A few years ago, my girlfriend and I saw Pan's Labyrinth in the theater. A year later, I bought and ripped it to PSP so that I could ogle its numerous critters while taking mass transit to work. I love Del Toro's fetish for insects and his symbolic use of insect morphology -- they seem to signify Proteus to him (as they do to me!). My girlfriend loved the imaginative aspects of the film as well: the "mere faun" (Pan, of course). She and her twin sister are so fascinated by Greek mythology that they learned the Greek language and like to speak it to each other occasionally. We were less fond of Del Toro's depiction of fascism, which was presumably an echo of the Spanish Civil War. I was particularly bored with the black-shirted fascist father ("Real World" = "The Fatherland") and his cartoonish personality (an obsession with clocks and punctuality). After this flick and the Sylar character in Heroes, it's time for benevolent old clock tinkerers to make a cinematic comeback. I was also unsure the war references were necessary or worked with the rest of the plot -- they introduced an odd tone that was both too vague and too rooted in timely events (the date stamp: something one tries to avoid in a nightmarish fairy tale). But perhaps there was some special sense of urgency that made Del Toro use that setting. As with Jan Kolsi and his odd introduction of Nazi persecution into an adaptation of Gombrowicz's Pornografia, I suspected I might have to read more about the director's culture to appreciate the resonance of his fascist father (who, predictably, speaks of murdering the mother to save his bloodline and so must die -- every child becomes Oedipus). The flick struck me as more sad than brutal -- a non-satirical fairy tale version of Gilliam's Brazil. Then it hit me like a menhir: more books have been published about the Spanish Civil War than any other war in history. That was why my thoughts on Pan's Labyrinth were unresolved: I wanted to know how those scenes might resonate for Del Toro's Spanish audience. I had the same issue with Jan Kolski when I saw Pornografia at the Walter Reade: I glanced around the theater at key points and realized various members of the all-Polish audience were weeping profoundly -- some were actually rocking back and forth and breaking down. I concluded they must have lived with the experience and history that made Kolski add the scenes in the first place. I couldn't judge the artistic merits of Kolski's liberties without knowing what they meant in context. The excessive or arbitrary use of traditional fascist imagery in current film narratives looks cliche to us, but that's in the context of standard British/American/Western European culture. Perhaps there are places in which that imagery was forbidden until very recently; in which it encompasses unfamiliar and underreported events; in which depicting it remains a vital and necessary act. Perhaps Godwin's Law can't possibly apply in such places. One place in which the so-called law may never apply: when the reference is incredibly specific. The great German poet, Ingeborg Bachmann, claimed that Nazis and apologist philosophers (see Heidegger) had destroyed the German language by making it overly general, and that certain postmodern theory, which posited a language of tendencies devoid of any author, was an attempt to escape responsibility for the holocaust. She believed that the counter to fascism was to make language and art specific, so that humanity could not become lost in generalities and euphemisms. That's why I would argue that Michael Haneke's films are antidotes to fascism, not examples of it: they are horribly specific and unflinching films, the exact opposite of propaganda under a fascist regime. But back to the Spanish Civil War. I was moved by Carlos Saura's depictions of fascism in Goya in Bordeaux, but that was because they were specific to Goya's life and work -- most scenes were literal adaptations of his paintings. Then, too, Saura filled in the background: Goya's early dashed belief in the civilizing intellectualism of France (since the previous Spanish king made the mistake of forming a post-revolution, post-royalist alliance with Napoleon), Spain's exploitation by Napoleon's brother, Joseph, and the heartbreaking execution of random innocents on May 3, 1808 (as shown in Goya's most famous painting). Disasters of War is, after all, the artist's treatise on the horrors of the war he lived through, not merely war in general. Saura could explore that war in critical detail because Goya was its most lasting artistic historian, victim and witness. Because of said specificity, it is difficult to watch certain scenes from Goya in Bordeaux without feeling brutalized. Anecdotal/political history makes the paintings come to life, and then the scenes they depict actually occur with the viewer as spectator. Only then does the audience begin to understand why a man whose mistress was murdered and children died as children, who was forbidden even to paint the architects of his grief, might have seemed mad to others. They come to appreciate the bleak self-hatred and regret that led to Goya's portrait of Saturn. I didn't get the same feeling from Pan's Labyrinth. It was harder to see the relevance of Del Toro's fascists because he half-spelled it out, which made his version of fascism seem mere "Fascism" in capital letters and quotes. But perhaps his treatment of history is considered subtle by his most important audience. Perhaps it's the viewer and not the artist who needs to do more research. What do you think: When is the depiction of fascism cliche, when is it necessary and when is it art? What determines the success of the enterprise? Is the redeeming virtue restraint, detail, authority? How much of our collective image of fascism is shared, and when is shared imagery not cliche?
I really liked Pan's Labyrinth. I think it is one of the best fairytales I've seen, but also one of the most emotionally harrowing. It's The Company of Wolves' nastier older brother. Before they were cleaned up by the brothers Grimm, and further polished to a U-rated shine by Disney (and yes, that irony does not escape me) fairytales were pretty, well, grim and morally ambiguous. They were cautionary tales to children and adults alike that the world out there is full of danger and not to be trusted; that appearances can deceive and temptations often have a nasty sting in the tail. I think the whole Nazi theme was worked into the film to illustrate the true nature of fairytales, partly as escapism for the child but also as a framework for making sense of the real dangers and trials that a child has to cope with right here in the real world, and real the monsters it has to confront who often are all too human.
Christ on a swizzle stick, Nexxo -- are you ever preaching to the converted! (Not that I mind, since the subject's familiar and dear.) I'm also glad you've mentioned The Company of Wolves, since Angela Carter is one of my favorite stylists. Fairy tales have always been nasty affairs, just as nursery rhymes prove to be once the sugary sing-song's seen through. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. In that sense, The Innocents is a hideous fairy tale wrested from the ingrown toenail psychology of Henry James. It is a fairy tale's riding hood seen from inside out: 99.8% malice and 0.2% protective lining. Unfortunately, the Nazi father in Labyrinth doesn't work for me the way he does for you. If he were terrifying, he would be as satisfying as a certain subterranean monster seen elsewhere in the film (which I won't describe, since people who are reading this might not have seen it). My problem with said fascist, as I said before, is that he is a cliche. Fairy tales use archetypes, but they must play with our expectations knowingly. Angela Carter spent a lifetime toying with fairy tales: casting them in eerie transformative lighting and building revelations of character into the script like turnarounds in jazz. That's the kind of thing I wish Del Toro would learn to do, since he comes so close. If only he'd done something revelatory or subversive with his textbook fascist -- that might have made the prosaic characterization worthwhile, since it would have been misleading. Lewis Carroll's stories and poems are full of fascists, but that works because the charactors are so strange and idiosyncratic, avoid looking too much like familiar villains from history, and maintain the disarming logic of actual dreams (not the annoying pseudo-dream logic of pedestrian comedy writers trying desperately to be creative). Chronos, Del Toro's first film, is probably his most perfect. My problem is never grim carnage (which is relaxing, since it puts our minor struggles in perspective). Rather, the issue is any flaw that breaks the spell. A grim fairy tale needn't be perfect to work, but its world has to remain intact. Dario Argento can be quite inspired, but he is also one of the most flawed filmmakers who's still worth watching. Even so, Suspiria works for me as a slasher's fairy tale despite its many flaws (bad acting and bad dialogue, for example). For one thing, the worlds and irrational events have a slippery intense integrity. David Goodis's Dark Passage (and the film based on it, which Goodis detested) is a kind of noir fairy tale in the sense that Goodis's books are all bad dreams, and there is a moment when the characters freeze, suddenly aware of their own unreality, and the dreamer either dies (wakes) or consents to a life of unconscious stasis. As corny as Goodis can be, the veil's never pierced. In Labyrinth, the outer world is somehow out of balance with the inner -- not in an engrossing tension-creating way but in the sense of failing to complement it artistically. It is alternately too literal and too vague, and the villain needs to be more haunting and less like a lead figure from an historical board game about WWII. Lewis Carroll struck the perfect balance somehow, though film adaptations never catch that grim magic. There is an incredible amount of violence in Snark and the Alice stories. It all happens off-screen, in the imagination of the reader left picturing a hellbound battle between someone who sees what they hit and someone else who hits what they see, neither of whom will stop until everything has been destroyed. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are murder-entranced Kali in silly outfits. Princess Mononoke is full of animal gods who will only spare you if you catch them in the proper mood. It, too, avoids veil-piercing by never explaining its most evocative characters, such as a creature with an eerie distracted face that proves completely non-human. Its features are not functional; they are like the camouflaged coloration of the most lethal mushroom in the world. All of which points to the terror of a world unseen and unimagined (which is, of course, the true horror implicit in classical gods: that they only *appear* to be like us anatomically and emotionally). Here's something I'll recommend to you, Nexxo: Dear Dead Days, by Charles Addams. It isn't a book of his cartoons but rather a collection of morbid things that inspired him. It is his answer to the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" The book is not so much a disturbing fairy tale as the future inspiration for hundreds that haven't been written. Also: For the past few years, I myself have been writing childrens' books that are far too upsetting for children. I promise you, pals: Devising gleeful nightmares is excellent therapy. One last thing: If you get the time, Nexxo and everyone else, please answer the question(s) at the end of my original post. But don't let me stop you from expressing some other relevant point of interest. Feel free to talk about anything related to the topic.
I feel so dumb after reading that, but i bought the film when it was released on dvd, so here goes. I think the fascism in this film adds to it. It gives the little girl a reason to escape from the cruel reality of war into her own world, the struggles of those close to her give the film some depth and you get to see the people struggling against fascism. The monsters in the fairy tale world, why do they want to kill her? They want food, a basic instinct, none of them are inherently evil, but the stepfather, he kills and tortures because of his views and his position, he is ruthless at it too with no remorse, Spoiler especially at the end when he has no need to kill, but has no need for her either, all he is concerned about is passing on his family name, for his own pride. Pan even tries to save the little girls mother. I think the film was asking who was the real monster? The creatures she meets along the way or the humans? Yea this probably sounds cliche and backs up what Prestidigitweeze was saying, but im just trying to give the film from my perspective, feel free to shoot me down Having looked up Godwins law (couldn't find anything on Saura's specificity x.x), i do feel that fascism is valid in this film, because fascism is evil in its purest form (cliche again), a very human evil, where the monsters are not evil, they might do bad things, but it is because of a primal need, not because they are bad in any way.
I haven't seen Chronos yet (only know of it); I must admit to enjoying his fizzy-pop Hellboy series though. I did see Princess Mononoke (another DVD I need to add to the pile). I'll certainly track down Dear Dead Days. I like Charles Addams; my mother bought a book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes illustrated by him for my brother and me when we were little (I credit her with putting a lot of thought in our early formative experiences). More recently I bought a reprint for my niece. I agree that bad guy characters should not be explained too much. Better to project our own fears on them. In that respect I rather liked the Borg in Star Trek: TNG because they were so unlike anything we could relate to: a machine-like hive mind that could not be reasoned with or appealed to. I guess it is also why enemies like the Alien, the Terminator and The Matrix worked so well. Unfortunately people end up wanting more and the director makes the mistake of giving it to them. The Borg suddenly get an all-too-human Queen (oh, please) driven by the same mechalomanic lust for conquest as any cut-rate B-movie baddie (Fu Manchu, anyone?), the Alien suddenly gets a queen (I see a pattern here), and The Matrix, well, we don't talk about The Matrix sequels here. Especially not the Architect. Who could almost have been stroking a white cat. In that respect I think that the best, and most scary evil characters are those that have a sympathetic aspect to them that one can relate to. You like them and you want them to like you --even though they are doing horrible things, and quite likely are going to do horrible things to you. It is the ultimate fear of any child and all too real: that of the abusive parent. I remember the creeps I got in Music Box (by Costa-Garvas, not the Laurel and Hardy one) when Armin Mueller-Stahl's avuncular and apparently genuinely distressed Mike Laszlo is slowly unmasked as a former Hungarian Nazi war criminal. When finally confronted with the indisputable evidence by his lawyer daughter who set out to prove his innocence, the sudden personality flip sent icy tingles down my spine. It's a tricky balance to get right: Richard Burton managed it in 1984 reasonably well but Anthony Hopkins rather missed the mark in Silence of the Lambs (then again, by his own admission he wasn't really trying). In that respect I think the only flaw in Pan's Labyrinth was that the Nazi stepfather wasn't nice enough to the girl and her mother. I can imagine a lovable, even caring stepfather would have been much scarier because there would always be the struggle between resisting collusion with, and eventual corruption by his evil ways, and the fear of how he could turn on you if you rejected him, knowing how he could comfortably and easily switch to a monster when dealing with his enemies. Most child abuse is duplicitous and subtle that way, and all the more damaging because it does its damage under the skin. As for your question, I'll have to think some more about that: I think that the display of fascism is cliche when it is depicted as unadulterated goose-stepping evil. Real fascism is more subtle than that. I'll resist comparisons to The Body Snatchers (1956 version) or The Stepford Wives (1975 version) or even The Handmaid's Tale as even that is too blatantly obvious (some interpret Body Snatchers as a warning about the Communist threat; however it could equally be a warning about McCartyism). Perhaps the most fitting --albeit unintentional-- examples I can think of are recent American TV series like Numbers which have suddenly gone from generic crime solving to depicting the fight against (Middle Eastern) terrorist threats happening all over the place. Fascism is what people collude in doing to others out of fear and idealism, not evil. The real monster is, again, human, and the most terrifying is the one with the highest ideals and most sincere intentions.
I thoroughly enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth, and the more of del Toro's work I see the more I appreciate his style of storytelling. I particularly like his films' artistic styling - the characters' designs, the lighting, and the overall art direction - it appeals to the fantasy geek in me. To be fair, much of that also I'm not as learned, so I can't really comment on the differences between the various depictions of Fascism in literary and theatrical history. However, as an average movie-goer I actually appreciate a little cliche. If the portrayal is too nuanced, there's a chance I might miss it, and end up a bit confused. Perhaps that's why characters, good and bad alike, nearly always have some easily identifiable characteristic, even if it is only a little cliche. People intellectual enough to know, will already understand what is going on in the character's mind. The average movie-goer can use a little hint here and there. Film makers know that the general audience isn't always clued in to every detail. If we're going to contrast between the Grimm Brothers collection of fairy tales and Disney's versions, we might differentiate between Walt's storytelling, and that of the post-Walt era. I believe that Walt was a very effective storyteller, and his films - particularly the early animated features - contain much more menacing villains and scenarios than some of the more modern cartoons. It's not unlike the difference between corporate rap and the authentic street rap that Prestidigitweeze commented about in another thread a while back. There is a distinction between the (modern) Disney Corporation, and Walt Disney. This is one of the principle reasons why I've fallen in love with Hayao Miyazaki's work. For him, much like Walt, the storytelling is what is important, not the means of delivery or the return on investment. As it applies to this discussion, I prefer Castle in the Sky over Princess Mononoke, and that movie is rife with cliche Fascists. Despite the cliche, I think the story itself is told extraordinarily well, and the genre perhaps lends itself to a little over-the-top characterization. In addition, as Nexxo commented, neither were the Grimm Brothers' collections always accurate to the tales' original sources. While they built a great foundation for Philology, even they weren't above changing details here and there. Yet too often we hear of people complaining that such-and-such story is nothing like the "original" (read: Grimm) version. In my opinion this is part of the nature of storytelling: each person takes the material and presents it from his perspective, based on his world view, and often altering details that may seem minor to him, but might have been important to the previous author. As long as the original thematic elements remain (as untouched as possible), then the harm is minimal. In that sense, fairy tales are similar to many history books. While perhaps not as insightful as the other commentary here, it's at least my perspective as a Regular Everyday Normal Guy. At the very least we can all agree that Pan's Labyrinth was an excellent movie, whether you enjoy portrayal of Fascism versus Fantasy and how it relates to the characters, or you simply like the visual feel of the film, or both. -monkey
Nexxo: I've heard excellent things about Hellboy II and intend to see it soon. Del Toro's commercial flicks often have fun touches (Mimic leaps to mind), and Hellboy II is reported to have extra helpings of fun. This is an excellent quote: "Bad guy characters should not be explained too much. Better to project our own fears onto them." That's why details should be specific without being obvious: The best symbols are somewhat cryptic. Francis Coppola has spoken of using non sequiturs deliberately in the Godfather trilogy: He always tried to add strange or puzzling details to each murder scene to make it feel more haunting. On some level, he realized the viewer would be fascinated by elements that were vivid but couldn't be explained; that an apparently irrelevant detail had the power to make scenes appear more real (since ordinary life isn't necessarily interrupted by death, and an unshaven old man brandishing a toothbrush might wander past a falling body without seeing it) and created an unresolved feeling that drew the viewer back to them: murder to give them catharsis, non sequiturs to compel them to return. Best to formulate details like that without being too rational about it, so that your subconscious may seize upon whatever feels powerful without being preempted by some perceived obligation to be witty, theatrical or clever. I've always remembered a conversation I had with my best friend growing up (he's now a prolific science fiction writer). We asked each other, what do you do when you're writing a story? Both of us had the same thought: I venture up to my mental attic and begin pulling out whatever fascinates or compels me. I use whatever current arcs upward from the Jacob's ladder of early memory: that is most potent, that holds the greatest charge of power, be it anger, pain or sadness. If I can feel it, chances are the audience will as well. We concluded that finding and using said power is far more important commercially than sitting down and deciding to write a commercial book or screenplay. The same holds true, I think, when adding touches to a scene in which an awful character does awful things. The scariest villains are often sympathetic and rational for long stretches: They aren't pretending to be good, they're emotionally unreliable. Such people are frightening because we don't know what they'll do and, as a result, don't know what we'll do. We can't always trust ourselves to mistrust them enough. I thought your answer to my question was spot-on, but you indicated you might need to think about said question a wee Hank longer to respond in full. If I've understood you, then please feel free to take your time if you're inclined to say more. I often take ages when responding to you. After all, the voices tell me we have lives. ====================== Hardware150: Please don't feel dumb after reading anything by me/us, since that isn't the intent. I'm not trying to be smart by talking this way, I'm only being myself. You happen to think differently and in different words, but that doesn't mean your thoughts are less worthy, it means you're an individual. We all see our presentation of ideas from the inside out. Every false start and aborted phrase is revealed to us, therefore our verbal faults seem more glaring than anyone else's. Other people look more together than that because we see only the finished product of their thought. You, friend, wax decorously modest, then go on to provoke thought with insightful comments. But you won't find "Saura's specificity" anywhere because it's my coinage: a summing of the virtues of director, Carlos Saura, expressed as a parallel possessive to Godwin's Law because it is part of a title. Titles improve when the music of repetition underlines the surprise of insight. =============== Strapping Young Ultrasupermonkeychimpfellow: I appreciate your heroic defense of the obvious, and it is true I sometimes forget (deliberately or otherwise) that an audience might need fairly obvious cues. I'd argue that part of the apparent need for the obvious comes from Hollywood board meetings making sure to spoon-feed their mega-audience every story point until no one can comprehend subtlety any more. I would argue that an average audience would re-learn that skill if we reintroduced the need. I can't trace it to an individual, but I believe the practice known as corporate dumbing down became far more prevalent after Spielberg and Lucas gave birth to The Blockbuster: budgets and anticipated profits on that level became to flicks what the celebrity bio has become to publishing (which has been taken over by emperors from other industries, who came to the table expecting impossible profits -- more than publishing has ever generated at the best of times). In short, I think we're both right. I need to respect the comprehension level of the average audience, but you aren't doing that audience any favor by reinforcing or pandering to said level. Re the complaint that a fairy tale adaptation wasn't true to the original: I think we agree the complaint is misguided at best: It presupposes we can trace the original version in the first place, and presumes the original to be the version to which the complainer has become attached: good luck with that. I've barked it before and I'll whinny it again (toot-toot): Authenticity is a myth. It's a red herring tossed at us in the hope we'll mistake manipulated social history for personal evolution. My problem is not with deviating from some imagined original version of a fairy tale. It is with anything that breaks the audience's narrative spell. In conventional music theory, one tries to avoid writing parallel fifths. The point isn't to be dogmatic but to teach students how to write parts that occur simultaneously but retain their independence homophonically and contrapuntally. The idea is not that parallel fifths are evil, but that two lines should not become one line inadvertently, since the goal in classical music is to make each voice as distinct as that of a character in a play. The student is learning to think on several levels at once, not to avoid stepping on cracks or walking under ladders. When I talk about not breaking the spell by introducing too-familiar characters from history, it's that sort of thing. The point isn't to assert annoying rules but to give the fairy tale an independent life and not drag it down. This, by the way, is turning out to be virtually the same argument Andre Breton had with Dali about injecting current events into surrealist paintings. Dali had every right to do it, but I'm with Breton when it comes to the result: a bit too obvious; not in the same league as the work of Remedios Varo, Max Ernst or his incredibly talented (and still living!) painter wife, Dorothea Tanning (talk about perfect nightmare fairy tales for adults!):
One last thing: Were you aware Guillermo Del Toro has co-written a trilogy of novels about vampires? If not, have a look: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Strain-Guillermo-del-Toro/dp/0007310250 An interview on the subject appears here: http://www.thewrap.com/article/2670
The fascist father in pans labyrinth didn't need to be accurate, just as the pan didn't need to be entirely accurate to any particular mythology. The movie is about archetypes and the juxtaposition of adult fear (within) to child fear (without) as expressed in Ofelia's potential psychosis. As for the question of when is cliche justified, the only answer can be context. The Nazis in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas were painfully trite, until you peeled back the second layer and understood that the film wasn't a commentary on Nazism and innocence lost, but a more universal commentary on an institutionalized Milgram effect (be it in a politcal party, nation, religion or even corporation). It is then you see that the shallow cliche was neccessary; Anything more elaborate would have obscured that abstraction.
Hellboy II was a good action movie, and del Toro's signature touches gave the movie a fantastic feeling. I admit I didn't go in looking for underlying meanings, so I'm sure I missed some of the more subtle aspects of the film. For me it was pure hero-fantasy escapism. Now there's a name that rolls of the tongue! That's a good point, and I concede that you're probably correct. As much as I appreciate turning off my brain for a mindless comedy, I do still enjoy the intellectual challenge of trying to understand a well-made story, even if I don't always get it right. I'm currently in a battle of wills with my wife and almost-2-year-old daughter over similar things. My daughter just wants to watch Finding Nemo every day. I'm an advocate of quiet story time.[/QUOTE] If I learn nothing else from this thread, I at least walk away with another book to add to my list: I'm now actively searching for Charles Addams' book of illustrated nursery rhymes that Nexxo mentioned. It'll go well next to the complete Grimm's fairy tales . -monkey
yeah that was a sad movie.. kinda like bridge to terabithia- had the same sort of ending I dunno I don't look at movies that deep- my favorite movie of all time is a b flick called wizards of the lost kingdom.. it was by far the best movie ever made- they had literally a sock puppet play a dragon and you could see the guys mouth through his cyclops mask.. oh and the look on kor's face as he looked like he couldn't wait for the film to be done as he half assed swings his sword around (not to mention the king who literally doesn't know how to hold a sword but mows down 2 elite soldiers by walking into them XD) and oh my god.. the midgets.. I can't really say much more- the only other movie I laughed harder was probably parts of norbit hellboy was really good I thought too.. liked the way they gave him personality on screen
