Didn’t want to reopen the old thread but I just rented this movie and wanted to compliment all the savvy Dopers who noticed stuff that I didn’t notice until I listened to del Toro’s commentary.
The disk Netflix sent included the commentary and sneak previews, but nothing about “the making of”, etc., so I’m buying the 2-disk edition.
The commentary was excellent. del Toro must have carefully mapped it out ahead of time. There was no skipping around or long periods of silence. He was very generous, none of the oblique crap that some directors do in commentaries. He’s very matter of fact about the mechanics of the scenes.
I think he answered almost all the questions from the thread, except for the one about Ofelia and the hourglass. But most importantly, he answers the question about whether the fantasy elements were “real” or a figment of Ofelia’s imagination.
But I still don’t understand how they managed all the rain. He says the location was in the midst of a 30-year drought. They weren’t allowed to use real fire or even shoot blanks because of the fire danger. So how do they do the rain?
I liked how the fantastical scenes were balanced. None of this “I paid a gazillion dollars to design this Faun and by god I’m getting my money’s worth!” The critters were on screen long enough for their part of the scene and that’s it. How refreshing!
I loaned the DVD to my daughter for the weekend, or I’d be watching it again right now. What a wonderful movie.
Thanks for the reminder-- I need to get the DVD. I liked this movie a lot, and definitely want to see it again. But I think I’ll opt for the one with El Fauno in it, not Pam.
:smack: I’ve asked a mod to fix the title. Fixing it will ruin the jokes, but I don’t think I can handle the embarrassment.
I almost had to close my eyes whenever Vidal was on the screen. But the violence became less graphic, even though the incidents of violence increased. That helped me deal with it. I don’t like explicit violence either, and I was grateful when del Toro cut away from it.
Well, some folks have said they think the fantastical stuff was Ofelia’s imagination.
del Toro says no – fantasy moved into the real world. The reason Captain Vidal didn’t see the Faun was because he couldn’t, he was too self-absorbed and evil – not because the Faun didn’t exist. He said the scene where Vidal picked up Ofelia’s magical chalk (and some later scenes) was intended to make this clear.
A minor question from the old thread about Ofelia and the grapes. Ofelia ate the forbidden grapes because she was hungry. She’d been sent to bed without supper the night before, and we didn’t see her eat all the next day. But she also ate the grapes to show that she could think for herself, she wasn’t going to blindly follow orders like Vidal and his soldiers.
Thank you for sharing this. I did not want to believe that it was all imagination.
I probably just need to buy the DVD myself.
BTW
I consider myself fairly tough with graphic scenes, but I did have to look away occasionally.
This makes me like the movie more, I saw it on a huge IMAX-esque screen in a nearly deserted theatre, but I came away with the opposite impression. I thought we were supposed to feel the fantasy was in her mind. Hearing del Toro say we weren’t supposed to feel that way makes me like the movie more but frown because at least for me he failed to convey the fact.
I never thought the fantasy was all in her mind. I thought it was ambiguous. Actually I don’t want Del Toro to tell me if it was real or not.
My favorite Del Toro line was in the intro to the deleted scenes for Blade II. “We took these scenes out because they sucked. But they say we have to put them in the DVD. So here they are.” (paraphrased from memory.)
He said something similar in this commentary, but I don’t remember exactly what it was about – but he had no problem admitting when something didn’t work as planned.
I didn’t believe it was real either. I thought that at the end, Ofelia was hallucinating – sort of a near-death experience – as a way for her mind to make sense (as she could understand it) of all that had happened to her and her mother.
Also raised in the old thread, the dinner table conversation about Carmen’s late husband – del Toro says he intended for us to question whether Captain Vidal murdered him.
Also, count me as another who suspected that we were supposed to walk away thinking it was in her imagination. The only thing I couldn’t account for (that I recall now) was her disappearance from the room when the door was shut and locked; at that point it was either believe in the magic chalk or work with the assumption that she had, somehow, escaped another way.
Brings a whole new perspective to the movie knowing that it wasn’t her imagination.
Not for me. Not at all. You’re assuming that he’s telling the truth.
I give a director (or any creator) my full attention when they’re talking about their stuff, but that doesn’t mean they’re trustworthy. I remember some of the writers on these very boards saying that the creator is the least qualified person to judge their own stuff. Though I wouldn’t go that far (the creator, after all, has a unique perspective shared by no one else), I also wouldn’t go in the opposite direction and give them carte blanche to tell me what their work means.
The movie works so amazingly well because of the ambiguity. If he had wanted to make it clearer, he could’ve done so by more explicitly demonstrating her powers instead of leaving just the puzzle of the chalk and the locked room. And the shot of the girl bleeding to death from the gunshot wound, her blood soaking into the ground after her supposed salvation is too heart-wrenching for me to deny its truth.
I’m not saying I’m right about this. I’m just saying that I personally can’t believe him, not this time.
Did the commentary say anything about what became of the baby and the Commie good guys? (My favorite line of the film and one of my favorite F.U.s in all of filmdom: “No. He will never even know your name.”)
The faun said that the blood of an innocent was the last thing needed. I thought that the way they showed her blood spilling into the ground showed that that had been fulfilled.
I always thought we were supposed to believe the fantasy was real because of the opening scenes telling us the story of the Princess who went to the surface world, but I also liked how it was a little ambiguous, too. Maybe those of you her thought it was all in her imagination would not have seen the faun either?
I also suspected since it was the Princess’s soul that was trapped, the only way she would be able to return was if her soul was released. So it is sad that she dies in the end but I think we are supposed to believe that her soul returns to her realm and that wasn’t just a dying hallucination.
The violence was pretty graphic and if that had been all there was to the movie, I would have hated it. I might watch it again but I think I’d definitely fast forward through those scenes. I am curious how they did some of them though. When he beat the peasant with the flashlight you could see his face collapsing, when Vidal is shot, his eye on that side appears to sink in. shudder Okay, I’m not really that curious about how they did those scenes.
You noticed that? I didn’t, but del Toro talked about it in the commentary. I also didn’t notice the changes in the Faun, that he became younger and fresher.
Someone commented in the old thread about the possible sexual nature of Ofelia’s encounter with the Toad – the toad’s tongue flicking out and splashing her with Toad juice. del Toro said the opening at the base of the tree was metaphorical, but he said nothing about the Toad being sexual. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t though – maybe he was just running out of time to explain those scenes.
Oh, and he said Vidal stitching his cheek was CGI. Of course it was, but I had no idea that CGI could be used like that, so that we see the actor’s face and just a little bit of CGI, and it blends so perfectly.
