2006 adult fairy tale
Rating: 17/20
Plot: A girl's mother marries a cruel army captain in 1940's Spain. The girl's recruited by a fawn to accomplish three tasks while the chaos and revolution in the everyday world overwhelms.
I don't completely understand this movie and doubt I ever will. In a way, it's as simple as a fairy tale except nobody at all lives happily ever after and it's a once-upon-a-time that you wish never existed. I feel like I'm missing too much historical or cultural context to fully digest everything here, something that makes it feel a little less universal than other fairy tales. I did pick up a little more this time around though. It's such a dark movie, and del Toro, who really was allowed to let his imagination go nutsy with this, doesn't hide gruesome details. My wife accidentally saw two scenes while she was in the room doing other things, and both of them--one perhaps the most famous image from the film and the other involving a cheek--made her recoil in horror. But that's what a good adult fairy tale should do, right? As gruesome and bleak as this gets, it's unquestionably beautiful. The special effects, a few digitally-created creatures but a lot of practical special effects with some puppetry, blend with the reality flawlessly. And check out what's going on with the color here. Different tones are used for the fantastical worlds and the harshness of the real world. It's effective and making a distinction between reality and fantasy although both more than likely exist in the world created by del Toro. Just beautiful colors though, and there's also such a clarity or a sharpness with everything you see. It makes the monsters in the more fantastical parts of the story more real, the step-father villain more villainous. And I think del Toro's doing something pretty brilliant by including parallel imagery that connects the two worlds. I know there are secret doors, and there was one more I identified that I can't think of right now. It's the kind of thing that helps this reward subsequent viewings. Of course, things are thematically linked between the fairy tale part of the story with its palm-eyed monsters, fairies, regurgitating toads, and fawns and the brutal Fascist reality with its cruel violence. There are lies in both, characters suffering because of naivete, bad guys, despair in the shadows of heroism or maybe vice versa. This is sometimes really hard to watch despite the beautiful and imaginative imagery, but you've got to give del Toro credit for showing us things in the mid-aughts that we haven't seen before and for his balls for framing his story with shots of the young protagonist dying from a bullet wound to the stomach. Oh, and how about that little girl? Ivana Baquero is really good. Sergi Lopez's Captain Vidal character was so nastily written, the kind of villain that even a guy like me who often roots for villains could never side with, and he portrays the guy without bombast, quietly hostile and the perfect amount of ambiguity. This isn't a fun movie at all, but it's gorgeous and leaves you feeling exactly what an adult fairy tale should make you feel.
2 comments:
Visually great, but by the end I grew to really dislike the film. It was dark, depressing, and if I remember right, the girl was stupid because she was warned not to do something, but then she did it anyway. The movie is very well made, but I was disappointed by the experience. A 14.
Your memory's correct about being "stupid because she was warned not to do something," but I think that's part of the point. I think I had problems with the exact same thing though. She actually doesn't follow directions a few times (the time you're probably remembering best would be when she eats food on that weird monster guy's table after being told not to), but think about what has happened to the adults of the movie who just go along with what they're told to go along with. Part of growing up is learning to make your own decisions, right? Realizing that there are times when just listening to others isn't always the best move?
You're right about dark and depressing though. Fairy tales are supposed to end happily ever after, and this one is pretty much a downer from beginning to end.
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