January 25, 2007
Go see Pan's Labyrinth
It's fantastic. It's not quite the heart-warming fairy-tale that one might expect from the title and the rough plot blurbs available in various places, but given the director, lately of Hellboy and *cough* Blade II, this is perhaps unsurprising. It's a lot more violent than I was expecting. But it's still a touching foray into innocence and betrayal.
The second task is truly the stuff of nightmares, and captures exactly the deeply creepy Brothers' Grimm-style fairy tale that's been missing for too long. I mean, "Little Red Ridinghood" is supposed to be cute and all, but it's worth pointing out that a number of people wind up getting eaten by a wolf, who is subsequently chopped up by a lumberjack. That's not cute, but somehow it's been sanitized to the point that we think of it that way. Pan's Labyrinth is good, old-fashioned fairy-storytelling as it was meant to be.
Also! Guillermo del Toro doesn't like fascists. I'm just sayin'.
I'm planning on seeing it Friday and I'm sooooo excited!!!
Posted by: Amelia at January 25, 2007 01:56 PMMost of the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, before they were airbrushed in response to the contemporary solicitousness for the innocence of children, were morbid and violent: a lot more Pan's Labyrinth than Shrek I and II. Little Red Riding Hood has faint echoes of this older sensibility toward the upbringing of children, but one would do better to look at, e.g., some of the earlier German versions of Cinderella, in which the wicked stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by birds. The fact that del Toro's latest is rated to ensure that almost no children will attend reminds me of this Auden observation in Letter to Lord Byron:
"I hate the modern trick, to tell the truth,
Of straightening out the kinks in the young mind,
Our passion for the tender plant of youth,
Our hatred for all weeds of any kind.
Slogans are bad: the best that I can find
Is this: ‘Let each child have that’s in our care
As much neurosis as the child can bear.’"
But maybe my sympathy with this passage is just further evidence of how unfit I am for parenthood.
Posted by: Julian at January 28, 2007 03:41 AM