Monday, March 5, 2007

Pan's Labyrinth

by Guillermo del Toro, with Ivana Baquero, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdù, Ariadna Gil, Mexico/ Spain/USA 2006, 119'. The Labyrinth of the Faun (International: English title), El laberinto del fauno (Spanish), Il labirinto del fauno (Italian). --

Ofelia is a little girl who lives two parallel lives. A real one, in the young and cruel Spanish dictatorship (but could be any other similar place), where the challenge is defending her mother and herself from her primitive and machist stepfather (an unrecognizable Sergi Lopez). And a fantastic one, in her imagined fairy tales, where once she was a princess then become a human to experience the World, and now she has to succeed in different challenges to get back to her kingdom. The two parallel words overlap continuously in Ofelia’s existence, and will end up to become as one. Will Ofelia turn into a princess again? Yes, she will, but in the real Wold, reaffirming life over everything else. --

Poche altre parole, per un bel film molto centrato (forse anche troppo perfetto), pieno di vita vera, in cui la fantasia è una riuscita estensione della realtà. Riferimenti mitologici (il labirinto di Creta) a parte.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved that movie. Not only because it was very well directed and performed but beacuse it touches a samll bit of our recent history: the attempt made by some communist forces to draw back Spain to a democracy, at the end of IIWW.

You can find my comment on the movie here:

http://desdesants.bloc.cat/category/3787/9077

Marco Inzitari said...

Gracies Dav,

a very good review, as usual. I mostly liked your comment "un final tan trist com brillant i optimista..." ("an end which is so sad as it's keen and optimistic...").

It's good that Del Toro decided to refer to the historical period just after the end of spanish civil war, which is really poor internationally known. Though I think that the link with that particular moment in time is not very important for the movie, and that the movie could have been set in every other similar historical situation.

Hope to see you soon on "this screen" again, maybe with some other review from your blog!