We saw it Monday afternoon. I thought it was great; visually stunning, dramatic and, to my mind very ambiguous at the end. Was it all fantasy or not? I suppose it’s up to each viewer to decide.
I was puzzled by one moment though. At the dinner party, when the older officer says he knew the Captain’s father and recalled the story about his watch, why did the Captain deny his father had a watch?
Regarding the watch,
I think the captain was always haunted by the “show my son how a brave man died” and both wanted to imitate him in every way (having his own son, wanting the watch smashed just like his father did) and resenting his father for placing the burden of living up to his example. He made the watch run again, because he wanted to live his own life, not always carry around his father’s, but in the end tried to do the same to his own son.
About Ofelia’s dad, did everyone notice during the dinner exchange
Ofelia’s mom talks about how she used to see the capitan when her husband repaired his uniforms, and he looked her up later when her husband died in the war. Someone else makes a snarky comment about “oh, what a coincidence” and the capitan shuts them down abruptly. The implication being the capitan killed Ofelia’s dad to get his wife!
Really lovely movie.
There’s quite a buzz about this movie and I think it’s only in limitted release still, so that might explain why the theater was sold out since it wouldn’t be playing in many places. Currently 8.4 on IMDB. It looks great, and I hope to see it next week.
The film was visually stunning, and the young lady who played the protagonist is very good in the role (I vote she should replace the annoyingly one-note Dakota Fanning in all “eerily mature child” roles) but I was honestly a little nonplussed by the story and some of the rather ham-fisted symbolism and allegory. Or maybe I was just put off by the needlessly graphic and seemingly gratuitous violence; it came off as a retooling of a children’s fantasy as imagined by Quentin Tarantino. (Perhaps someone can convince me that this was thematically necessary, but I’m not seeing it.) I much preferred El espinazo del diablo (The Devil’s Backbone), also set during the Spanish Civil War (though a few years earlier, I believe, when the war was still ongoing), and which had a lot more going on in it.
Stranger
I was unsettled by the violence - although I’d be warned to expect it - but for me it not only showed the horror of real-life in wartime, but also underlined the fact that this wasn’t a “kids’” movie.
The violence of real-life was more unpleasant than anything encountered in the Fantasy World.
And yes, sometimes there was a feeling of “lookit, this is symbolic so pay attention”, which could have been handled with a touch more subtlety.
Just came back from this. It was even better than I expected, and my expectations were very high. It was very dark and gory, but the gore was, IMO, neccessary. You wouldn’t have had the same impressions of the horror of Ofelia’s captivity–for all intents and purposes–in that house with the brutal fascist captain and her passive mother. While I found the gore disturbing, I never found it gratuitous.
Re the ending and the fantastic components:
[spoiler]I think it was still ambigous, even though the Captain saw nothing. The fact that Ofelia was able to enter the locked room where the captain and her infant brother were made it possible that the magic was real, although obviously locked rooms can be broken into without resorting to magic. In any event I felt the ambiguity wasn’t resolved in the movie, which is how it should be.
The ending was way more tragic than I expected, but again that was entirely appropriate.[/spoiler]
I’m looking forward to it because I like Guillermo Del Toro’s films, but I seriously doubt it’ll make the theaters around here. It’s supposed to be on DVD in May, though, so I guess I can hang in there until then.
The ads and publicity interviews in Spain have made it very clear that the “fantasy” part was minimal, hasn’t it been so in the US?
Haven’t been able to catch it, it came out just as I was moving Over Here so it was quite a hectic time.
I haven’t seen it, but yesterday my wife took our 15 year-old (at her request) and a friend. All 3 said it was an amazing movie, but all 3 also said it was the most graphically violent movie they had ever seen, and that that detracted significantly from their enjoyment of it. I believe the scene my daughter described involved smashing someone’s hand with a hammer. (And, for a little context, our family owns and enjoys Fight Club, and recently enjoyed Pulp Fiction - so we aren’t entirely opposed to portrayals of violence.)
One question my wife had - she said one scene had a newspaper headline of the Americans landing on a beach in France, which she presumed referred to Normandy. But my impression was that this was set in the Spanish Civil War - the preceding decade. Any thoughts?
I saw the movie on Saturday. It is only playing at three theaters in Austin. My friend and I tried to get into the 1:00 showing, but it was sold out. The theater was very full, only a handfull of singles, for the 4:00 showing that we got into.
Like others, I was expecting that the fantasy part would be bigger, but in the end I am glad it wasn’t. It is a movie that I do want to see again. I am having trouble drawing any comparisons between the fantasy characters and real world ones.
Mercedez, the housekeeper, explained this herself.[spoiler]She told Ofelia that when she was little, Ofelia’s age, she did used to believe in fairies – but not anymore. It’s different when you grow up. It mirrored the way Ofelia’s mother’s lines kept repeating. “You don’t understand. When you get older you’ll understand.”
Both grown up, female role models had lost their innocence. They can’t see fairies anymore.[/spoiler]
No, the fantasy element has been emphasized here in the trailers and posters.
Agreed. I am not entirely opposed to my older kid seeing violence on film - he loves the Matrix movies and even the Blade series - but I don’t think I’ll be letting him see this one soon. I got into an argument with my aunt, who was planning on taking my 11 year old cousin to see it. “It’s really disturbing violence,” I told her (having seen it already.) “It’s absolutely deserving of it’s R rating, you know. I wouldn’t take WhyKid, and he’s three years older.”
“But they advertised it on TV,” she protested. “How bad could it be?” (I don’t follow this logic at all, but that’s what she said.)
Finally I tried a different tack: “You know it’s not in English, right? It’s subtitled.”
They went to see Alpha Dog or some shit instead. :smack:
A quick google (which I have the advantage of doing in Spanish and getting lots of sources from Spain) verified what I remembered: it’s set after the Civil War. One of the first links said “in 1944”.
It’s brutal violence. The Matrix type stuff is comic book, cartoony violence. Pan was about brutality and it wasn’t stylized to look “cool”, it was designed to look authentic and convey its disturbing nature.
I watched Sin City and flinched only once. Pan actually made me turn away a couple of times. My finacee’s mom wanted to see it and I am very glad she did not come with us.
It was disturbing enough that I found waiting for the violence that was undeniably forthcoming made me squirm, like when:…the capitan said "if you can count to three without stuttering…"That scene made me whoozy.
I have to admit that I didn"t see the broken bottle beatdown coming.
Thanks. I should have googled myself. For whatever reason, I had gotten the strong impression that it was “during” rather than “after” the SCW.
Folks who have watched it, how much do you believe the amount and graphic nature of the violence was necessary to the film’s impact? I’m not suggesting that there should have been no violence, but my understanding is that there were several extremely violent scenes. Would the film have been significantly lessened if the violence had been less - perhaps only 1 or 2 explicit scenes with other scenes more implicit?
I’m just wondering, because hearing of this extreme degree of graphic violence makes it likely that I will not watch this movie.
Good question. I think it was fairly essential for the point that this director was trying to make and the story that he was trying to tell. This wasn’t a child’s bratty spoilt reaction to a stern new stepfather who made her go to bed without her supper for spilling her milk. This was a sweet, well-behaved child’s world shifted upside down by a sadistic bastard, and her mother’s complete betrayal, body and mind, and inability to protect her from him - “him”, of course, being a stand-in for the big bad world of a country torn apart and physically and mentally ravaged by war. And, like we all do to some extent or another, she found safety in fantasy.
It’s not a pretty thought. But it’s not a movie about fairies and fauns (although there are fairies and fauns) it’s a movie about the ravages of war.
Could he have toned down the violence and made a Spanish language The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe spin off? Sure, but that wouldn’t have been this movie.
Personally, I felt that the graphic violence was necessary to the storyline. I was not warned beforehand about some of the more graphic scenes and as a result I was caught off guard. Still, I felt that the violence helped to establish the environment of war more accurately. Much like a fantasy story, the violence drew clear and unambiguous lines that served to identify good characters and bad characters.
Without giving too much a way, I do feel that less violent scenes would have detracted from the emotions that the movie evokes. Had they cut away from showing brutal scenes throughout the film, my feelings for the main characters would have been greatly diminished.
Oh, wait, I missed this part. Actually, only 2 or 3 scenes were terribly explicit that I can remember. But they were enough!
Folks who’ve seen it, help me out here, what other very “explicit” scenes were there?:
The bottle smashing.
The view of the mangled hand of the rebel - though we didn’t really see what they did to get it that way.
The Captain stitching his slashed cheek.
Oh, and a borderline one within the fantasy world:
The fairy getting chomped.
The film takes place in 1944 or 1945, after the Spanish Civil War was ostensibly over, although insurgency and fighting continued into the late '40s (and in the Basque regions, throughout Franco’s reign).
Stranger