Topic: Pan's Labyrinth

[MysterD]

I cried like a baby.

Que cried?!?!?!?!?

I'm....shocked....

[Quemaqua]

I cry at movies all the time.  Nearly every time I listen to certain music, too.  Just because I'm a homicidal maniac doesn't mean I don't have emotions.

[MysterD]

I cry at movies all the time.  Nearly every time I listen to certain music, too.

Wow, I'm actually...shocked....

Just because I'm a homicidal maniac doesn't mean I don't have emotions.

You're so.....complicated.

So, in games like Painkiller, do you cry for every pixel you slaughter???
'Cause that'd be a hell of a lot of crying, y'know....

[Quemaqua]

Why would you be shocked that a poet and musician gets emotionally engaged with fiction and drama?

[PyroMenace]

You do realize who your asking this to right?

[nickclone]

I didn't know you were a poet and a musician, I can feel sorry for other people, but I don't get emotional anymore.

[iPPi]

Wow, that was a great movie. I'm all sad and happy at the same time.

Hahaha yea.  The way the movie ended made me feel that way too.  It was sad, yet it is kind of happy as well.

I loved this movie. 

[Pugnate]

I've been putting off watching this basically because of this thread. I don't want to feel emotionally drained for now.

[iPPi]

I've been putting off watching this basically because of this thread. I don't want to feel emotionally drained for now.

Hehe, it's a very emotionally draining movie.  You feel exhausted after watching it.

[Pugnate]

I will find a day when I am not so fucking stressed to watch it. It is in the theaters here.

[Ghandi]

I just got done seeing this. It was amazing. By far my favorite movie of the year.

[Cobra951]

I'm not used to seeing such excellence in production values and special effects in Spanish films.  It felt incongruous to hear and understand the dialog in something other than English.  The film is too depressing for me, though.  I don't think I'll be watching it again.

The name of the film is El laberinto del fauno, which translates to The Faun's Labyrinth.  I wonder whose idea it was to bring up Pan, who does not appear in this film, faun though he may be.

Edit:  Changed "fawn" to "faun".  Not sure if it was wrong, but avoids confusion with deer.

[Quemaqua]

Even after watching to the end?

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It's definitely got sad tones, but I found the ending beautiful and uplifting.  I suppose you can interpret it multiple ways if you so desire, and I don't think it's meant to be literal, but I still feel it heavily purports that doing right will equal reward no matter the hardship.  I think that's a beautiful statement.

EDIT - I wondered about the title thing too.  He sort of briefly touched on it somewhere on the DVD interviews and such, but I can't recall what he said.  Whatever it was, it was just in passing and didn't say much of substance.  Something akin to "focus groups were too stupid to figure out the title" or something like that.

[Cobra951]

Yes, I saw the whole ending.

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It's like Alice waking up after being through the looking glass, I thought.  Except that Alice maybe had a dream, maybe had a wonderful adventure.  In the movie, the down-to-Earth alternative is that the girl was murdered by her own fascist father (or was it stepfather?), and had something akin to a near-death experience that fits in with her fantasy world.  Then she was dead.  Isn't the whole point of the movie that there is no magic in this ugly world, that only children can escape it with their naive beliefs until they grow up into the calamity that surrounds them?

[Quemaqua]

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Well, that's one interpretation.  It may even be the intended one.  But personally, that isn't what I take from it.  There are elements of that, yes, but to me fiction is a from of truth, a thing of creation that allows us to internalize our own feelings and make them manifest in a way that is understandable.  I view the movie as a statement that work equals reward, that struggling through the difficult times in life under your own power will always bring you what you need to carry on and do better, that there are right moral choices to make and that making them is not only the best thing for yourself, but the best thing for other people and the world.  That even if your only consolation in the end is telling yourself that you did the best you could and you acted well, that is reward enough.  So I guess what I'm saying is that even if Guillermo del Toro doesn't believe that this is true, I believe that this is what the movie has helped me realize... that yes, that's reward enough.