Pan's Labyrinth

[MacGuffin]

Trailer

[Ghostboy]

Man, that trailer gives away everything!

I think I agree with Modage 100% on this one. I loved it. It's not a genre-defying masterpiece, but it's really, really good - great, even. It also has one of the most terrifying scenes I've seen in ages -  I don't know if it'll get everyone, but the imagery combined with the staging of the scene just really freaked me out.

And Modage isn't lying about the violence. Del Toro's usual surgical glee shines through in fully glory, and it also appears he studied Irreversible quite closely before writing this. It'll make you squeam.

[Alexandro]

I expected a little more from this than what i actually got. It's quite a ride, and I would say is Del Toro's greatest visual achievment yet. Some of the scenes are truly scary and the overall atmosphere permeates every frame.

But I had my problems with, I guess, the screenplay. By that I mean the schematic way of presenting the characters and dealing with them. The villain is so bad, so so so bad, Sergi Lopez can't save him from becoming boring. There's no real tension between him and the rest cause you expect what you get from him. Too two-dimensional. The same could be said about the mother and Maribel Verdu's character. You could argue that this black and white view on things is inherent to fairy tales, but I just don't think it helps the movie to be more entertaining or surprising.

Besides that, pretty much everything else is fantastic.

[MacGuffin]

Scariest Film Of The Year? 'Pan's Labyrinth' Director Spills His Guts
Source: MTV

Imagine a movie so terrifying, so graphic and gory, that you spend half its running time peeking between your fingers.

Now, imagine a flick brimming with such powerful images of fantasy that it makes "Harry Potter" or "The Chronicles of Narnia" look like "Alf" reruns. Combine the two, and you have a peek into the imaginative world of "Pan's Labyrinth."

Larger-than-life Mexican director Guillermo del Toro has spent the better part of the last decade establishing himself in America with a mix of studio work ("Hellboy," "Blade II") and critically acclaimed foreign films ("Cronos," "The Devil's Backbone"), each branded with a signature mastery of darkness and dreamscapes. Now, months before his horrifically fantastical "Labyrinth" opens, sneak previews already have Hollywood insiders affixing the words "Best Picture contender" in front of it.

With nine weeks to go, the friendliest, most terrifying director in Hollywood broke down a key "Labyrinth" scene, gave us a peek at his oversized trick-or-treat costume and revealed that this Halloween has brought with it a particularly terrifying prospect: The purchase of his first tuxedo.

MTV: "Pan's Labyrinth" tells the story of a young girl escaping the horrors of war with frequent trips to a magical underground world. The above-the-ground scenes are as brutal as anything in "Hostel," and the magic stuff is like "Harry Potter" — why don't more movies try to combine the two?

Guillermo del Toro: Well, I think that the entire literary genre of fairy tales is very much tapped into fear and terrible happenings. When you read the Brothers Grimm tales, you realize they are taking place in a time of famine and pestilence, and they deal with cannibalism, incest — all sorts of nice stuff! It's funny that we've grown afraid of bringing that darkness into the magical elements when we address fairy tales.

MTV: The "Harry Potter" movies will tease audiences with potential threats, but Harry and his friends usually seem to be facing adventure, rather than real danger.

Del Toro: I remember reading the "Harry Potter" books before they made the movies, and I remember admiring the books very much, because I felt they were darker and far more heart-wrenching. The kid is an orphan, and there's almost a Dickensian thing there. All that got lost in the first two films; the darkness and emotion came back much stronger in Alfonso [Cuarón's] third film.

MTV: Will we ever see a trend of fantasy movies that aren't afraid to kill off people and show some real-life horror?

Del Toro: Yeah, I think there are shades of darkness in "Monster House" that are interesting and hopeful for me, because fantasy cannot be monochrome; fantasy cannot be all white. We're living in a time that is so hypocritical, that things [like "Monster House"] look daring. The classic Disney films look daring now! I don't think that today's studios would have the balls to kill Bambi's mother — they would test it and f--- it up. And they wouldn't have the drunken nightmare in "Dumbo," or the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in "Fantasia" or so many other things. It's very scary when Disney starts becoming daring in this kind of perspective.

MTV: There's some stuff in "Pan's Labyrinth" that will haunt your nightmares for weeks. Do you consider it to be a horror film?

Del Toro: I consider it to be a fantasy film, but I have had the great honor to sit next to Stephen King during the Pale Man sequence and to see him squirm like crazy. That sequence is pretty close to horror, but the rest of the film is dark fantasy.

MTV: The Pale Man is the name you gave to the tall, creepy guy who the young girl finds sitting at the end of a table, with his eyeballs lying on a plate in front of him. When he realizes she's robbing him, he places the eyeballs in his hands and starts chasing her down. So, what screwed-up part of your mind comes up with stuff like that?

Del Toro: [He laughs.] I wanted a monster that could come out of a child's imagination. Something that was simple in terms of the silhouette of it, but that was also scary as f---. Originally, I had thought of making him just an old guy, like a blind old guy, and somebody sculpted the face with a lot of detail then I doodled a new face on top of it without any features. I remembered how disturbing it was for me when I was a kid to see the "faces" on the bottom of manta rays, so I thought, "Well, that kind of neutrality, and that little mouth and those two little nostrils/eyes."

MTV: Viewers might identify with the little girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), when she's trying to pull herself away from the Pale Man's grasp.

Del Toro: Well, empathy is a big deal in horror. When violence and horror are done without the empathy of the audience, it becomes almost like porn. Empathy is what makes it human and emotional.

MTV: So, what's the secret to scaring people?

Del Toro: Horror comes out of very simple devices, but you can sum them up in simple terms: Things that are there should not be there and could not be there, and yet they are. That's how you summarize it. It's what could not happen, what should not happen, but nevertheless happens. That's the world of horror.

MTV: Give us your five favorite scary movies, to help get us in the mood for Halloween.

Del Toro: First, I'd say "Eyes Without a Face" [1960] because it's poetic and haunting and strangely moving. Then "The 7th Victim" [1943], because it's moody, subtle and creepy. Next, I'd say "The Shining" [1980], because it's totally a milestone in horror filmmaking and remains one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen. Number four would be "Don't Look Now" [1973], which contains some of the creepiest, but most strangely moving sequences in the history of film. And finally, I'd say "Black Sunday" [1977], because of how mysterious and rich and eerie it is.

MTV: Your studio has taken the unusual step of screening "Pan's Labyrinth" for critics months before its release date. Is it basically an attempt to get the word out?

Del Toro: We've been traveling with the movie festivals, and the reaction has been absolutely astounding all the way through. It all started out at the Cannes Festival, with a 22-minute standing ovation, which was life-changing. We've been showing it to very emotional, and very warm responses at the Toronto and New York film festivals, and it's my hope that the movie continues finding its audience. The secret to this movie is letting people see it.

MTV: And, of course, there's all the Oscar buzz that's beginning to swirl around the flick. Are you ready for all the madness of awards season?

Del Toro: [He laughs.] Thank you. Shout that from the rooftops, man! Seriously, I must confess, for the first time in my life I am considering buying a tuxedo.

MTV: What does a master of horror do for Halloween?

Del Toro: Normally, if I'm doing the costume thing, I'm a stickler — I actually go to one of my pro friends and have them make me up. But this year, I'm giving in and I'm just going to go as a pirate. I'm gonna do myself up, man. I want to take the home-cooking approach to making the costume. I'm going to kick back, and I'm going to wear a pirate costume around the neighborhood.

MTV: Well, pirates are pretty big right now.

Del Toro: [He laughs.] Yeah, and when they see me, they are going to become even bigger — like, as in size triple XL.

MTV: Maybe next year, the Pale Man will be the hot costume.

Del Toro: I would love nothing more.

[modage]

And finally, I'd say "Black Sunday" [1977], because of how mysterious and rich and eerie it is.

haha, way to do your reporting MTV.  i'm pretty sure he's not talking about the 77 film with that title: http://imdb.com/title/tt0075765/

Plot: An Isreali anti-terrorist agent must stop a disgruntled Vietnam vet cooperating in a plot to commit a terrorist plot at the Super Bowl.

another 2 1/2 seconds on imdb and you might've found the one he was talking about.  http://imdb.com/title/tt0054067/

[MacGuffin]

Pan's Labyrinth: A Story that Needed Guillermo Del Toro
by Sasha Stone; OscarWatch

When I first meet Guillermo Del Toro, writer/director of "Pan's Labyrinth," one of the true masterpieces of the decade, he is not promoting his own movie. He is there, along with his friend Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu to hold a special screening for their friend, Alfonso Cuaron's new film, "Children of Men."

Del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu together have produced some of the year's best offerings, even if "Children of Men" and "Pan's Labyrinth" hit almost too late for Oscar voters or guild voters to catch up with them. Running the awards circuit can do wonders for films that were difficult to get made, namely in the money department. Being nominated for an Oscar at least doubles your profit out of the gate, which can mean life or death for a labor of love like "Pan's."

While "Babel" is a strong best picture contender, and "Pan's" the frontrunner for the foreign language Oscar, "Children of Men" is a highly acclaimed film yet so few Academy members, and perhaps guild members, seem to have seen it. It seemed odd to me that these two lauded directors would be doing anything but trying to gain recognition for their own work, but what you get immediately from them is that they aren't like the typical Hollywood players.

The Universal lot was not easy to get to on a Wednesday night. With all of the screenings and parties and voting, how can any Academy voter keep straight all that needs to be seen and done. This is why del Toro and Gonzalez Inarritu went to the trouble of holding a special screening -- in hopes of giving Academy members a chance to see it on the big screen, which greatly enhances the experience of "Children of Men."

Friendship, collaboration and relationships are important to them. The question isn't why were they doing this for their friend but rather, how could they not do it.

Del Toro greeted me with his characteristic warmth and friendliness; so different from the usual limp handshake and cold stare you get when you meet people in this town who've met hundreds before you. He is funny and charming and easy to laugh, and has what David Byrne would call "a face with a view," and a sharp intelligence that takes conversations places you never thought they could go. With his vast knowledge of film history, his abundant creative energy, I could have talked to him for hours. Unfortunately, so could everyone else. Everyone was eager to get in their time with del Toro and of course, Gonzalez Inarritu – the celebrated auteurs, along with Alfonso Cuaron, who brought cinema to life this year. I was lucky enough to catch del Toro on the phone a few days earlier to discuss his masterpiece, "Pan's Labyrinth."

Despite it coming in at the very last day of the year, "Pan's" is catching on like wildfire, and is, at last glance, the best reviewed film of 2006. But it was anything but easy to get made. Financing collapsed at least twice, del Toro says. His director salary and the producers' salary all went into making the film that no one wanted to fund. "I co-produced with [Alfonso] Cuaron, who is a good friend and I said, 'Look, I'm going to put in $100,000 to start the design phase because no one is paying for it.' And Alfonso said, which I will never forget, 'Count me in for half.'"

When the film was screened at Cannes and enjoyed a twenty minute standing ovation, it was so late in the festival that no one really noticed. By the time it came to the US, only word of mouth was getting the film any kind of buzz. At last it was released, and the reviews were unanimous raves. It seemed like "Pan's" was on its way.

"When I was a screenplay writing student my teacher used to say, 'Don't make movies you need to do, do the movies that need you to do them,'" he says. "'The movie that needs you is the one you need to do.'" Clearly, "Pan's" needed del Toro to do it, and he was lucky enough to have friends who had faith in him. Many of the cast members in the film del Toro cast against type. Maribel Verdu, usually playing a sex goddess was reinvented by del Toro as the compassionate revolutionary – one of the two heroines in the film, yet he wasn't sure if she'd even want to do it. Del Toro saw a sadness in her, however, he thought would be perfect for the part of Mercedes. When it came time to cast the evil Captain Vidal, Del Toro chose Sergi López.

"In Spain he is considered a melodramatic or comedic actor," del Toro says. "The producers in Spain said, 'You should be very careful because you don't know about these things because you're Mexican, but this guy is not going to be able to deliver the performance.' And I used to tell them, 'Well, it's not that I don't know ,it's that I don't care.'"

Vidal turns out to be a formidable screen villain, someone del Toro describes as clean on the outside but dirty on the inside. "This guy is a very well groomed, very polished, gentlemanly monster. He looks fantastic – he gets up from his chair when a lady leaves a room. But he's unfortunately a sociopath."

Vidal is something del Toro would call a man-made monster, not in the realm of the spiritual world. "I think those are sadly the result of the emotionally disfranchised," he says. "When you have people that all of a sudden can kill each other for an idea then these monsters are born. Then there are the monsters of the irrational, which I adore – and the monsters of reason which I deplore and am afraid of.

"With the captain – the particular brand of fascism that was in Spain at the time was born out of the arrogance, the entitlement of the privileged classes and the very Catholic right wing," he says.

One of the reasons "Pan's" works as well as it does is the battle between idealism and fascism occurring between the people in the woods and Vidal. And so does a war rage on in the Labyrinth, with Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) in charge of keeping the flame alive forever so that the Labyrinth will last. So too does Mercedes (Verdu) keep the flame alive by working for Vidal yet betraying him at the same time forwhat she sees to be the greater good.

Del Toro doesn't believe Vidal to be spiritually evil, more like someone who does what others tell him to do. This very flaw informs the film's central question. "This intolerance is born out of buying into someone else's truth and making that the truth. When somebody tells you you have to push this button and you don't know what it does, you lose your humanity.

"The movie shows you that choice is what defines who you are," he says. "The girl is at the crossroads of being a woman or being a child; the mother is at the crossroads of giving birth – everybody is in the Labyrinth." When del Toro says these words the hair on my arms stood up - because he carries this story around inside him, he's able to put into words what it is about this film that stays with you.

"Everybody is in transit," he says. "You realize that you turning to the right or you turning to the left defines who you'll eventually become."

My experience of "Pan's Labyrinth" was to see the gritty, real life story of Franco-era Spain as the film's sole reality. However, audiences have been tearing up message boards arguing that point, because the Labyrinth that Ofelia enters seems so real.

Del Toro says, "I think it's real but it's real not in the pejorative sense. It's a spiritual reality – she really goes on a real adventure – by that, I don't mean the faun is there, or the mandrake is there, but she really is transported -- saved by herself."

Because del Toro is such a visual director, as a writer he sees the movie he wants to make, along with concentrating on the themes and story. He calls it "visual rhyming," this idea of writing even the way the shot transition works. "It gives a cadence to the film that's almost musical."

As a visual piece, "Pan's" parallels two opposing worlds – the fantasy realm in Ofelia's world and the oppressive environment in the home of the fascist captain. Since he is to be Ofelia's new father, and because she is so scared of him, of losing her mother – her imaginary world springs to life, which is my take (up for debate). To illustrate this, del Toro matched recurring objects in both worlds "through the little details, like the key, like the knife, like the doors, like the dining room of the 'Pale Man' being exactly the same symmetry as the dining room of the fascist. If you see it again you'll see that the banquet in both instances is exactly the same. The guy sitting at the head of the table with the all of the food laid out, that it's the same size in both, with the chimney behind him."

Guided by a faun, who may or may not be Pan himself, Ofelia is given tasks to complete in order that she take her rightful place as princess in the Labyrinth. But del Toro believes that the key to spiritual salvation is not obedience.

"It's a matter of creating a fairy tale that is in favor of disobedience – obedience disguised as blind patriotism is often invoked for the worst causes. It's at a time when we are supposed to be better people by not questioning anything and in reality we are better people by doing it."

Del Toro believes that how you interpret the ending of the film works like a mirror test; it tells you more than you need to know about your belief system. "I know which side of the fence I stand on," he says. "When you see the movie, even if you see it with two, three different people, you get mixed reactions to the last ten minutes. People say it's all in her head or it's all real."

But del Toro believes that we all have our own invented belief systems we adhere to, like the concept of time, or doing our taxes – these are ideologies that are mutually agreed upon but they aren't, literally, reality. "You are faced with the option of not believing what lives inside you and buying into dreams are far cheaper and a bad imitation of magic," he says. "People argue when you're growing up. "When you're a kid, everybody argues against you keeping childish concerns and then you contemplate the world of politics and religion and you wonder what those are there for, if organized politics and organized religion are not childish concerns of imaginary boundaries and imaginary friends badgering each other. When I see religious wars I just wonder whose imaginary friend is stronger."

Although del Toro was telling his own story, to a degree, with Ofelia the embodiment of his own inner world as a child, the story was difficult for him to write. Eventually he got what he wanted to say in the first ten pages and the movie was all there from that point on. To talk about the image he locked into would spoil the movie and no one wants to do that. But it amounts to the idea of rebirth, of personal choices.

"We all go through that moment in life when you put your toys away and you leave the fairy tales on the shelf and never open them again." In writing "Pan's Labyrinth," del Toro has opened up a treasure chest of ideas and ways of looking back and perhaps digging back up the imaginary world we once drew upon to take us away.

[Mikey B]

This movie scared the crap out of me. It's really quite wonderful though and I wasn't bored for one second. Some of the people in the audience were angry/disapointed that the movie had subtitles. I scoffed and was dosapointed in them.

[hedwig]

dosapointed

I Stole SiliasRuby's DVD Collection.

Wait A Second. There Is Something Fishy Going On.

[I Don't Believe in Beatles]

http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/008508.html

Spoilers.

PAN'S LABYRINTH—Landmark Embarcadero Q&A With Director Guillermo Del Toro
(Posted In Horror Interviews Mexico and South America Sci-Fi / Fantasy )

Graham Leggat, Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society, introduced Guillermo Del Toro following the Embarcadero Landmark screening of Pan's Labyrinth. As with my interview with him, Del Toro is not a man to censor himself and his comments get into the film in detail so those who are offended by such language or equally by spoilers might best skip this write-up until they've had a chance to see the movie.

To get the ball rolling, Leggat referenced Mark Kermode's interview with Del Toro in the December issue of Sight & Sound, wherein Del Toro talked about Clive Barker, the writer responsible for the Hellraiser series of films, who had written of "a deep place touched only by monsters." In that interview Del Toro went on to speak about how a deep part of him had been touched and transformed by monsters. Leggat asked him to amplify.

Del Toro complied: "In the Barker story ["The Skins of the Fathers"] he actually literally means it because it's a woman who has intercourse with monsters. I love monsters and I think fantasy is the last refuge of spirituality in this time because we have essentially [gone] through the '50s and '60s and '70s, and all the iconoclastic taking down of—rightfully—disgusting institutions; but, anything that was erected after that essentially was or has become as hollow as those institutions. So we took down all the crap and we erected new crap. [Laughter.] We erected every boring, materialistic sort-of-reality t.v. shit to drive us on. I believe that in this age one of the few moments where I can feel like a child and can feel spiritually uplifted is through fantasy. I really believe in monsters in the way that a Baptist would receive Jesus. ...Monsters were invented by primitive man to explain—first of all—nature. Then as they became socially more complex they started inventing monsters to talk about the things that scared them about themselves and eventually it's psychological. Monsters have a direct tap into spirituality and consciousness. I feel that I have an intimate, almost religious, contact with fantasy creatures."

Leggat noted that in an anti-fascist fairytale such as Pan's Labyrinth, or even in many of the classic fairy tales, there's a tension between innocence and brutality. Referencing back to the Sight & Sound interview, he noted Del Toro's comment that he can't feel the magic without the brutality of realism. Leggat queried if that was tied up with Del Toro's description of the monster inside?

"The origin of the fairy tale," Del Toro answered, "is an oral tradition. Normally what would happen is cobblers and tailors traveling from town to town would stay at homes and charge a warm bed and a meal and then the whole family would sit around the cobbler or the tailor and they would tell a story, many times about a cobbler and a tailor in a fairy tale. That's why they figure so prominently in fairy tales. They had to entertain the whole family, children and adults, so they talked about contexts that felt alive and contemporary at that time. They talked about famine. They talked about war, pestilence, and they peppered [the stories] with incredibly brutal moments either to entertain the adults or to scare the children shitless [laughter] and into behaving. So there [are] two kinds of fantastic tales: one is extremely repressive, pro-establishment, and tells the children don't go out at night, obey your parents, don't be ambitious, and this kind of thing; and then there is the other one, which is absolutely insane and brutal. But all of them were peppered with really dark, incredibly almost Freudian, elements. I felt that they had been [whitewashed] and sweetened and taken beyond recognition into being Disneyfied, if you would. I wanted to recuperate the brutality because I believe that without a context of horror then the magic is meaningless. If all you're going to have is little elves singing happily all the fucking time.... [Laughter and applause.] The fact is my fantasy has always been absolutely non-liberating. It has helped me deal with the real world but I never imagined myself singing to little bluebirds or chipmunks or stuff like that. The way I see fantasy is not a way to escape reality but to articulate reality. To use those elements to learn your way around the world and I believe that fantasy is a way to create parable, to talk about big truths but in a way not married to outcome, or married to a political outcome, an immediate outcome. Darkness is necessary in those cases to bring forth ... this movie, if it worked with you—because a movie, I keep saying, is like a blind date, y'know?—if it worked with you, if it tickled you in the right places, then the movie hopefully transported you to a vulnerable place where you can be a kid again. Now we, as adults, in order to be shocked by the horror like a kid and experience the wonderful like a kid, I have to push your buttons and they're hidden under layers and layers of social fat. I have to push really hard like deep tissue massage.... When I was learning how to be a draftsman and opened one of the early books about how to draw with a pencil, the first thing they set up was that—in order to create the illusion of volume—you need darkness and light and that's exactly what this fable is [about]."

Alluding to Del Toro's infamous refusal to direct The Chronicles of Narnia perhaps for these very reasons, Leggat wondered if Del Toro found the extreme world of anime more compelling than, say, Harry Potter?

"The Narnia thing," Del Toro quickly responded, "is because I'm a lapsed Catholic and I didn't want the fucking lion to resurrect." [Laughter and applause.] "Why bother? Also, I loved the books when I was growing up and at that time I was jerking off behind the altar. Some of the anime I love. A lot of the anime I don't. The Harry Potter movies, for me, the books—which I read before seeing the movies—they were really beautiful books and the first time I saw the first and second movies they were almost so healthy that they looked like a yogurt commercial. They looked so healthy, I thought, 'Is this the same book that had this Charles Dickens orphan living with his relatives?' I didn't really recognize him that much."

Leggat then opened the conversation up to questions from the audience. One young fellow, gracefully acknowledging first Del Toro's Golden Globes nomination and inducing a deserved round of applause, then queried if Takashi Miike was a direct influence on Pan's Labyrinth?

"No," Del Toro denied, and then inquired if the young man meant the scene where Mercedes slashed Vidal's mouth? "They do it in many cultures and in Britain this is called the 'Chelsea smile.' If you're a traitor, they do the Chelsea smile to you. What I wanted ... both in Devil's Backbone and in this one there is a moment where the character ... I'm very interested in the proto-fascist to look really sleek. This guy [has] shiny boots, beautiful hair, [is] incredibly well-spoken; he's a gentleman, right? He can bash and kill and all that but when his wife leaves the room, he gets up from the chair. I was interested in him starting to look on the outside the way he looks on the inside and the same was true in Devil's Backbone. So I did the half-Chelsea on him because I wanted to prove several things. I needed that shot where he's sewing himself because it's a character moment. That shows you what type of guy this guy is. He shines his own boots. He fixes his own watch. And he sews himself up. This man is unstoppable. He's not going to stop. He's going to keep going. And then I want him to drink the drink, hurt, and what does he do? He pours another one! It's defining the character. It's a moment that's larger than life that turns him into the Big Bad Wolf. The fairy tales needs Little Red Riding Hood and it does need the Big Bad Wolf. That was not Takashi Miike; that was the half-Chelsea smile.

Actually, the young fellow corrected, that wasn't what he had in mind. He was wondering if Miike's Yôkai daisensô / The Great Yokai War (2005) was an influence on Pan's Labyrinth?

Again Del Toro denied a connection. "I love Miike. I saw The Great Yokai War about two months ago because there was going to be a scene in Hellboy 2 originally that had Yokai ghosts, which budget-wise has been eliminated now. Somebody said, 'Oh, you should check Miike's version of the Yokai wars'; but, I didn't see it during the shoot of Pan's Labyrinth. I like his movies. Audition scared the fuck out of me. That moving bag haunted me for ages and the sawing of the foot lives in my memory. I really love his sensibility but he's done so many movies and I've only seen probably 10 of them. So I have—what?—65 to see?"

One young woman wondered about Del Toro's research methodology, what he had read to prepare for this movie, and if there were possible allusions to the Little Mermaid fairytale?

"I've been collecting fairy tales all my life," Del Toro responded, "I have—I don't know—maybe 200 volumes. A few of them are original printings from the Victorian era illustrated by Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Arthur Rackham and the like. I am actually an avid collector of original art by Kay Nielsen. I've always been interested in reading the compilations and treatises about fairy lore. I've always found them a little dogmatic. It seems like they have a thesis to prove—either a psychosexual or social—and they go by it. I have enjoyed Angela Carter. I have enjoyed Bruno Bettelheim. I have enjoyed everyone. But the one book that became incredibly important in this movie was a book called The Science of Fairytales, which is a late Victorian book that has a prologue by A.A. Milne, the author of Winnie the Pooh. The book is an incredibly [scholastic], incredibly amusing but thorough inventory of how fairytales came to be, how the fantastic tale came to be, in all the cultures, not only Europe. It does a very unprejudiced inventory, sort of the way Joseph Campbell does it later in his books but far more open, far more light. I encourage you to seek it and you know what? If you can Google it, you can download it, because it's free to print on the Internet. I always browse in used book stores and I get nose and ear infections. I found the book and I bought it and I read it and then I found it on the Internet. It's a beautiful book. There is another book that I love that, for example, Mike Mignola also uses a lot in his comic books called Passport to the Supernatural by Bernhardt J. Hurwood. Those two books have a similar spirit in that, after reading them, you want to read everything that was [quoted]. Hurwood quotes everything from oral tradition, Plotinius' writings, he quotes a great 17th century book by Don Augustin Camlet about vampirism that talks about microscopic vampires and all [those] kind of things. The movie quotes everything because I wanted to have the story feel like an ancient fairy tale. It has homages to Wizard of Oz with the red shoes. I quoted exactly the Alice in Wonderland dress. I quoted C.S. Lewis—without the lion resurrection. I quoted Hans Christian Anderson also in the spirit. Anderson and [Oscar] Wilde have a really incredibly strange and moving sort of S&M thing going on. I'm not exactly able to pinpoint it but it's disturbing and moving and spiritual and, rather than try to explain it, I love it and assimilate it. Hans Christian Anderson was also whipping himself into submission for his desires—Wilde was a little more free—and what I think is the idea of sacrifice comes from him. I actually quote verbatim Charles Dickens' David Copperfield when the stepfather says, 'It's the other hand, Ofelia', which I think is chapter 3 of David Copperfield when he meets his step-father the first time. At the end her seeing this wonderful world is an exact quote of "Little Matchbook Girl" by Hans Christian Anderson and so on and so forth." Del Toro repeated the title of the two main literary influences on the film: The Science of Fairy Tales and Passport to the Supernatural. "I recommend like Oprah," he grinned, which roused a rush of laughter from his audience.

Another fellow noted that Del Toro is one of the only directors who actually shows children dying. In Mimic Del Toro actually shows the children being killed, though in Pan's Labyrinth he pulled back a bit and didn't actually show Ofelia's murder.

"No, actually I show the shooting," Del Toro qualified. "The violence in the movie is deliberately dosified and calculated. I was in favor of the structure of the movie. We live in a completely hypocritical world where we can bombard entire cities [but hurting children—in concept—is taboo]. We can eat the meat but we can't kill the cow. We don't mind the fucking package in the supermarket but we would be unable to kill the cow. It's the same in the world. We are raising these antiseptic fucking little brats to feel nothing, to shield them from pain, to shield them from imperfection, shield them from anything, and they grow up to be 35 year olds with the mind and the spiritual potency of a four-year-old kid. I find a movie like Free Willy much more obscene where they tell you, 'Oh, if you swim next to a fucking killer whale, he's going to be your friend. He won't chew your fucking legs and spit your intestines out.' [Laughter.] I find that kids are far more intelligent, far more sophisticated, than we give them credit for. We are brutal with children in the real world, allow brutality to exist towards children by the church, by society, by everything, but we shield them in the stories. I find that impossible to conceal. The way we treat them, the way we have laid out the world is so fucked up. We pass our hang-ups. We pass the crap from generation to generation but we want to make the fiction clean. The most truly liberating aspects are the ones that we overprotect. We can bomb the fuck out of Iraq but we won't tell our children about Winnie the Pooh bleeding. It's insane to me. Children in fiction—especially adult fiction—they're just another character in the same way that [on] my set a child actor is just another actor. I don't come in and say [coddling], 'Listen, my darling, that is a rubber man." I take them through the steps and, like another actor, with respect.

"There was a scientist in the mid 20th century, a brilliant crazy guy who actually invented ice ships for Churchill for World War II (and they were working). He was very interested in education. He said something brilliant. He said, 'Children should be treated like ambassadors from a more advanced culture who are here to teach us things instead of us trying to teach them our pathetic, stupid way of seeing the world.' I think it's hypocritical to do this. If I were doing a movie for 8-year olds and all of a sudden cut the throat of the two main children, I would say, 'Well, I'm as sick as fuck.' But this is for adults. So it's fine."

The same fellow had a follow-up question regarding Del Toro's brave depiction of the Faun as ambiguously evil, redeemed by film's end.

"The Faun is more ancient than Western culture," Del Toro reminded. "The Faun is not a trickster as Campbell would pose it. The Faun is definitely a neutral character. He was a benign faun. 'Pan' is only in English. [The original film title is El Laberinto del Fauno, The Faun's Labyrinth.] If he was Pan the girl would be in deep shit. [Laughter.] Believe me, that girl would be walking sideways by the time Pan would be done with her. No, he's a faun. The faun, in its original conception, is a character that is neutral. He cares for the woods but he can destroy it, he can kill. It's a character that is neutral in that sense, like nature. The idea was that this character is there just to guide her through the process. He doesn't have an investment [in] the outcome of the tests. One of the things I tried to do with him is the more the tests advance, the younger and more beautiful he becomes. Towards the end he's actually—the way I was directing him, I was telling him—he's like a glam rock star. As a director I told him, 'You have to move differently, be more sensual, be more beautiful, because it was important for me that [Ofelia] rejects him, not only when he looks bad, but when he looks the best she also says no. [She's] going to follow [her] gut. The three tests are a decoy. The real test is how she goes through them. If at the end the last test is supposedly, 'Give me the baby', if she turns the baby in that's not passing the test. If you notice in the movie one of the things I tried to do is the Faun is played by the same guy who plays the Pale Man because to me its two incarnations of the same character putting her through paces to see how she will react and seeing if she will learn from her disobedience and not lose the capability to disobey what she feels is wrong. Meaning she can disobey and it's great but then again at the end she's not intimidated by her mistake. She still disobeys the Faun [when he says], 'Give me the baby.' If you notice, the two fairies who are the Red and the Blue that are eaten by the Pale Man in the banquet hall, they come back at the end and circle around her so they were never really eaten."

Asked if the fascist character—though sleek and great looking—exhibits self-hatred through the nuance of cutting his own throat in the mirror when he's shaving, Del Toro confirmed that was his intent. "When you create fascists, when you create characters, these are not by any means intended to be Dostoevskian three-dimensional fully-fledged psychological portraits. These are types. These are characters that I hope are great but they are type characters. You cannot nuance both the story and fuck up with the story and fuck up with the characters; you're taking two legs out of a chair. Something's going to fall. I like to screw up with one leg and keep the others firmly planted in the genre or in the tradition. [Capítan Vidal], what I was thinking of him, is it's a character that the only thing he needs to have is flaws and reasons to be the way he is. Now this is a guy who was raised by a general. Whose only legacy is a broken watch to tell him, 'You're going to be like me. Tell my son how a man dies.' You can imagine the educational process of that father. It's not exactly fantastic and the guy even lies about his father's watch, that's how intimidated and how bad he feels about his own career, which is he's a captain in the military police hunting ragtag guerilla bands in the mountains while his father was a legendary general. This guy hates himself more than he hates anybody else. To me the fascist creates a whole legend, a whole construction, through his legacy because he's worried about leaving a memory that will live forever. It's his legacy and his construction that are fragile. On the other hand, the girl who is not worried about anything really leaves a legacy and lives forever in my mind in the movie. Kierkegaard said the reign of the tyrant ends with his death; the reign of the martyr starts with his. [This is] the difference. Look at the way the two characters physically die. The girl dies after going exactly to the place she wants to go, in her heart, and for me that's real. The captain, the last thing they tell him is, 'He'll never know your name' and he's completely destroyed. Everything that he believed in was that fragile. These people are like that. They live in another world. When you live in Spain long enough and, trust me, there's still a shitload of right wingers in Spain that miss Franco, they wish the Generalisimo would come back! These guys believe what he did. [Vidal] says, 'I want a new, clean Spain for my child to be born in." He really is doing these things [he perceives] to inhuman people. The Marquis de Sade used to say, 'I can understand the crime of passion. I can understand somebody murdering somebody in the heat of the emotion. But what I cannot understand, and what I cannot condone, is murder for ideas and laws. That someone can coldly, calculatedly, say that this law or this idea allows me to kill you.' This is what happens when you dehumanize somebody. When that guy becomes a Black guy, a Jew, a Muslim, whatever idea you want that allows you to kill him, you are relinquishing your own decision. You are relinquishing your own choice. You're making it impersonal. [The fascists] do that, killing [others] 'for the good of Spain.' When I was [on] the radio in Spain with this movie a guy called and said, 'Why do the fascists always have to be the bad guys in the civil war movies?' [Laughter.] I said to the guy, 'Listen, Sir, where I come from the word fascist has pretty bad connotations but if you know of any charming fascists and would like to bring them to the radio, please feel free to do it.'

"Everything in the movie tries to do parallels with things in the real world. There are two keys; one in the fantasy world, one in the real world. There are two daggers; the dagger that she hides and the dagger that she [finds]. The geometry of the dining room of the Pale Man and the geometry of the dining room of the captain are exactly the same. My idea is that these things are things that the girl catches on the fly and uses them to construct her imagination. And that is me. The Pale Man is the church. He has the stigmata. He puts the eyes in there. He devours children. [Laughter.] I was in Jesuit school. I'm not going to be a forgiving man. But the idea is these are things that feed into the angst of the girl and she's building her own little world with that or coding it like that. By the way, most of the violence in the movie is either based on oral accounts that I have read on things that happened during the civil war. In the case, for example, of the dialogue of the priest where he says God [cares little] about their bodies, he has already saved their souls. That's verbatim what a priest used to say in a concentration camp for Republicans when he brought communion. He used to say, 'Confess, my children, because God doesn't care about your bodies; he's already saved your souls.' And if that's not a motherfucker, I don't know what is. [Laughter.]"

An elderly gentleman asked Del Toro what inspired the character's name Ofelia?

Del Toro responded, "Ofelia is such a beautiful name for a tragic heroine. It may be too high-falutin' the idea that—like in Hamlet—she's an innocent heroine manipulated by so many factions and ultimately meeting a tragic end. Of course [Ofelia] doesn't die in the water but I love the idea of someone who is ultimately innocent [where] nefarious things are happening. Ofelia is a girl that is being told—like we are all told at a certain age—how to behave and what is expected of her. What dress she should wear. How she should behave like a lady. What she should do to regain her kingdom, and so forth. All these things in this case she's strong enough in her will to disregard."

One Hellboy fan complimented Del Toro for his expert comic adaptation. He wanted to know what fans could expect from Hellboy 2?

"I love comic books," Del Toro admitted, "and I grew up in a household where I was reading. My father was a middle class guy and one of the first things he did when he came into money was—he heard it was prestigious to have a library—so he went and bought four encyclopedias. Just by the way they looked, frankly. He bought one that was a Family Health encyclopedia where I learned the word 'fallopian tubes' [laughter]. The other one was an encyclopedia of art, which I read also entirely and so forth. But other than for those books that my father had, another was an anthology of world literature for young readers where I discovered my first Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, all those in there. At the same time I was reading those things in my father's incredibly abundant library, I was discovering comic books. To me Degas, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Gaugin, Edvard Munch are in equal value as Bernie Ritzen [sp?], Richard Corbin, Arthur Suydam, Jack Kirby, I didn't care. I just felt they were equally powerful. When people say, 'We see that you do your personal films and then you do the American movies' I say, 'No. To me Hellboy's personal.' It's autobiographical, frankly. He's born the same day I was born. He was born October 9, 1944 and I was born October 9, 1964. Many details of [Hellboy's] courtship with Liz, are details in the courtship with my wife. I believe that the ideal love story is finding a fire girl and being fire proof. The idea, like in Pan's Labyrinth, at the end of the day the fable is about choice. How you are who you choose to become. Not who you are born like or where you are born. I was born in a small city in Mexico where it was impossible to make films let alone fantastic films. When I got up in my first day of screenwriting class and I declared I wanted to do fantastic movies, I became immediately the town idiot. I believe that with will and hard work you end up bending the world a little bit to live in it. If the first [Hellboy] was the love story, [Hellboy 2] is the first year of marriage. What happens after they kiss fantastically and they live [happily] ever after? Somebody has to wash the socks and take the garbage out. Then it's all wrapped in an adventure about the real world destroying fantasy. How we have absolutely prostituted and ground it into the ground, destroyed fantasy, to build malls and highways. That's the story. The fantasy creatures rebel against the human and Hellboy has to choose which side he's [on]."

A woman complimented Del Toro on showing the scariness of the fairy people, that he didn't clean it up, that Ofelia fucked up but accepted her mistakes and moved on. She was impressed by Ofelia's bravery. That she went into the labyrinth without any fear. The woman said she was engaged by the dark beauty of the film all the way.

Del Toro thanked her and added, "The movie is autobiographical. I explored my entire home town through the sewers. [Laughter.] I went with two or three friends with flashlights and—over the course of three years—we crisscrossed the town through the sewers. I was never afraid. I saw monsters when I was a child. They were probably lucid dreams but I saw creatures. I believed they were real. I was in the Society for the Virgin Mary and we used to do oratory contests in the catacombs of a Catholic church in Mexico, which is equal to having a pyramid built in the center of San Francisco, a Catholic church that had catacombs, and we used to go there, praise the Virgin Mary, and when the priest would turn around we would open the crypts to see if there were bones in them. I was never really afraid. I was curious more than afraid and I think that children are like that. It's curiousity. The Celtic culture I wanted to take through Spain because they are rich and powerful as a culture and as a mythology before moving off to the northern lands. It's seldom used in Spanish films."

Del Toro then thanked everyone for coming and asked that, if we loved the movie as much as he hoped we did, to please—because it's a small movie—go out to the rooftops and shout it out to the world.

[MacGuffin]

More Than Just a Fairy Tale
Guillermo del Toro and Doug Jones discuss their critically acclaimed Pan's Labyrinth.

While filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is best known to genre fans for his comic book-inspired films like Hellboy and Blade II, a quick look at the Mexican-born filmmaker's credits shows that he has managed to balance his bigger budgeted Hollywood pictures with smaller, independent-minded projects like the Spanish-language ghost story The Devil's Backbone and his latest, most critically lauded film, Pan's Labyrinth.

An awards season favorite, Pan's Labyrinth was also shot in Spanish as well as, appropriately enough, in Spain. That makes sense, considering the film takes place in the years following the Spanish Civil War. Against this backdrop, the tale of Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) unfolds -- a young girl who discovers a magical, fairy tale world in her backyard that just might be her true home.

For del Toro, there is no real difference between the actual making of a film like Pan's (said to be budgeted at just $5 million) and a bigger picture like Hellboy (which is rumored to have cost more in the realm of $66 million to make), though the director says that one does need to bear in mind one's target audience at all times when putting together a picture.

"In terms of work ethic, work intensity, and attention to detail, I treat them the same," he says. "But ultimately the outcome and the storytelling drive and the goals are completely different. I'm not concerned about Pan's fitting into a preexisting form like a comic book superhero movie, and with Hellboy I am concerned about it fitting the mold but going against the grain at the same time. It's not that [the indies are] easier. It's just that the structure is so much more director-friendly."

A frequent collaborator of del Toro's, actor and creature performer Doug Jones plays the title role of Pan in the picture. A half-man/half-goat satyr creature, Pan serves as Ofelia's guide as she explores the netherworld that she has newly discovered. Jones, who will next be seen as the motion-capture performer playing the Silver Surfer in the Fantastic Four sequel this summer, says that he has such admiration for del Toro that he can't help but keep working for the guy again and again.

"It's funny, because when you see Pan's Labyrinth, you see that it has a big budget, big studio look to it," remarks Jones. "No shortcuts were taken visually or artistically at all. The difference in making the film is that Guillermo had more freedom as a director and as a creator, which gave us more freedom as actors and entertainers and performers. Without the layers of decision-makers in the studio system, and with this foreign film thing, it was so much of a more pure artistic endeavor as opposed to a marketing endeavor."

Even the casting process was easy, as far as Jones was concerned. Having already played Abe Sapien in Hellboy for del Toro, as well as having appeared in the director's first Hollywood film Mimic, Jones was already well entrenched in del Toro's mind when it came time to create his Pan.

"Guillermo sent me the script and said, 'You have to play this role -- no one else can,'" recalls Jones. "A big compliment. I read the script and by the last page I'm wiping a tear and saying, 'I have to play this role.' I got back to him the same day. Mythology has it that Pan's a god, a prankster. In this film, he's more of an angel character; maybe a demon. You're not sure. You have to go along with him to find out what he's after."

Jones also shows up as a distinctly less friendly creature known only as the Pale Man.

"We're following Ofelia's story throughout the film, and I'm her gateway to the fantasy world," explains the actor. "There is a chilling scene in the film where one of the tests that she has to do is she has to get past this character called the Pale Man to accomplish something. Well, she does something a little wrong and wakes up the Pale Man, and it's one of the most chilling scenes I've ever seen on film -- even though I'm in it!"

The Devil's Backbone took place near the end of the Spanish Civil War, and it also dealt with a child who must contend with the realities of living in that difficult era. It is a period of history that has fascinated del Toro for a long time.

"For many decades," he says. "I read about it a lot when I was a young adult and I found it to be a tragic war that somewhat affected the entire world and not just Spain. But curiously enough, most people outside Spain think it's a war that should only concern that country."

In fact, the filmmaker is already planning a third film, titled 3993, that is intended to close this particular cycle of pictures.

"[It's] a movie that, if I do it, would close the trilogy of Spanish Civil War movies," he says, "because it's about a character in 1993 who believes that civil war is a thing of the past. And something from 1939 comes to life and proves that it's not -- that it's pretty much alive."

Del Toro says that while all of these pictures share certain traits, he has little interest in repeating himself on anything he does and each project ultimately must stand on its own two feet. There are certain plot and thematic connections between Pan's and Devil's Backbone, for example, but there are also plenty of differences as well.

"[The similarity] is very vague," he says. "I tried to do a structural similarity to the two, so that one day if you so decide you can watch them back to back. But they are thematically similar in the sense that they both face brutality and innocence, but they do it in totally different ways. Devil's Backbone is a gothic romance with underground reservoirs and ghosts and haunted building, and Pan's Labyrinth is a fairy tale. It's a fascist time, and on the other hand The Devil's Backbone is the end of the war, but it's not yet defined as a fascist period."

The film, which was nominated for but did not win the Golden Globe this past weekend for Best Foreign Language Film, has nonetheless received several noteworthy critics' awards already and is expected to get an Oscar nomination as well in the Best Foreign Film category. Del Toro seems to be taking this critical recognition all in stride, but Jones thinks that his fearless director is finally getting the accolades he has long deserved.

"When I first read the script, I knew right away that if Guillermo was given the freedom to direct this in the way that he wrote it, it was going to be a classic," says Jones. "It was going to be a piece of art that the critics would love and true film aficionados are going to love and appreciate."

Del Toro demurs when such discussion comes up, much preferring to talk about what it might be about the film that has so gotten the critics' attention. He says that as the movie has slowly rolled out around the world over the past few months, he has had the opportunity to hear directly from his audience as to what they've gotten out of Pan's Labyrinth. And to the filmmaker's satisfaction, many folks seem to be walking away from the film with exactly what he intended.

"Devil's Backbone was done in 2001 and the world has changed so much politically [since then] that I thought I could do a little parable about choice and disobedience and make it relevant to today," he says. "[Pan's] is relevant to 1944 in terms of anecdote, but it's relevant to today in terms of what's going on in the world right now. I mainly notice in the Q&A [sessions], when I've done Q&As with the film, that the people really go there without being pushed there. I remember even when it was shown in London in a smaller screening, one of the audience members said, 'You're saying this and you're saying that, but the way I read the movie is it's about choice.' And I said, 'Thank you! That's really great because that's what it's about. I'm sorry I beat around the bush -- no pun intended!'"

[modage]

Title: Pan's Labyrinth
Released: 15th May 2007
SRP: $29.98 & $34.99

Further Details:
New Line Home Entertainment has today sent over some early details on the Guillermo del Toro directed Pan's Labyrinth which stars Ivana Baquero. The film will be available to own in single ($29.98) and double-disc ($34.99) editions from the 15th May. The film itself will be presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, along with Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo Surround tracks. English subtitles will also be provided. The full details have yet to be revealed on the extra material, although we can confirm that the two-disc edition will include a director's prologue, director commentary, featurettes, interviews, galleries, storyboards, and DVD-ROM features. We'll bring you the full details early next week. Stay tuned

http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/pans-labyrinth3.html

[Ravi]

I expected a little more from this than what i actually got. It's quite a ride, and I would say is Del Toro's greatest visual achievment yet. Some of the scenes are truly scary and the overall atmosphere permeates every frame.

But I had my problems with, I guess, the screenplay. By that I mean the schematic way of presenting the characters and dealing with them. The villain is so bad, so so so bad, Sergi Lopez can't save him from becoming boring. There's no real tension between him and the rest cause you expect what you get from him. Too two-dimensional. The same could be said about the mother and Maribel Verdu's character. You could argue that this black and white view on things is inherent to fairy tales, but I just don't think it helps the movie to be more entertaining or surprising.

Besides that, pretty much everything else is fantastic.

I didn't really have any expectations when I watched it.  You're right that the film isn't surprising per se, but the film sucked me in and I was with it the whole time.  The villain was one-dimensional, but in a relatively subdued way that worked for the "realistic" setting.  The film is clearly a fairy tale, so the lack of dimension in the film was not a problem.

[Alexandro]

I expected a little more from this than what i actually got. It's quite a ride, and I would say is Del Toro's greatest visual achievment yet. Some of the scenes are truly scary and the overall atmosphere permeates every frame.

But I had my problems with, I guess, the screenplay. By that I mean the schematic way of presenting the characters and dealing with them. The villain is so bad, so so so bad, Sergi Lopez can't save him from becoming boring. There's no real tension between him and the rest cause you expect what you get from him. Too two-dimensional. The same could be said about the mother and Maribel Verdu's character. You could argue that this black and white view on things is inherent to fairy tales, but I just don't think it helps the movie to be more entertaining or surprising.

Besides that, pretty much everything else is fantastic.

I didn't really have any expectations when I watched it.  You're right that the film isn't surprising per se, but the film sucked me in and I was with it the whole time.  The villain was one-dimensional, but in a relatively subdued way that worked for the "realistic" setting.  The film is clearly a fairy tale, so the lack of dimension in the film was not a problem.

Yeah, I actually revisited recently on the cinema and had little problems with it. It sucked me in too. Liked the villain also. Goes to show how subjective and moment dependent movie watching is. I guess the first time I watched it in a different mood.

[Ghostboy]

Man, the special edition DVD cover is awful! I almost didn't buy it for that reason alone.

The second disc is okay, but as with any Del Toro film, the best feature is the commentary track.

[MacGuffin]

I've never been a fan of Del Toro, so I was always reluctant to watch this. But, damn, if this film didn't surprise me and take my emotions and have their way with them. This is definitely Del Toro's best film. I think the difference being he's working with an original story (as opposed to adapting a comic book) and not going for straight horror. Here, the mixture of fantasy, fairy tale and real life horror is a perfect blend, and more so in utilizing Del Toro's strengths as a filmmaker.