A Rave for 'Pan'
Director's commentary guides us through 'Labyrinth'
By Andy Klein
When compiling my Top 10 Movies of 2006 list for CityBeat, I couldn't quite decide on a best-to-worst order, so I took the coward's way out and listed them alphabetically. In voting for various critics' group awards, however, this sidestep isn't permitted. Forced to hunker down and single out one film as best, my choice was Pan's Labyrinth - which recently came out on DVD in a feature-packed edition.
Guillermo del Toro's film is a startling, idiosyncratic combination of children's fantasy and brutal political realism that switches effortlessly from early Fascist-era Spain to the fairytale world of a young girl's imagination, eventually - magically - integrating the two into one.
We meet the girl in question, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), as she arrives, not very happily, at her new home in a sparsely populated rural region. Her widowed mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), has married Fascist Capitán Vidal (Sergi López), who commands the local outpost and by whom she is pregnant. The very moment they arrive, Ofelia is distracted by a dragonfly that leads her briefly toward an apparently ancient stone labyrinth on the grounds. And later, at night, the insect will appear in her bedroom, transform into a fairy, and guide her through to the center of the labyrinth - the lair of a faun (Doug Jones). He tells her she is a long-lost princess and that she can reclaim her position with her regal parents and live forever ... if she completes three tasks before the next full moon.
If Pan's Labyrinth has some classic children's story trappings, don't be fooled into thinking it deserves anything milder than its R rating. There are a few moments of sudden, wince-inducing violence; and the tone, on the whole, is very dark.
New Line's "Platinum Series" editions have frequently been among the best "special editions" in the market, with great care taken, even on films of questionable value. Pan's Labyrinth's two-disc package is absolutely first-rate; I'm sure there will be a Plutonium-238 (or some such) edition some day, but it's hard to imagine what could be added to the current product.
The transfer of the film on Disc One is beautiful, both aurally and visually. (I only checked out the Dolby mix, but there is also a 6.1 DTS-ES track.) Del Toro gives a very brief intro (roughly 25 seconds), explaining the film was so difficult to make that he lost 45 pounds. There are some other minor extras - posters, trailer, and TV ads - but the main attraction here, beyond the movie itself, is a wall-to-wall, scene-specific commentary track. Del Toro is a wonderfully intelligent and thoughtful filmmaker. Quite frankly, based on this and on the extras on Disc Two, he's someone you'd like to have as a friend.
Disc Two is packed with stuff. There are several featurettes: In "The Power of Myth" (14:20), del Toro talks about his use of fairy tales and view of the form in general. (Some of this overlaps with statements on the Disc One commentary.) The half-hour "Pan and the Fairies" goes into the development of the fantastical character design; "The Color and the Shape" (4:00) talks about the very carefully determined visual scheme; and, in "The Lullaby," del Toro discusses his collaboration with composer Javier Navarrete.
More material is organized around the director's notebooks. We can page through some of his early sketches and notes, then click on selected pages to leap to clips (a few minutes each) in which he elaborates on the subjects. There are also four scenes where the "angle" button on your remote enables you to view either del Toro's storyboard, a more sophisticated artist's version, the actual filmed sequence, or all three at once. Finally, there is a full hour of the Charlie Rose show, in which Rose interviews del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and actually lets them get a few words in edgewise.
Published: 05/24/2007
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