I know what you mean sparkplug! I found it hard to sleep afterwards as I felt I had regressed into that childhood world of fairy tales where everything had the capacity to be menacing or magical and i kept hearing noises in my flat!
Pan's Labyrinth
by Mystla 23 Replies latest social entertainment
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drew sagan
I enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth although some of the voilence was a little more than I can stand.
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slimboyfat
It was indeed a beautiful film. To me it was a modern day exploration of the disregard for and frailty of human life in the face of totalitarian cruelty akin to that depicted in Goya's The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid:
http://www.edu.pe.ca/rural/class_webs/art/images/goya.jpg
It was also a disarmingly frank discussion of how humans can retain dignity in the face of obscene ideological and wanton violence. And despite the fairytale form of the narrative, the suggestion is not to look for deliverance in an afterlife.
The doctor stands up for human dignity and pays for his life soon after. His choices were already dramatically reduced by that point, however he found the courage to speak the truth to savage power. Another key moment was when it turned out that the creature who had befriended the young girl meant her baby brother harm. What a terrible realisation when even your fantasies turn against you, but it underlined that human dignity supercedes authority, power, friendship, fantasy and self-preservation.
And notice that it was as the girl was dying that she envisioned her parents in a last grasp at the beautiful series of thought-worlds she had created to escape the horror of the real world as it turned ever gloomier. With her last breath Pan's Labyrinth was no longer animated, but the servant woman and the other survivors could move forward by promising to preserve remembrance of the human dignity they had stood for, and those who did not make it, while blotting out the mental lineage of the cruel oppressor.
The film thus seeks solace in the memories of the living rather than in finally being enveloped in a fantasy of afterlife. With Harry Potter and other modern fiction that turns fantasy against itself to present a physicalist view of the world it proclaims the disenchantment of the modern world, and sets us about the urgent task of constructing purpose and meaning within our temporality.
Slim
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codeblue
Interesting movie........glad I watched it!
