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Movie of the Week #28 - Pan's Labyrinth
I have been looking forward to this month, since I think it is the first time I haven't seen any of the movies before. The theme is Cannes and we start with Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth which premiered at Cannes in 2006 and received a 22 minute standing ovation.
Besides any thoughts on this movie, are you familiar with other of the Guillermo del Toro's filmography?
The rest of the schedule for May is:
- 13th: The Zone of Interest
- 20th: Luxury Car
- 27th: The Tree of Life
I've seen Pan's Labyrinth, and it's constantly in my top 10 or 20 movies of all time. The Shape of Water was also great, but the world building of Labyrinth remains his best work for me.
I've also seen Zone of Interest, but haven't seen the last two fully.
I’ve recently fallen out of love with Del Toro. Rewatching The Shape of Water made me go “eh.” Despite at one point being my favorite of 2017. I can’t fully explain why, I don’t think there’s much substance to it and I don’t really love the look of the movie enough to overcome that. I had a similar problem when I rewatched Nightmare Alley. I think style over substance is fine but it wares down on me when I don’t find the style all that cool.
I remember reading a Reddit thread where someone said Del Toro gets called a genius by people who only watch horror movies and/or are very nerd oriented. Edit: Sorry I wanted to expand on this but forgot. I think I used to be more nerd-oriented than I am now, which could explain some of my decreased feelings. I also feel like I forced myself to like his movies more than I did simply because I'm Mexican. I had a similar thing doing that for Roma a year after The Shape of Water released. And now I'm over that sort of identity play.
I will say though, Pan’s Labyrinth is legitimately great and might be the only great film Del Toro’s ever made. It’s a beautiful looking film, but it’s also the intersection of style and substance that I think a lot of his films lack. The metaphors to fascism are simple but effective. The melodrama blends well with the fantasy. And the music is great, especially the lullaby.
Personally I think Nightmare Alley is another of his masterpieces, but it's also based on a book so that might help.
Hell Boy and Pacific Rim are on the "dumb but fun" scale personally. I really haven't seen that much more by him.
Hehehe. Wait 'til you get to the bit where it suddenly and violently stops being a whimsical fantasy film.
I usually like Del Toro's stuff, because he seems like a decent person who makes films because he feels like he has something to say and can do it with impressive use of practical effects. Pan's Labyrinth came out lifetimes ago, but it was a phenomenon. It was rare for a foreign language film to be talked about that much.
It took me a little while to settle into this movie, because with the exception of LOTR, fantasy is not something I watch much. The combination with a real world 1944 and the dark fantasy setting worked quite well, keeping things tangible and upheld the mystery of what actually happened. It was like a twisted combination of The Neverending Story and Schindler's List. Vidal is basically Amon Goeth. Some of the CGI stuff was a bit hit and miss that sometimes pulled me a bit out of the movie, but the overall style and atmosphere held things together.
LOL. That is definitely the best description/comparison of it I've heard. :P Although sadly it was lacking an Oskar Schindler type hero character... it only had the Amon Göth-like villain. :(