bomb ready to explode when Ofelia's mother doesn't want to get into the wheelchair he provides for her. She was like, "No I want to walk" but he pretty much demands it when he says, "Please do it for me." And the second after, Ofelia goes to shake his hand with her left hand but he roughly grabs it and says, "It's the other hand Ofelia." How rude! She slips up just once and his idea of perfection makes him totally act like a jerk. Very soon after, the true beast in him comes out. I couldn't believe it when he smashed that man's face in with a bottle and shot the man's father. They were telling the truth about what they were doing in the woods but before truely searching for the right answer, he killed them! Totally unnecessary. Why does he think his idea of perfection is the right one and what in the world does he think he'll gain from striving for it? "Perfect" sounds very boring to me. I've always loved people's imperfections and mistakes. They make you who you are! Maybe I shouldn't hate him so much...I remember him saying he wanted his son to be born into a "new, clean Spain." Perhaps his intentions are all wrong. He thinks his actions are for the good of his son when really he's destroying his soul with all his killing. Can we blame him for trying to do what he thinks is right for his son?

Something that really hit me was the fact that, by the end, Ofelia is the princess of the underworld. The underworld isn't usually associated with innocent, good hearted people. The underworld is a place wretched souls go so why does Ofelia, the girl that sacrificed her LIFE for her newborn baby brother, become the princess of such a place? This is the place we're rooting for her to get to but it's suppposed to be a bad place. I'm sure Del Toro did this on purpose to make people think about the difference between good and bad. You would think that she'd rather stay on earth instead of becoming the princess of the underworld...and it's such a bright place too. When she gets there, she's wearing red and white, the king and queen are wearing bright colors, and it's very well lit. Whenever I think of the underworld, I think of a dark, dank place similar to the inside of a cave. Del Toro really thought of every last way to make us reshape our ideas of good and bad.
Del Toro also played with my idea of normalcy and convention in the small detail of the story Ofelia told her little brother while he was still in the womb. Her mother asked her to calm him down with a story and the story she came up with was one that I would never tell a child. She told him a story about a beautiful flower that couldn't be reached because it was surrounded by poisonous thorns. Because the flower was unreachable, it wilts and dies. What a sad story! Normally, this wouldn't be a story told to a young child because the child would either get sad or not understand what's really being sad. I think that Ofelia herself shouldn't understand that kind of sadness...
Oh and one small thing: I think it's interesting the tree that Ofelia's white flower grows on looks like the head of the Faun. The way the branches split off look like horns...

And I really think all of you guys should read this blog: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/09/10/fixing-pans-labyrinth/
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