Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray]
by Guillermo Del Toro
![Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray]](/images/Pan-Labyrinth-Blu-ray-B000WSLAUO-L.jpg)
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Blu-ray details
Actor: Ariadna Gil, Doug Jones, Ivana Baquero, Maribel Verdu, Sergi LopezDirector: Guillermo Del Toro
Brand: NEW Line Home Video
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); Spanish (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 119 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2007-12-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line
Product features:
- Following a bloody civil war, young Ofelia enters a world of unimaginable cruelty when she moves in with her new stepfather, a tyrannical military officer. Armed with only her imagination, Ofelia discovers a mysterious labyrinth and meets a faun who sets her on a path to saving herself and her ailing mother. But soon, the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur, and before Ofelia can turn
Blu-ray Reviews of Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray]
Blu-ray Review: Two Tales in One? Or a New Tale out of Two?
Summary: 3 Stars
A movie like Pan's Labyrinth - popular for its mythical creatures, weird fairies and so on - is enigmatically interesting because it's possible that the 'genre' (and thus message) of the movie changes according to the status assigned to said creatures.
If the creatures were real, then it's Fantasy and all that this implies for a war-oriented movie. If they were NOT real, then one could say that the movie is essentially about psychosis, escapism, people 'dealing with' the horror of war, traumatic realism, etc. in which case the director del Toro would have to be conveying a different message entirely.
Then again maybe del Toro left it to us to decide, thus creating the paradox scenario where we, the viewers, have a say in "what kind of movie" we're watching. Given a parallax move, we could even say we were watching two different movies entirely. Or, to push the envelope deeper, what if we were watching two movies enmeshed, hybridize and juxtaposed together thereby creating a "third" movie, NEITHER a war NOR fantasy movie but a movie where possibility is always in the making, where perspectives fluctuate and **where the undecidability of what is real is ITSELF a critical element of the reality we inhabit**??
In a word, Pan's Labyrinth is about the significance of knowing but not knowing. Ofelia experiences the creatures and the satyr but can never know if she is being really helped or simply cruelly misled. In a heart-thumping scene, Ofelia has to retrieve a key from a child-eating monster asleep at a table and, despite being told not to eat of anything, goes on and consumes two apples resulting in the monster waking up and almost catching her. Doesn't this scene suggest that Ofelia has trouble deciding on the nature of the knowledge imparted by the satyr and, yet again, didn't her ambivalence almost prove disastrous? Carmen, her mother, knows that being with the Captain is a necessary move but also 'knows' it's not (so what is it that she really knows?). The Captain, despite being an seasoned war commander, didn't know that Mercedes and the doctor was a spy, or at least not until it was too late and he was given a 'Glasgow Smile' (a wound inflicted by Mercedes whom he had tied up but who released herself behind his back but right under his nose). In the end, of course, Ofelia 'learns' that she is the incarnate (but amnesiac?) Princess Moanna. Her knowledge of this fact both redeems and ends her life and then the story. Yet this leaves all the other characters in the dark (of knowledge). So we have a girl who achieves (some kind of) immortality via true knowing, a knowing which generates a final un-knowing or, conversely, a finality of un-knowing.
The quasi-suspended nature of the ending only heightens the point that the movie was always about the irreducible double-seeing, un-seeing and perceptive indecision which fills our world. Del Toro has presented us with a striking red herring. He's made it seem like we have to decide if we're watching magical realism or simply a story of a girl with an over-stimulated imagination, when in fact *the act of choosing* is the very enigma we are expected to recognise, appreciate and, ultimately, live with.
Description of Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray]
Studio: New Line Home Video Release Date: 12/26/2007 Rating: RInspired by the Brothers Grimm, Jorge Luis Borges, and Guillermo del Toro's own unlimited imagination, Pan's Labyrinth is a fairytale for adults. Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) may only be 12, but the worlds she inhabits, both above and below ground, are dark as anything del Toro has conjured. Set in rural Spain, circa 1944, Ofelia and her widowed mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil, Belle Epoque), have just moved into an abandoned mill with Carmen's new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi López, With a Friend like Harry). Carmen is pregnant with his son. Other than her sickly mother and kindly housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdú, Y Tu Mamá También), the dreamy Ofelia is on her own. Vidal, an exceedingly cruel man, couldn't be bothered. He has informers to torture. Ofelia soon finds that an entire universe exists below the mill. Her guide is the persuasive Faun (Doug Jones, Mimic). As her mother grows weaker, Ofelia spends more and more time in the satyr's labyrinth. He offers to help her out of her predicament if she'll complete three treacherous tasks. Ofelia is willing to try, but does this alternate reality really exist or is it all in her head? Del Toro leaves that up to the viewer to decide in a beautiful, yet brutal twin to The Devil's Backbone, which was also haunted by the ghost of Franco. Though it lacks the humor of Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth represents Guillermo Del Toro at the top of his considerable game. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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