Comments on: Pan’s Labyrinth — Nominee for 2007 Oscar – Best Foreign Film

By: Fresh Bilge » Key to the Labyrinth

Fresh Bilge » Key to the Labyrinth — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:50:02 +0000

[...] found the film grotesque in ways unintended and probably unimagined by its maker. She also provided a link to a review of the film that emphasized Hispanic culture’s obsession with blood and [...]

By: Eva

Eva — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:20:30 +0000

I’m Spanish and I Went to see the film with my mother who is 65 five years old. She told me that Spain in 1944 was like the way the movie is. Poor, dark, nobody talked about the war…

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 17:03:59 +0000

The part of Hollywood that does not recycle adolescent boy fantasies in CGA, has become very downbeat in the left wing fashion. This years crop of movies that are up for awards reflects this obsession. Pan’s Labyrinth is clearly political, an attempt to wave the bloody shirt of the Spanish Civil war. And yes del Toro is an intellectual grandchild of the Spanish reds who founded the Mexican film industry.

But look at some of the others. Dystopian, anti-liberal and just plain misanthropic. I think the mood in Hollywood is very down beat, probably because their audience has not endorsed their political choices.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:46:09 +0000

this speaks ill of a great univeristy. . .

I suppose the above is spam, but it unwittingly illustrates the Left’s obtuseness about moral as well as practical issues.

“Divestment” is a nice phrase to use in political theater. However, in reality divestment means selling your shares, which means selling them to someone, which means selling them at a price that that someone is willing to pay. This generally means a below-market price. So, for a price, you get to wash your hands of your tainted shares, and in the process you help to transfer the ownership of companies in troubled parts of the world to people who are not so morally fastidious as you are. I’m sure you feel good about yourself, but I don’t understand how any of this helps people in Darfur.

By: Irving Pensky

Irving Pensky — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:11:47 +0000

this speaks ill of a great univeristy–University of Chicago!
how horrible!
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=168102

By: Shannon Love

Shannon Love — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:26:18 +0000

I am disappointed that Guillermo del Toro made such a movie. Hellboy is a vastly different different movie in tone.

In Hellboy, the title character is a demon who is born/summoned into the world in order to bring about a Lovercraftian apocalypse. Adopted by American soldiers at the end of WWII, he grows up into a cigar chomping, demon fighter who sounds and acts like he came from Brooklyn. In the end, he defies his supposed destiny. The key line in the movie goes:

What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don’t think so. It’s the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.

It’s a quintessential American movie as is the comic book. (Blade also have a similar theme.)

I suspect that the original source material has more impact on del Toro than any political biases of his own. He seems to choose source material based on their visual properties than the actual story.

By: Tatyana

Tatyana — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:14:43 +0000

I arrived to the same conclusion, but without excurses into LA surrealist literature. And on about 15th minute.
The movie is a mixture of superstition and vulgar marxism. The world is painted black and white, or rather brown and red. Which are not that different, if you watch all the piling up of atrocities with unbiased eye – an unintended circumstance.

For a while I thought all this “us against them” is eather a) a parody on Soviet propaganda movies of the 30′s or b)the worldview through the eyes of immature teenager, and will be corrected further on by loving and understanding parent.
Alas, the goal was not to create an artpiece, but an agitfilm. Silly me!

By: Axel Kassel

Axel Kassel — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:30:21 +0000

Re the time scale: The premise is that the Captain’s unit is hunting a post-war remnant group of rebels in the hills–rather like hunting down John Murtha’s band after 2012.

By: Helen

Helen — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:01:01 +0000

Don’t understand the timescale, not having seen the film. Surely by the end of WW2 the Spanish Civil War was well and truly over by about six years.