551, 666, 838 Trilogía de Guillermo del Toro

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Fletch F. Fletch · #26 Post by **Fletch F. Fletch** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 2:13 pm

pages from Del Toro's sketchbook.

Interview in the pages of The Independent.

soma · #27 Post by **soma** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 2:03 pm

Wow. I saw this tonight. Pan's Labyrinth is the most strikingly original, visionary, imaginative, haunting and sublimely poetic fantasy I've seen since The City Of Lost Children. And remarkably it leaves even that visionary maelstrom in its wake - with a grasp of narrative, classical knack for storytelling and ability to deeply, truly move that Jeanot, as clever as he is, could only dream of.

Somewhere between a war film and a fairy tale, somewhere between reality and fiction, somewhere between Terry Gilliam and the Brothers Grimm, between Jean-Pierre Jeanot and Jim Henson, between Burton and the baroque, between Mozart and a lullaby from the witches of Macbeth... lies Pan's Labyrinth.

I'm a big fan of Del Toro's earlier, fantastic and underrated gem, The Devil's Backbone, and as mentioned this is very much a celluloid sibling to that film. But even still, Pan's Labyrinth makes The Devil's Backbone look like a warm up lap before the marathon. And after seeing his Hollywood efforts since then I certainly wish he'd stick to making films in Spain! Deftly interweaving political tensions and war drama with myth, magic and demented fantasy; this is a violent and darkly mesmerising fairy tale for adults, the same adults perhaps who were once just as mesmerised as children by The Neverending Story and The Dark Crystal. A flawless masterpiece; a singularly original and uncompromising vision from the ground up. One of a kind...

And the best film I've seen this year.

blindside8zao · #28 Post by **blindside8zao** » Sun Dec 24, 2006 10:56 pm

Is there any way to tell what theaters will be releasing this?

#29 Post by **Jeff** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 9:45 pm

Jim Hoberman has done a fine job of articulating what makes this film so great.

Michael · #30 Post by **Michael** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 10:25 pm

DAMN! Thought its release was going to be wide today. It looks like I'm going to have to wait for another month or two. I really can't wait to see it. I love del Toro.

#31 Post by **Jeff** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 12:24 am

I believe that it is getting its (relatively) wide release on January 19th.

marty · #32 Post by **marty** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 1:24 am

Pan's Labyrinth is ok but I don't see why people rate it so highly. It doesn't hold a candle to his earlier film, The Devil's Backbone which is a bona fide masterpiece.

MichaelB · #33 Post by **MichaelB** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 5:48 am

soma wrote:Pan's Labyrinth is the most strikingly original, visionary, imaginative, haunting and sublimely poetic fantasy I've seen since The City Of Lost Children.

Not a recommendation in my book - I was bored rigid by Lost Children, which was as dramatically and emotionally inert as it was visually spectacular.

And I speak as someone who was a rabid Jeunet-Caro fan up to that point (the shorts as well as Delicatessen, whose UK release I was proud to have worked on).

Still, The Devil's Backbone really was extraordinary, so expectations haven't been dampened that much.

toiletduck! · #34 Post by **toiletduck!** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:26 am

This was intense and tragic and hopeful and fantastic(al) and I really enjoyed it, but it's still only the second best "young girl with dead father escapes horrifying adult reality through fantasy world" film I've seen this year.

-Toilet Dcuk

miless · #35 Post by **miless** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:24 pm

toiletduck! wrote:This was intense and tragic and hopeful and fantastic(al) and I really enjoyed it, but it's still only the second best "young girl with dead father escapes horrifying adult reality through fantasy world" film I've seen this year.

-Toilet Dcuk

Tideland?

toiletduck! · #36 Post by **toiletduck!** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:45 pm

That's the one.

-Toilet Dcuk

daniel p · #37 Post by **daniel p** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:32 pm

Tideland was a piece of crap imo, and the past 2 Gilliam films have turned me off him.

I love Pan's Labyrinth, even moreso than Devil's Backbone. Without the fantasy side, it still would have been a great film, much more mature than Del Toro's other work.

Andre Jurieu · #38 Post by **Andre Jurieu** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 6:09 pm

miless wrote:
toiletduck! wrote:This was intense and tragic and hopeful and fantastic(al) and I really enjoyed it, but it's still only the second best "young girl with dead father escapes horrifying adult reality through fantasy world" film I've seen this year.

-Toilet Dcuk
Tideland?

This is the first time I've totally disagreed with The Dcuk.

Kirkinson · #39 Post by **Kirkinson** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 7:00 pm

Andre Jurieu wrote:This is the first time I've totally disagreed with The Dcuk.

About which part? Thinking Pan's Labyrinth is second to Tideland, or liking Pan's Labyrinth at all?

Andre Jurieu · #40 Post by **Andre Jurieu** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:46 pm

Kirkinson wrote:
Andre Jurieu wrote:This is the first time I've totally disagreed with The Dcuk.
About which part? Thinking Pan's Labyrinth is second to Tideland, or liking Pan's Labyrinth at all?

Actually, I find myself at odds with The Dcuk on the appeal of Tideland (and I say that as a Terry Gilliam fan). Now, back on topic...

Fletch F. Fletch · #41 Post by **Fletch F. Fletch** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 2:03 pm

GreenCine Daily interview with Del Toro.

DrewReiber · #42 Post by **DrewReiber** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 6:49 pm

I thought the film was alright, but I was surprisingly disappointed once it was over and I reflected on the experience. The visuals and performances were fantastic, but the script was still your average assortment of fantasy conventions. Even more frustrating, the characters/plot revolving around the civil war were hidieously undeveloped considering the amount of time spent on them. While it's a step up from Hellboy, I felt The Devil's Backbone was better written.

I want to love Del Toro's work, especially because the passion and attention to detail is everywhere in his films... but I'm more certain than ever that he is in desperate need of a screenwriter to collaborate with.

Fletch F. Fletch · #43 Post by **Fletch F. Fletch** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 2:11 pm

Austin Chronicle interviews Del Toro.

Fletch F. Fletch · #44 Post by **Fletch F. Fletch** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:02 pm

The Onion A.V. Club's interview with del Toro.

Michael · #45 Post by **Michael** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 7:10 pm

What a disappointment. Pan's Labyrinth is uneven and surprisingly dull. If Ofelia is the heart of the story, then what's the film doing by spending too much time with the captain and other people? The
Spanish Civil War background has been done so many times before but there's still not much new to explore or discover in the film. The fantasy parts are the best parts but they are treated more like teasers. I really wanted to love it.

Watch these films instead: The Spirit of the Beehive, Vacas and del Toro's superior film The Devil's Backbone.

tavernier · #46 Post by **tavernier** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 7:30 pm

Nice of you to mention "Vacas," which is still Medem's best film.

marty · #47 Post by **marty** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 8:01 pm

Michael wrote:What a disappointment. Pan's Labyrinth is uneven and surprisingly dull. If Ofelia is the heart of the story, then what's the film doing by spending too much time with the captain and other people? The
Spanish Civil War background has been done so many times before but there's still not much new to explore or discover in the film. The fantasy parts are the best parts but they are treated more like teasers. I really wanted to love it.

Watch these films instead: The Spirit of the Beehive, Vacas and del Toro's superior film The Devil's Backbone.

Nice to finally see someone else who was disappointed by this film. I agree that The Devil's Backbone is vastly superior.

Oedipax · #48 Post by **Oedipax** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 3:30 am

I saw this last night and was also fairly disappointed. I'm a bit bewildered by the tremendous outpouring of critical support for this one - 98 on Metacritic! It had a few good moments, sure, and I respect the decision to let this go as far and as dark as it does, but something was missing. I suppose for one example you could compare the flaccid hedge maze ending here to its obvious precursor in The Shining. No comparison there.

Michael · #49 Post by **Michael** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 10:40 am

With all this amazing hype, I was expecting something new, something original...and a new fantasy film that would blow me away like Spirited Away did a few years ago. It turned out to be a pretty conventional civil war film with a few glimpses of fantasy that brought my mind to some of the 1980s fantasy films, Legend and Labyrinth.

A few things stood out of Pan's for me were:

- it's uncompromisingly depressing and dark. An ultimate downer.
- excellent performance by everyone, especially the actress who played the nurse Mercedes.
- the eyes-in-the-palms monster is really kick ass and what a shame that he's in the film only for a few minutes. I loved the frescoes on his ceiling - how they can spark your imagination! and I think del Toro should had done more with this monster, using him as a mirror to the evil captain and the kids as the villagers, etc. But that wild episode unfortunately fleeted by too quickly.

bunuelian · #50 Post by **bunuelian** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 12:37 pm

Count me among the disappointed. I agree with everyone that the performances are good and the visuals nice, but the film defeats itself with its "fyi, the fascists sucked" obviousness. Every time the noble republicans come ambling out of the forest looking like they're on holiday to provide the only adult loving relationship in the film (and a "pure" one between a brother and sister), there's just too much beating of the dead horse for my taste. If the film were set in Baghdad, I might care more.

The faun was distractingly overwrought.

I think my reaction to the film is largely coming from my visceral distaste for watching people get shot and mutilated just for the sake of sickening the audience. It's not hard to get under the audience's skin with this sort of stuff, and all the relentless misery in the real world does eventually work to make the viewer long for the fantasy elements to come back. A lot of the suffering in the film never touches our hero (the civil war elements) but they do impact us. But the story didn't need to involve torture to be emotionally effective, and seemed more manipulative for it. The stutterer was utterly pointless, for example.

551, 666, 838 Trilogía de Guillermo del Toro

Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)

Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)

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