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.
no subject
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.