The Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade 2 which I had watched earlier was just another vampire action movie, the sequel of Blade: narrated in a usual way . So I didn’t have much expectations when I got a DVD of his Spanish movie “EL Laberinto del fauno” aka “ Pan’s Labyrinth”.
But I was wrong. This Oscar winning movie was not at all comparable to his hollywood ventures in quality .
It may be the first time that the major technical awards like cinematography and art direction goes to a foreign language film.
Children are fond of fairy tales and some of them, sometimes, will be too much obsessed with such things and it’s not uncommon. In this movie, Guillermo Del Toro narrates how a little girl survives her disturbing surroundings with her self created imaginary world. But the movie is not a children’s’ film. The lead role in the movie is “Ofelia" a 12 yrs old girl, enacted by Spanish actress Ivana Baquero .
By and large,I would say, the movie has two separate viewing dimensions. A spectator can choose his own. Anyways the director uses the viewpoint of the leading protagonist ,”Ofelia” usually at a first time watch, we will also be in the same dimension and as a result , we will also be immersed with the fantasy world along with Ofelia. We can watch the movie as a third person, then it would be easy to make out the reality. Guellirmo del Toro's treatment in this film is like "magical realism" similar to Francis Copola's "Aocalypse Now" , Adoor's 'Anantharam' etc..
But I was wrong. This Oscar winning movie was not at all comparable to his hollywood ventures in quality .
It may be the first time that the major technical awards like cinematography and art direction goes to a foreign language film.
Children are fond of fairy tales and some of them, sometimes, will be too much obsessed with such things and it’s not uncommon. In this movie, Guillermo Del Toro narrates how a little girl survives her disturbing surroundings with her self created imaginary world. But the movie is not a children’s’ film. The lead role in the movie is “Ofelia" a 12 yrs old girl, enacted by Spanish actress Ivana Baquero .
By and large,I would say, the movie has two separate viewing dimensions. A spectator can choose his own. Anyways the director uses the viewpoint of the leading protagonist ,”Ofelia” usually at a first time watch, we will also be in the same dimension and as a result , we will also be immersed with the fantasy world along with Ofelia. We can watch the movie as a third person, then it would be easy to make out the reality. Guellirmo del Toro's treatment in this film is like "magical realism" similar to Francis Copola's "Aocalypse Now" , Adoor's 'Anantharam' etc..
The opening scene of the movie itself is brilliant. When title begins, we can hear a lady humming a lullaby, along with that we can also hear heavy breathing of a girl, then the first visual comes. Camera slowly pan to left of the frame and shows a close head shot of a little girl ,lying, and her nose is bleeding . Then camera zoom into her eyes (just like rewinding the shot as we can see the bleeding from her nose is disappearing ),and suddenly the scene dissolves into a wide shot of a ruined city along with that a narration starts in voice over,: “A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. “ Along with the narration, the visuals shown vaguely …before completing these lines of narration, again a fast cut to next shot ;2-3 vehicles traveling through woods and then cut to interior, of one of the vehicle, extreme close shot of a hand pointing to the lines in a page of a story book, and it is the same girl we saw at the opening scene. Obviously the lines she is reading is the narration we have been hearing, about the princess. So now that we got that the ongoing scenes are flashback and possibly by the little girl and we can assume the story will be coming back to the point where we started, as we are still unaware of what happened to the little girl.
Now we can see, she is not alone in the cab, she is with her mother who is pregnant and sick, and her mother affectionately scolds her for always being immersed in fairy tales books. So it is revealed here that Ofelia is a bookworm girl and it is her nature that always too much into such kind of stories and stuffs. Another incident happens at this moment. The cab is stopped somewhere between the woods as Ofelia’s mother suddenly feels uncomfortable and tends to vomit. Ofelia also gets outside of the cab and walks around there, she suddenly watch an idol like sculpture there and she finds a big ,cricket like insect with a pair of wings coming outside of that sculpture ,when she put a separated part back to it. As per her knowledge from the story books, it may be a fairy . She asks to the insect “are you a fairy “ ?
When they start the journey again, we can see the insect also following the cabs. But the scene cut there itself. Later they reach the destination, to the mill of Ofelia’s step father, a fascist army captain, who is a sadist and cruel man, captain Vidal . There, Ofelia finds a similar insect again. ,following the insect she reaches a nearby Labyrinth (a maze with complicated passage ways built with rock ) . From this point onwards, Ofelia’s disturbed mind could have started working in unusaual way. She began to believe that it is a fairy . She even asks to it “have you followed me “? In fact, the insect could have reached along with the vehicle, or it might be a different one as we already saw that the place is surrounded by dark woods and such insects may be common there. The new surroundings were unbearable to little Ofelia and her only relief was her story books. The backdrop of the story is set, in the Northern Spain, while the civilian war is going on, in 1944, a group of rebels are carrying on a guerilla war against the fascist troop. The movie deals with this story also in which the lead character is Mercedes, the captain's maid , but really the sister of Pedro, leader of the guerilla troop. Director carefully handled this such as Ofelia’s fantasy story never mixed with the real story. At that night, Ofelia meets the insect again, this time her mind is completely set up to believe that the insect is a real fairy which she is reading in stories. She takes her story book and shows the insect, a picture of a fairy (a tiny human like structure with a pair of wings) and says, the fairy looks like this. . Suddenly, Ofelia sees that the insect itself reforms into the exact shape of fairy which is in her book. From here onwards, Ofelia’s subconscious mind completely takes over her conscious mind and begins to create a complete magical world where she would be the princess. The director narrates the parallel story along with Ofelia’s fantasy world brilliantly .Some points which we may feel complicated , while connecting these stories , should be resolved by the spectator himself. For eg:, Ofelia gets some stuffs, a book , a piece of chalk , a key, a mandrake root, from the fantasy world, given by a faun ,all stuffs are real, which she might posses already or she gets from somewhere else .
I can’t go forward with rest of the incidents as it will be too long, and every scene, there is some thing to analyze or narrate. Still there are some scenes which are extreme violent or graphically vulgar.
The scene which portrays the sadism of Captain Vidal first time,
Now we can see, she is not alone in the cab, she is with her mother who is pregnant and sick, and her mother affectionately scolds her for always being immersed in fairy tales books. So it is revealed here that Ofelia is a bookworm girl and it is her nature that always too much into such kind of stories and stuffs. Another incident happens at this moment. The cab is stopped somewhere between the woods as Ofelia’s mother suddenly feels uncomfortable and tends to vomit. Ofelia also gets outside of the cab and walks around there, she suddenly watch an idol like sculpture there and she finds a big ,cricket like insect with a pair of wings coming outside of that sculpture ,when she put a separated part back to it. As per her knowledge from the story books, it may be a fairy . She asks to the insect “are you a fairy “ ?
When they start the journey again, we can see the insect also following the cabs. But the scene cut there itself. Later they reach the destination, to the mill of Ofelia’s step father, a fascist army captain, who is a sadist and cruel man, captain Vidal . There, Ofelia finds a similar insect again. ,following the insect she reaches a nearby Labyrinth (a maze with complicated passage ways built with rock ) . From this point onwards, Ofelia’s disturbed mind could have started working in unusaual way. She began to believe that it is a fairy . She even asks to it “have you followed me “? In fact, the insect could have reached along with the vehicle, or it might be a different one as we already saw that the place is surrounded by dark woods and such insects may be common there. The new surroundings were unbearable to little Ofelia and her only relief was her story books. The backdrop of the story is set, in the Northern Spain, while the civilian war is going on, in 1944, a group of rebels are carrying on a guerilla war against the fascist troop. The movie deals with this story also in which the lead character is Mercedes, the captain's maid , but really the sister of Pedro, leader of the guerilla troop. Director carefully handled this such as Ofelia’s fantasy story never mixed with the real story. At that night, Ofelia meets the insect again, this time her mind is completely set up to believe that the insect is a real fairy which she is reading in stories. She takes her story book and shows the insect, a picture of a fairy (a tiny human like structure with a pair of wings) and says, the fairy looks like this. . Suddenly, Ofelia sees that the insect itself reforms into the exact shape of fairy which is in her book. From here onwards, Ofelia’s subconscious mind completely takes over her conscious mind and begins to create a complete magical world where she would be the princess. The director narrates the parallel story along with Ofelia’s fantasy world brilliantly .Some points which we may feel complicated , while connecting these stories , should be resolved by the spectator himself. For eg:, Ofelia gets some stuffs, a book , a piece of chalk , a key, a mandrake root, from the fantasy world, given by a faun ,all stuffs are real, which she might posses already or she gets from somewhere else .
I can’t go forward with rest of the incidents as it will be too long, and every scene, there is some thing to analyze or narrate. Still there are some scenes which are extreme violent or graphically vulgar.
The scene which portrays the sadism of Captain Vidal first time,
1. He beat young man to death and also shoot his father suspecting that they are rebels.
2.The scene in which he stitches his wound on his cheek after getting stabbed by Mercedes.
3.The last scene in which he is shot by Pedro, the bullets penetrates his face, just below his right eye, and the eye ball of his right eye going upwards ,before he fell down and dies.
4.I didn’t like the scene in which, Ofelia gets the key from the giant toad as it seemed most vulgar scene.
The director gives us only a single scene in which we can distinguish between Ofelia’s fantasies with real world. The climax scene, she is speaking with Pan, and Vidal who was chasing her, comes to the scene to find that she is speaking alone. This scene ,director has presented with the viewpoint of Vidal or a third person, only to help the spectator to make out the reality .Here the movie comes back to the original sequence after flash back.
The movie got 3 Oscars, for Cinematography, make-Up, and art direction. But I wonder then why it lost the award for Editing? Editing of the movie done by Bernat Vilaplana is outstanding. There are so many scenes which are remarkable with excellent editing, most of them, we can not even recognize the cutting point. Eg:, the scene ,in which Captain Vidal preparing for his shaving in front of a mirror. Also another scene ,the army men going to woods with their horses and the camera panning to right then ,without any distraction, next frame smoothly comes which shows Ofelia , walking around woods ,in a different but similar location. Aboslutely brilliant editing.
The director gives us only a single scene in which we can distinguish between Ofelia’s fantasies with real world. The climax scene, she is speaking with Pan, and Vidal who was chasing her, comes to the scene to find that she is speaking alone. This scene ,director has presented with the viewpoint of Vidal or a third person, only to help the spectator to make out the reality .Here the movie comes back to the original sequence after flash back.
The movie got 3 Oscars, for Cinematography, make-Up, and art direction. But I wonder then why it lost the award for Editing? Editing of the movie done by Bernat Vilaplana is outstanding. There are so many scenes which are remarkable with excellent editing, most of them, we can not even recognize the cutting point. Eg:, the scene ,in which Captain Vidal preparing for his shaving in front of a mirror. Also another scene ,the army men going to woods with their horses and the camera panning to right then ,without any distraction, next frame smoothly comes which shows Ofelia , walking around woods ,in a different but similar location. Aboslutely brilliant editing.
No words to say about cinematography , it speaks for itself and justifies its reward. Especially the lightning given was outstanding. Most of the frames had to be shown in dark atmosphere , where light should come from any single source .Also there were almost no scenes in which camera is still, the picture was shot just like the camera follows the characters ,so frames always seem dynamic . Guillermo Navarro is the cinematographer.
Apart from Ofelia and captain Vidal, Mercedes is a strong character and the performance by the actress Maribel Verdú is mind blowing. Script is so amazing that each and every characters are narrated well. Captain Vidal's mannerisms are brilliantly portrayed. The writer portrays him as sadistic and crule as well as brilliant and disciplined. He always carry a watch in order to keep himself punctual. His character itself is introduced with a close up shot of this watch in his hand . Even though it is not mentioned , the reason for Ofelia’s hallucinations may be because her subconscious mind automatically finds a way to release the pressure inside her creating a fantasy world she always dreaming of and put herself into it ,or it may be a state of schizophrenia.
Apart from Ofelia and captain Vidal, Mercedes is a strong character and the performance by the actress Maribel Verdú is mind blowing. Script is so amazing that each and every characters are narrated well. Captain Vidal's mannerisms are brilliantly portrayed. The writer portrays him as sadistic and crule as well as brilliant and disciplined. He always carry a watch in order to keep himself punctual. His character itself is introduced with a close up shot of this watch in his hand . Even though it is not mentioned , the reason for Ofelia’s hallucinations may be because her subconscious mind automatically finds a way to release the pressure inside her creating a fantasy world she always dreaming of and put herself into it ,or it may be a state of schizophrenia.
The music composed by Javier Navarrete is touching. In the last scene ,we will make out that the lulaby heard at the beginning of the movie is sung by Mercides.
Overall an amazing movie experience. visit http://www.panslabyrinth.com/.
My rating for this movie is 8.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment