Pan's Labyrinth
| Pan's Labyrinth | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Guillermo del Toro |
| Written by | Guillermo del Toro |
| Produced by | Alfonso Cuarón Guillermo del Toro Bertha Navarro Frida Torresblanco Alvaro Augustin |
| Starring | Ivana Baquero Doug Jones Sergi López Maribel Verdú Ariadna Gil Alex Angulo |
| Cinematography | Guillermo Navarro |
| Edited by | Bernat Vilaplana |
| Music by | Javier Navarrete |
| Distributed by |  Warner Bros. Picturehouse Optimum |
Release dates |  October 11, 2006 October 20, 2006 24 November 2006 December 29, 2006 |
Running time | 112 min. 119 min. (UK version) |
| Countries | MexicoSpain |
| Language | Spanish |
| Budget | USD $17 Million[1] |
Pan's Labyrinth is an award-winning 2006 Spanish language film written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro. Its original Spanish title is [El laberinto del fauno] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), which refers to the faun of Roman mythology and directly translates to "The Labyrinth of the Faun"; the English title refers to the faun-like Greek god Pan, though del Toro has stated that the faun featured in the film is not actually Pan.[citation needed]
The film, which garnered several Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, had its premiere in the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and was released in the United Kingdom on November 24 2006. In the United States and Canada, it was given a limited release on December 29, 2006, with a nationwide release on January 19, 2007.[2] Pan's Labyrinth has won numerous American and international awards.
Plot
Template:Spoiler The prologue tells of Princess Moanna, daughter to the king of the underworld. She became curious about the world above and fled to the surface, where the brightness of the sun blotted out her memories. Growing old as a human, she died, causing turmoil in her kingdom. However, the king always believed that her spirit would one day return, reincarnated in the form of another.
The story cuts to post-Civil War Spain in 1944, after Francisco Franco has come into power. Ofelia, a young girl often absorbed in fairy tales, travels with her pregnant mother Carmen to meet Captain Vidal, her new stepfather and father of Carmen's unborn child. Vidal, a fascist devotee, suffers from the repercussions of his father's death as a famed commander in Morocco, and takes his anger out on the Republican rebels he has been assigned to seek out and eliminate while stationed at a countryside mill.
On the way, Ofelia discovers a large insect resembling a praying mantis and walking stick, and she believes it to be a fairy. The creature follows the family to their new home, where it leads Ofelia to an ancient labyrinth. Before Ofelia can enter the labyrinth, she is stopped by Mercedes, one of Vidal's maids and a spy for the rebels, who are led by her brother, Pedro. That night, the creature appears in Ofelia's bedroom, where it morphs into a fairy and leads Ofelia through the labyrinth into a small clearing. There, she meets the faun, who recognizes her as the long-lost Princess Moanna and assigns her three tasks to complete before the full moon to ensure that her "essence is intact".
Ofelia completes the first task - retrieving a key from the belly of a giant toad - however, she fears for her mother, whose condition is worsening. The faun gives Ofelia a mandrake root, which instantly begins to cure her mother's illness. Ofelia then manages to complete the second task - taking an ornate dagger from the lair of the Pale Man, a child-eating monster. Although she was warned to not consume anything there, she eats two of the Pale Man's grapes as she leaves, awakening him and causing the deaths of two of the faun's fairies. Infuriated at her disobedience, the faun disappears, claiming that she will never return to her kingdom or see him again.
Meanwhile, Vidal becomes increasingly vicious in his methods, torturing a captured Republican and killing a doctor (a Republican sympathizer) who euthanized the prisoner (at the prisoner's request) after the prisoner began to give Vidal information. Vidal catches Ofelia tending to the mandrake root, and Carmen, desperate to prove to her daughter that magic is not real, throws the root into the fireplace. Instantly, she develops painful contractions and dies giving birth to a son. Vidal discovers Mercedes is a rebel spy, and he captures her and Ofelia as they attempt to escape. Ofelia is locked in her bedroom, and Mercedes is taken to be tortured; however, she frees herself, injures Vidal and flees into the woods, where Pedro and the rebels rescue her.
The faun returns to Ofelia, claiming that he will give her one more chance to prove herself. He tells her to take her baby brother into the labyrinth. Ofelia manages to steal the baby after sedating Vidal; however, although disoriented, Vidal continues to chase her through the labyrinth amidst an attack on the mill by the rebels. Upon her arrival in the clearing, the faun tells Ofelia that the portal to the underworld will open only with the blood of an innocent -- she must spill her infant brother's blood. Ofelia refuses to harm her brother, and the faun disappears, accepting her decision. Vidal finds her, takes the baby and shoots Ofelia. As he staggers out of the labyrinth, he finds the rebels waiting for him and, after handing them his son, is killed by Pedro.
As Mercedes enters the labyrinth and mourns over Ofelia's dead body, Ofelia is reunited with the king and queen of the underworld. She learns that by spilling her own blood instead of her brother's, she has proven herself to be the true Princess Moanna. The epilogue tells that Ofelia ruled the kingdom for many centuries, was adored by her people, and left behind little signs of her life on Earth, visible only to those who knew where to look. Template:Endspoiler
Cast
- Ivana Baquero as Ofelia: Del Toro says he was "scared shitless" in casting the right actress for the lead role, and that finding the 11-year old Spanish actress was purely accidental. "The character I wrote was initially younger, about 8 or 9 and Ivana came in and she was a little older than the character, with this curly hair which I never imagined the girl having. But I loved her first reading, my wife was crying and the camera woman was crying after her reading and I knew hands down Ivana was the best actress that had shown up, yet I knew that I needed to change the screenplay to accommodate her age."[3] Baquero says that del Toro sent her lots of comics and fairytales to help her "get more into the atmosphere of Ofelia and more into what she felt." She says she thought the film was "marvelous," and that "At the same time it can bring you pain and sadness and scariness and happiness."[4]
- Doug Jones as The Faun and The Pale Man: Jones had worked with del Toro before on Mimic and Hellboy, and says the director sent him an email saying "You must be in this film. No one else can play this part but you". Jones read an English translation of the script and was enthusiastic but then found out the film was in Spanish, which he did not speak. Jones says he was "terrified" and del Toro suggested using a voice over actor to dub over him later, or learning Spanish phonetically, but Jones rejected both ideas preferring to learn it himself. He said "I really, really buckled down and committed myself to learning that word for word and I got the pronunciation semi right before I even went in," using the five hours a day he spent getting the costume and make-up to practice the words.[5] Del Toro decided afterwards that he still preferred to dub Jones with the voice of "an authoritative theatre actor," but Jones's efforts remained valuable because the voice actor was able to easily match his delivery with Jones's mouth movements.[6]
- Sergi López as Captain Vidal: Del Toro met with López in Barcelona, a year and a half before filming began, to ask him to play Vidal. López said of it, "For two hours and a half he explained to me all the movie, but with all the details, it was incredible, and when he finished I said, 'You have a script?' He said, 'No, nothing is written.'". López agreed to act in the movie and received the script one year later; he's said that "it was exactly the same, it was incredible. In his little head he had all the history with a lot of little detail, a lot of characters, like now when you look at the movie, it was exactly what he had in his head."[7] In Spain, López was considered a melodramatic or comedic actor, and the producers told del Toro "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"; del Toro replied "Well, it’s not that I don't know, it's that I don't care."[8]
- Ariadna Gil as Carmen
- Maribel Verdú as Mercedes: Like López, Verdú was cast against type; usually playing a sex goddess, del Toro selected her to play the compassionate revolutionary because he "saw a sadness in her...he thought would be perfect for the part".[8]
- Alex Angulo as Doctor Ferreiro
- Roger Casamajor as Pedro
- César Vea as Serrano
Reception
The film has received almost universal critical acclaim, earning a 96 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes[9] and a 98 percent rating at Metacritic,[10] making it Metacritic's fourth highest rated movie of all time.[11] Mark Kermode, in The Observer, labelled Pan's Labyrinth as the best film of 2006, describing it as "an epic, poetic vision in which the grim realities of war are matched and mirrored by a descent into an underworld populated by fearsomely beautiful monsters".[12] Stephanie Zacharek wrote that the film "works on so many levels that it seems to change shape even as you watch it",[13] and Jim Emerson called the film "a fairy tale of such potency and awesome beauty that it reconnects the adult imagination to the primal thrill and horror of the stories that held us spellbound as children."[14] The New Yorker's Anthony Lane took special note of the film's sound design, saying it "discards any hint of the ethereal by turning up the volume on small, supercharged noises: the creak of the Captain's leather gloves ... the nighttime complaints of floorboard and rafter..."[15] As of May 14th 2007, it is No. 41 on IMDB's top 250.[16] and the No. 2 movie of 2006.[17] Some reviewers had criticisms, however: for The San Diego Union-Tribune, David Elliott said "the excitement is tangible", but added that "what it lacks is successful unity...Del Toro has the art of many parts, but only makes them cohere as a sort of fevered extravaganza."[18]
During its limited first three weeks at the United States box office, the film made US$5,430,000. As of March 1, 2007, it has grossed $33 million in North America, and grossed around $70 million worldwide.[2] At the Cannes Film Festival, it received a 22-minute standing ovation.[19] At the 2007 Saturn Awards, Pan's Labyrinth received accolades for Best International Film and Best Performance by a Younger Actor for Ivana Baquero.[20]
Influences
Del Toro has said the film has strong connections in theme to The Devil's Backbone and should be seen as an informal sequel dealing with some of the issues raised there.[21] In 2004, del Toro said: "Pan is an original story. Some of my favorite writers (Borges, Blackwood, Machen, Dunsany) have explored the figure of the god Pan and the symbol of the labyrinth. These are things that I find very compelling (remember the labyrinth image on Hellboy?) and I am trying to mix them and play with them."
However, in 2007, del Toro admitted to the striking similarities between his film and C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia: both films are set around the same time, have similar child-age principal characters, mythic creatures (particularly the fauns), and themes of "disobedience and choice." Says del Toro: "This is my version of that universe, not only 'Narnia,' but that universe of children's literature."[22] In fact, del Toro was asked to direct The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but turned it down for Pan's Labyrinth.[22]
Some of the other works he drew on for inspiration include Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths, Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan and The White People, Lord Dunsany's The Blessing of Pan, Algernon Blackwood's Pan's Garden and Francisco Goya's works.[23] The movie also borrows from themes popular in Spanish and Mexican culture and literature, including loss of innocence and the idea of magic existing as long as you believe.[citation needed]
Guillermo Navarro, the director of Photography has also stated “After doing work in Hollywood on other movies and with other directors, working in our original language, in different scenery, brings me back to the original reasons I wanted to make movies, which is basically to tell stories with complete freedom, and to let the visuals really contribute to the telling of the story.”
Ofelia's dress that she unintentionally ruins during the course of her first trial is also strikingly reminiscent of Alice's dress, worn in Alice In Wonderland.
Comparison to other films
In addition to Narnia, Pan's Labyrinth has also been compared to films such as Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, Gabor Csupo's Bridge to Terabithia and Jim Henson's Labyrinth.[24][25] Del Toro himself has noted similarities with The Spirit of the Beehive.[26]
Soundtrack
The score for Pan's Labyrinth was composed by Javier Navarrete and was completely built around a simple lullaby tune. Navarette and the score was nominated for an Academy Award.
Awards
| Academy Awards record | |
|---|---|
| 1. Best Cinematography | |
| 2. Best Art Direction | |
| 3. Best Makeup | |
| BAFTA Awards record | |
| 1. Best Foreign Language Film | |
| 2. Best Costume Design | |
| 3. Best Makeup & Hair | |
Pan's Labyrinth has won numerous film awards, including The National Society Film Critics for Best Picture, and Academy Awards for Achievements in Cinematography, Makeup, and Art Direction. It has also earned BAFTA awards for Best Foreign Language Film, Costume Design, and Makeup and Hair. At the Goya Awards, the Spanish equivalent of the Academy Awards, the film won in many categories including Best Cinematography, Editing, Make Up & Hairstyles, New Actress for Ivana Baquero, Original Screenplay, Sound, and Special Effects. At Mexico's Ariel Awards, the movie won in 9 categories, including Best Movie and Best Director.
The film was also nominated for a number of other awards such as Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.
The film won the top award at the 2007 edition of Fantasporto.
DVD
Pan's Labyrinth was released on DVD on March 12 2007 in the United Kingdom by Optimum Home Entertainment in a 2-disc special edition.
The film was released in the United States on May 15 2007 from New Line Home Entertainment in both single disc and double disc special edition versions, featuring an additional DTS-ES audio track not present on the UK version.
Additionally, the film received a special limited edition release in Korea. Only 5,000 copies of this edition were manufactured. It is presented in a digipack designed to look like the Book of Crossroads, along with an art book and replica of Ofelia's key.
References
- ^ Shafer, Craig (2007-01-18). "Amazing journey: Fantasy both frightening and beautiful lurks in this award-winning labyrinth". New Times SLO. Retrieved 2007-01-24.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Unknown parameter|box office=ignored (help) - ^ a b "Pan's Labyrinth (2006)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
- ^ Fischer, Paul (2006-09-26). "Exclusive Interview: Guillermo del Toro "Pan's Labyrinth"". Dark Horizons. Retrieved 2007-01-28.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Spelling, Ian (2006-12-25). "Guillermo del Toro and Ivana Baquero escape from a civil war into the fairytale land of Pan's Labyrinth". Science Fiction Weekly. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Topel, Fred (2006-12-27). "Doug Jones En Espanol". CanMag. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Eisner, Ken (2007-01-11). "Labyrinth's faun unmasked". straight.com. Retrieved 2007-01-28.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Topel, Fred (2007-01-02). "Sergi Lopez on Pan's Labyrinth". CanMag. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ a b Stone, Sasha (2007-01-11). "Pan's Labyrinth: A Story that Needed Guillermo Del Toro". oscarwatch.com. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Pan's Labyrinth". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2007-01-24.
- ^ "Pan's Labyrinth (2006)". Metacritic. Retrieved 2007-01-24.
- ^ "Best-Reviewed Movies". Metacritic. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
- ^ Kermode, Mark (2006-11-05). "Pain should not be sought - but it should never be avoided". The Observer. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Zacharek, Stephanie (2006-10-13). "Pan's Labyrinth". Salon.com. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Emerson, Jim (2006-12-29). "Pan's Labyrinth". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Anthony Lane, "The Current Cinema", The New Yorker, January 08, 2007
- ^ "IMDb Top 250" Retrieved on February 12 2007
- ^ "IMDb Top of 2000s" Retrieved on February 28 2007
- ^ Elliott, David (2007-01-11). "Artist in charge". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Rodriguez, Rene (2007-01-16). "Director keeps Hollywood out of "Pan's Labyrinth"". The Miami Herald. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ David S. Cohen (2007-05-10). "'Superman' tops Saturns". Variety. Retrieved 2007-05-11.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Pan's Labyrinth in the 2006 Cannes Film Festival
- ^ a b "Del Toro crafts a harrowing fairy tale". Star Beacon. 2006-12-29. Retrieved 2007-03-28.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Del Toro message board
- ^ "Pan's Labyrinth Film Review - Time Out Film". Retrieved 2007-01-24.
- ^ "Bridge to Terabithia a Pan's Labyrinth for Kids". Retrieved 2007-02-23.
- ^ "Outside The Frame: Guillermo Del Toro Interview Part 1". ThePhoenix.com. 2007-01-11. Retrieved 2007-01-28.
External links
- Official site
- Pan's Labyrinth at Rotten Tomatoes
- Pan's Labyrinth at IMDb
- Pan's Labyrinth at Box Office Mojo
- Pan's People, samples from del Toro's sketchbook
- Official Pan's Labyrinth Myspace
- Weavers of Dreams - the creature creations of Pan's Labyrinth
- Radio (Fresh Air) Interview
- Premiere.com interview