Pan’s Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth
Last week I got my usual Kinokuniya monthly newsletter and noticed that they were having a contest to win free movie tickets. I wrote back immediately but didn’t get a reply, so I figured I wasn’t quick enough. Lo and behold, two days later they arrived in the mail! I won two free tickets to see a sneak preview of Pan’s Labyrinth. Other than Kevin’s review, I really didn’t know much about it other than it was some sort of fantasy. I was expecting sort of a dark, “Alice in Wonderland” type adventure. Yowza. Instead it’s more like 2/3 war story, 1/3 fantasy. And the war bits are really, really gruesome. I found myself hiding behind my hands more than once, and the “lip stitching” part had the whole audience audibly wincing. That said, both parts of the story were compelling and I wasn’t bored at all. The actors are all fantastic, and the effects are convincingly creepy. I did find the ending a little depressing though… (Spoilers after the jump.)So she friggin’ DIED? Does that mean that the underworld is real, or was it just all in her head? I figure it had to have been real, because she obviously got out of her locked room somehow. But I really hate stories where the characters have really crappy lives and then die, and we’re supposed to somehow think it’s a happy ending. (See: CS Lewis’s “The Last Battle”; that “Sliding Doors” movie with Gwyneth Paltrow.) Snookums thinks I’m too much of an atheist to like these stories. I guess I must be. I just find them really depressing.

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  1. I just saw it yesterday. I read an interview with the director whose view on the ending was that the fantasy was shown to be true by the bloom on the fig tree. It’s one of those sad endings that you have keep reminding yourself is actually meant to be happy. She finally escaped.

  2. Escaped by DYING? That sucks! I just find kind of Puritan, this idea that we should all suffer through crap because there’ll be reward afterwards.

  3. Dude, next time you post spoilers, please don’t type them in capital letters so it’ll be guaranteed I’ll see them as I rush to close the tab!

  4. Eh, I debated on that one. But it’s not really a spoiler, because it’s the first shot you see in the movie. I’m sorry though!

  5. One of the best movies ever. Fact.

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