Three notes on structure and influence in Pan's Labyrinth

[lolaraincoat]

First note: Pan's Labyrinth upends every other story of the Spanish Civil War I've ever seen/heard/read by beginning after the war is over, and yet being a war story, and a war story in which the good guys win. It might be that the only way to make a hopeful story about the Spanish War is to start after Franco's victory -- after all, it was all downhill for him from there, right? A very, very slow downhill, but still.

Second note: Pan's Labyrinth upends every Disney fairytale movie by having a dead father be the condition from which the story flows, rather than the dead mother. Furthermore it puts the death of the mother at the end rather than the beginning of the story. So, like My Neighbor Totoro (which in some senses it mirrors, darkly) it turns the classic Disney narrative inside-out -- though to much different effect.

Third note: There's not much Mexican commentary on Spain that I can think of, in film or elsewhere, but of course there's tons of Spanish film and other art about Mexico. It might be worth watching it again just to see how it's related to Luis Buñuel's Mexican films ... hey, I wonder if the amputated leg and the icky eyeball monster are conscious homages to Buñuel? Is the milk in this movie connected to the milk in Los Olvidados?

So to sum up: you have to see it, it's just as good as everyone said it is, but wow, painful, ouchy, wow wow wow.

Comments

[stillwell.livejournal.com]

I loved it, too.

I don't know if you saw my post a couple of weeks back, but I was pleased to note that this film gave Lissette a fabulous excuse to use the word "hubris."

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

No! I missed it! But now I've gone and looked at it. So which situation/character gave her the excuse for "hubris"? Was it the scene with Mercedes and the Captain and the knife?

Which, by the way, was a great self-defense scene and a weirdly realistic self-defense situation (predatory employer with all the social power) in the context. I was sorry to see that she didn't kill him right then, but then that's her name, right?

[stillwell.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was that scene. Wow, what a scene! I think I had my hands in the air through most of it.

Yes, such a great SD scene! And when she and the others did kill him it was pretty amazing, too. The dialog is already in my family's lexicon. A couple of weekends ago my brother-in-law said to me, "He won't even know your name." while pointing a cake mixer at me ;)

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

The eyeball monster did seem to me to make some kind of reference to Chien Andalou, where there is a violent eyeball and there is a hand whose palm formiculates. But also there are lots of images of gods and monsters with eyes in their hands--eg in Hindu art and some of the weirder Catholic images of the stigmata and so on. Nothing weirder than Spanish Catholicism except maybe Mexican Catholicism.

Not suuuuure I can comfortably view the years 1939-1975 as Franco's slow downhill slide into, uh, complete absolutist rule, but full marks for trying. ;-)

I didn't think so much about Disney patterns of absent mother and mothering father in this movie. It seemed to draw on fairytales where a weak or opportunistic parent (father or mother) marries for financial security, but marries an ogre by mistake. There are many such (Toads and Diamonds, Cinderella, etc.) I thought both parents were effectively absent in Pan's Labyrinth--the father dead, the mother ill (dying) and bedridden.

One thing irritated me greatly in all the reviews: to a man the reviewers described the magical parts of the story as a fantasy invented by the girl. But absolutely nothing in the movie indicates that the magical events are unreal, or merely her pov. Not even the ending confirms that one world is real and the other imagined. I think this is important to the story, so the tone-deafness of the reviewers concerning how magical realism works (and the assumption that because a child is the protagonist, the magical stuff is a fantasy, a fairy tale) is pretty shocking. One comparison might be to the Taviani brothers' "Night of Shooting Stars," a less successful movie (horribly sentimental), but one in which the reality or fairytale status of the core story is left open by the structure of the movie and the style of its narration.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hey, good to see you around these parts again!
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Well, yeah, but the movie isn't set in 1939 -- it's set in 1944. We're seeing the post-war mopping-up, and it ends in a victory (however partial and temporary) for the forces of good. So in that sense, it's Hemingway played backwards.

And that's right, eyeball monster is Un Chien Andalou. But I never see scenes of milking cows and then drinking fresh milk without thinking of Los Olvidados, too. That's probably just me, though.

I went and looked up some of the reviews just now, and you're right -- something about the movie inspired unusual stupidity in reviewers who are not generally so dopey. Huh.