anime
02-18-2007, 10:36 PM
Pan's Labyrinth is rich and intense (often violent), a weaving of two tales within one dark setting in 1944 after the Spanish Civil War, just as Franco begins his terrible domination: 1 - A young girl, Ofelia, learns she is princess of an underground netherworld, and 2 - Her mother, Carmen, has married a sadistic and officious fascist, Captain Vidal, and is pregnant with his child. Mother and daughter have moved to the captain's military outpost, an old mill, whose wooded outskirts crawl with rebel guerrillas and within which is hidden the ruins of an ancient labyrinth.
The film is getting rave reviews from critics, and deservedly so. I saw it last night and will see it again soon. Really, as Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe put it, "...a transcendent work of art. Del Toro's gratifying surreal and fantastical instincts now have an unstinting moral eye on the world. Saying a filmmaker has matured suggests that he's forgone what made him so entertaining in the first place. But in evolving with this voluptuously realized film, with its omnipresent dangers, Del Toro has simply refined the deftness of his storytelling. A beautiful film about ugliness."
Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun Times: "...Ofelia's challenges do not arise like arbitrary plot obstacles; they are organic to her (and the movie's) development. The girl learns to trust her own instincts about right and wrong. In order to find her true self, she must also find the strength to break the rules imposed by authority. An individual conscience: What could be a more powerful anti-fascist weapon than that?"
The film is getting rave reviews from critics, and deservedly so. I saw it last night and will see it again soon. Really, as Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe put it, "...a transcendent work of art. Del Toro's gratifying surreal and fantastical instincts now have an unstinting moral eye on the world. Saying a filmmaker has matured suggests that he's forgone what made him so entertaining in the first place. But in evolving with this voluptuously realized film, with its omnipresent dangers, Del Toro has simply refined the deftness of his storytelling. A beautiful film about ugliness."
Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun Times: "...Ofelia's challenges do not arise like arbitrary plot obstacles; they are organic to her (and the movie's) development. The girl learns to trust her own instincts about right and wrong. In order to find her true self, she must also find the strength to break the rules imposed by authority. An individual conscience: What could be a more powerful anti-fascist weapon than that?"