Pan’s Crab-yrinth
Last Sunday, I went back to the Darkside after a long hiatus (blame Netflix) and watched El laberinto del fauno. Don’t listen to the critics on this one. Some ne-fairy-ous puck slipped ‘em all a Mickey or something (Andrew O’Hehir, what possessed you?) because this flick is not even close to being “convincing,” “glorious,” “lovely,” “magical,” “gorgeously executed,” or “rewarding.” (Den-nis!) It is ugly, flat, and entirely unmoving. I hereby pan Pan’s Labyrinth.
During the movie, I kept thinking how much I would rather have been watching:
- Dirty Pretty Things, for a convincing villain who gets his due in a much more interesting manner
- Henson’s Labyrinth, for a truly traumatic “end-of-childhood elegy”
- Heavenly Creatures, for impeccable fantasy and effective violence
- The Stepfather, for kitschy horror, in a pack of giddy 11-year-old girls having a slumber party (true story!)
- Any film by Carlos Saura remotely related to the Spanish civil war
- Paisà or Roma, città aperta, for beautiful, gripping, white-knuckles-intense antifascism
- MirrorMask. “Too bad I missed its theatrical run. I wonder if it can possibly live up to personal hype? I did rather like Neverwhere. Hmm, wonder if anyone will ever do movie justice to Coraline…” (Eek! I see it’s in production! Starring…Dakota Fanning. I’m completely depressed now.)
- Spirited Away, any day
- even The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (rare cinema common ground with my mum), for a compelling girl-faun screen couple
I was also scrambling to recollect what beef I had with El espinazo del diablo when I saw it back at the Nuart, but I only remember feeling vaguely dissatisfied. (I managed to miss Hellboy and Blade 2 and haven’t seen any of G. del Toro’s earlier works.) I’ll take a deep breath and try to articulate why I despise this (horrible! l-ame!) movie.
It’s almost unanimously heralded as an ingenious blend of fantasy, historical drama, and horror, but these constituent parts stand weakly on their own and do not blend well (or contrast strikingly). The visuals are shoddy and distracting: the appearance and voice of the fauno ring false; the movement of the faun and the fairies is clunky; and the labyrinth set is plain and plastic. Fine, the saggy little-girl-eating demon with eyes in his hands (whose image was showcased in many of the rave reviews) was pretty cool (and Scott and I both admired the murals adorning the ceiling of its banquet hall), but sorry, its brief appearance cannot carry the whole picture. True, the gore was pretty well rendered, but what’s the point? Since it’s not a horror movie, I couldn’t giggle and gross out. Nope, serious antifascist struggle in progress, so the only option was to roll my eyes. I’m a big enough girl that I don’t need gory violence exchanged between a cardboard villain and those resisting his evil oppression to get the horror of the war.
So maybe I wouldn’t have noticed the inferior effects if the plot or the characters had engaged me, but it was all so boring! Besides the disposable baddie and his uninteresting henchmen, there was the stuttering Republican soldier awkwardly introduced at his camp only to be gratuitously tortured later in captivity. So stupid! I don’t want to talk about the ending, I hated it so much (and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone, as if that’s even possible.) All those dead people (and munched-up fairies), they probably symbolize something, but I just don’t care.
Ugh! Gotta go take a shower and listen to the Sex Pistols or something. Bye!