In Korea, this movie was soooo famous for its 'child-friendly' poster that made parents to watch this movie with their kids which didnt end well. hahahhhaha
I wish I could believe that Ofelia really did survive and live eternally in the underworld, but saying that someone "returned to the kingdom of their father" is a common euphemism for death in many cultures, so I imagine the fairy tale was only an allegory for her situation, a way for her to wrap her mind around things that are unfathomable to her as a child. She was always going to die. That's the point - war is cruel, senseless, and people die for no good reason.
When analyzing the alignment of the faun, it’s important to remember that he never wanted Ofelia to be obedient. At the end, he reveals that she passed the test by not sacrificing her brother, and in the second trial, the knife is found in the one she chooses herself, not the one the fairies direct her to. Even the first trial, I believe she was told to “shove the rocks down into the toad’s mouth” which she also ended up not doing, instead tricking it into eating the stones. All that taken into consideration, I think it’s plausible that the faun wanted her to agitate the Pale Man. After all, if you can pass the trials by completing 2 out of 3, it’s not a good test. But why would he want her to anger the Pale Man? I think it, as well as everything else he does, is to teach Ofelia disobedience. He’s preparing her to be a leader, and if she accepts commands without question, she will expect her people to do the same. She has to wake the Pale Man, so that the faun can get angry with her, so they can see if she remains rebellious even when there’s backlash. As we can tell from Vidal, obedience leads to tyranny and fascism, and if Ofelia is obedient without thought, she will be a tyrannical and fascist leader.
Perhaps the same end could have been reached if she had been taught to be more questioning rather than being disobedient but I like the thought you put into it.
weird. just finished deathly halows 2. then wanted to see if i kill giants is like pans labarynth. mr del toro is always a name that makes me look twice, cancel my plans and go get popcorn.
Man I was hoping for a mention of magical realism, a common theme in Latin American literature, since Pan's Labyrinth is such a perfect embodiment of it!
We talked about it a lot after the screening of the film and a co-worker of ours (whose grandparents had to deal with the revolution and Franco for years after that) brought it up. It was a wonderful conversation but all of us sort of agreed that we weren't sure where to go with it in this episode. But it's something we'd like to revisit. I even felt sad that we left it out, but... honestly... I think we could all talk about this movie forever :) - Nick J.
I think talking about M.R. is out of place. Spain and Latinamerica are not the same! (even if they have a lot of similarities and Toro is Mexican) and Pan's Labyrinth happens in a truly spanish context, but even more, the M.R. is not about "fantasy worlds" nor the merging of them with the reality: it is about supernatural as something proper of the reality and everydayness, and it is under the perception (and memory) of people
Pan's Labyrinth is so good that I always forget that the dialogue is all in Spanish. I just went to rewatch it after seeing this video and was shocked to find that there are subtitles!
There are some really interesting parts of the dialogue which work way better with Spanish than they would in English- For example, when Vidal greets Carmen and Ofelia he says "Bienvenidos." Because Carmen and Ofelia are female, he should have said "bienvenidAs," but the fact that he doesn't represents that he's mainly addressing his unborn son inside Carmen- keep in mind as well that they don't KNOW its a son, reinforcing Vidal's misogyny and pretty chilling confidence. There are also things like the Faun addressing Ofelia as 'usted', effectively using the third person (or second person formal) to speak to her, showing the deep respect he has for the princess
Your comment doesn't make sense. What has to do with quality the fact that it's not in english? You sounded very ignorant. Showing you only watch movies in your language, denying yourself of masterpieces just because they have subtitles... What a shame you are, little man.
@@AlbertoFolres Reread his comment and if you dont understand, reread again. And if you still dont understand read his direct replies and consider how many thumbs up hes gotten, and that you are misunderstanding what he meant. Btw its you and your attitude that isnt coming off well. The original comment is fine. Me dgio este porque entiendo más que un lenguaje.
Guillermo del Toro didn't win the Oscar for this one, but now the universe balance has been finally restored. And the whole Mexican trinity of directores have Oscars of their own. On top of that, he's the sweetest person ever.
I heard someone explain it as “No matter how cruel and scary the fantasy world is, the real world is more cruel and more scary.” Which is how I read the film
There are two things you didn't mention: first off, Ophelia's story mirror's mercedes' story. Both are young, female and disobedient. They live in the same house and throughout the story acquire a knife and a key to help them. Both are also big sisters trying to protect their little brothers. The second thing is that Ophelia's red shoes might be a reference to a fairytale of a girl who bought red dancing shoes instead of black shoes for church, she was punished when she went to the dance and couldnt stop dancing, she either danced to death or had her legs cut off by a soldier (after which they, with the shoes, danced away).
Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite films of all time, probably in the Top 3. Not only that, but this movie might be the film I think of as being the closest to a "perfect" movie. Thanks for this episode. I really anticipated this, and I wasn't disappointed. Great job, guys! :)
No piece of art is truly perfect, but a definition for a "perfect" piece of art that I've found quite useful is that there is nothing you could think of adding or subtracting from it that could conceivably improve it. If Pan's Labyrinth fits that definition for you, then I think you should feel quite justified in calling it a perfect movie.
Sackobooks In that respect, I do indeed see Pan's Labyrinth as a "perfect movie", since I feel like nothing is out of place and I feel completely invested in every scene. Thanks for your opinion.
And he's in Star Trek Discovery, and isn't his talent just something to behold. I saw someone describe he and Andy Serkis like this: "Most actors pretend to be other people, but Serkis and Jones pretend to be other things"
If it helps, Pan was an interesting figure in mythology. He was both good and bad. During the day, his music would make people ecstatic and joyous. Yet at night, that same music would drive them mad with terror (which is where the word panic comes from). So Pan represented nature, and in a way life, in its entirety: beautiful yet terrifying. This may be why the faun acted as he did.
The thing Ophelia was looking for was meaning. Purpose. Reality is a horrible place, usually controlled by abusers like Vidal and enablers like Carmen. We go on about how everything happens for a reason and how everything works towards the good, but this is not so. Think of all the children who are born into completely hopeless situations. How many live their whole lives in misery, how many are sold as slaves or who suffer all types of abuse or who die from starvation. The fantasy realm is just as dark and cruel as reality in this movie because darkness and cruelty pervades Ophelia's life. Imagination is very powerful, but one can seldom imagine healthy behaviors or safe homes or happy situations if that isn't what you've experienced in life. And yet, by imagining the fantasy world, Ophelia can at least think of herself as having importance and purpose. She doesn't have to acknowledge the possibility that she's just another little girl who will suffer and die for no reason at all at the hands of the greedy, the cruel, and the stupid. The coping mechanism that she uses cannot make a safer world, but she can imbue her struggles with beauty and meaning, and draw enough strength from that to fight and to live what little life she has with some measure of agency and principle.
It’s important to note the faun forcing Ophelia to sacrifice her brother was a test, and she was able to enter the magical realm solely because she herself made the ultimate sacrifice of death
I think the biggest clue (at least if I remember correctly), is that when Vidal locks Ophelia in the room before she drugs him, she had to have used the magical chalk the Faun gave her in order to have escaped. I think it's the only way to explain her getting out of that room. And yes, everyone should watch The Devil's Backbone.
The thing about Pan's Labyrinth is that every proof that the fantasy world is real also proves otherwise. When Ofelia went in that quest where she opened the portal with a piece of chalk, right after she left the room, the wall came back to normal and the drawn door made of chalk had disappeared, but in the end, when Merecedes goes looking for her, the door is still there. Also, in the labyrinth when the walls opened for Ofelia to pass and closed before Vidal arrived, it would've been certain that the magic realm was true, but soon after Ofelia arrives the center of the labyrinth, so does Vidal, which means he must've found another way and same goes for Ofelia. The mandrake root, though, is a fair point. Of course, it could be just coincidence, but we know it's not the case. Either way, I like to believe the underworld realm is real, even though when she finally got to her kingdom we saw her mother and father as queen and king, and then it cut to Ofelia dying, so she could've been delirious at that point. BUT IT WAS REAL! ;--;
This fact is nicely foreshadowed in the beginning of the movie when the narrator says that "the princess escaped the underground world eluding her keepers"
Something that I love about classical fairytales is that as much as everything in fairytale worlds is magical and whimsical, it is just as deadly as the real one.
This movie left me confused and heartbroken. The review has helped make some sense of these feelings but I don't know if I could ever bring myself to watch it again.
Tim Burton used to make interesting movies, nowadays he lost his touch. Del Toro is still making fascinating new movies, but I believe pan’s labyrinth was his peak.
Perhaps Guillermo del Toro’s greatest gift to modern cinema is the production (and now popularization) of fairytale films that are specifically on an adult level.
The film's ambiguity was my favourite aspect. Even characters/places nominally favourable the protagonist, like the stick insect, faun and labyrinthare ambivalent, and even sinister. Personally, I was half-expecting the Faun to turn on Ofelia all the way through the movie. This is much truer to the roots of fairy stories, which are much deeper than simple black-and-white modern morality.
Really? Del Toro is always super preachy and binary good/evil... Using fascists as demonic personification of "pure evil" for example, is more than just unambiguous, it's fascist. The only way to justify this would be to say that the whole film is very deeply inside a child's mind, but there aren't any real clues to say that our child is an unreliable narrator...
@@lhpoetry I was referring more to the fantastic elements, but I agree the political -sub- text is where del Toro falls down. It's ironic that the sorts of creators who can conjure such ambiguity and nuance in fantasy become so dogmatic and Manichean when it comes to reality. Though that itself illustrates the tension between ideology and imagination.
@@TomorrowWeLive: Fair enough. I came into the film after taking a History and Memory Spanish Civil War Literature class, so I was shocked. Fair to say the SCW wasn't Del Toro's primary focus, but I felt similarly about the Shape of Water, which also created dehumanized caricatures of evil, which I think are dangerous because it encodes the message that evil isn't inside of us.
Luis Sierra monsters are usually simplified ways to represent complex situations; showing a monster's complexity shows that things are never that simple, even if they were actually monsters.
I first watched this film because I heard it had a lot of critical acclaim, and at the end of it, I didn’t really understand why. It was a beautiful film, but I knew there was a deeper meaning I wasn’t comprehending. This video really makes me realize how fantastic this film is, so thank you for that! Because of this video, I’m going to watch Pan’s Labyrinth again!
Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite films of all time. It's beautifully woven together, and provides an elegantly stark contrast between the beautiful and the horrific. The ending still makes me cry every time I watch it.
3:46, I don't know how you couldn't break out into tears at the end of your synopsis; the ending of the movie is one that I will carry with me to the end of my own days.
On a Friday night when my friend and I were still in college, we wanted to go out for a movie. She presented two choices: a movie called Smokin' Aces and a foreign film I had not yet heard of: Pan's Labyrinth. I still bring up that fateful decision to her to this day and am so glad we both chose to see Pan's Labyrinth that night.
I love Pans' Labyrinth, because it shows my grandfathers' homeland as it truly was during his time there and why he had to escape to Cuba. My grandfather and others like him would appreciate this film more so than US audience who have no idea of Spaniard History. I am not saying US people don't know anything of it, just that it is different when you are from that country and experienced that regime first hand.
Magical Realism at its finest. One of my favorite movies of all time. Magnificent and captivating storytelling, set design, acting, directing, editing.
Del Toro is my favorite director, I love his style of film making from the experimental writing, to the wonderful and occasionally terrifying character design. Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth are my particular favorites
3:50 it can also be interpreted that flower bloomed because she got rid of the toad sapping the life from that tree and now it’s beginning to bloom again because of her. Both a real and fairytale explanation to it just like the rest of the movie
We do this film in my Spanish 3 class every year. The question they are all asked to answer in an essay is "Is the fantasy world real or not?" Having watched it 20x or so now, I can honestly argue both sides and have had students do so well on both sides.
I REALLY want more films of this genre. Where the fairytail realm is just as brutal and unforgiving and corrupt as the real world. Combined with the practical effects, it is its own genre of film that rarely gets made sadly
Un gran video como siempre, una obra de fantasia moderna que merece existir en la cultura popular y la memoria de los lectores o expectadores junto a alicia en el pais de las maravillas, el mago de oz y el viaje de chihiro.
This movie is absurdly beautiful, better than most Oscar winners out there. I still feel tingly when I remember the story. Del Toro is great at taking us to the most wonderful journeys.
Pan’s Labyrinth is a masterpiece. It’s one of my favorite movies of all-time. If you’ve never seen it I HIGHLY recommend you check it out. One of the best movies ever.
I thing that a “The Shape Of Water” film criticism would be great because it is a great movie thanks to the amazing cinematography, music and history. It would also be great because it’s very recent. I hope you make a video of this series of this movie.
I really love this movie, it's one of the cinematic masterpieces of the early 21st century. I can't point out a single thing which disturbs me and that happens very rarely. It's lightyears ahead of The Shape of Water which wins an Oscar for best movie...
This is a truly scary movie. I love it from start to finish even without the subtitles! The scenes communicate to you! PS The Devil's Backbone is one of my favourites. Fernando Tielveee!!!
I will never be able to forget two scenes in this film. One scene is, as you mentioned briefly, when Vidal bashes that rebel's face in for it's pure uncensored graphic imagery (too many films shy away from the brutality of real life). The second scene is when the Doctor gets shot by Vidal, because of how insanely realistic and well shot that scene was. I have NEVER seen a more realistic gunshot death in any film. Ever.
THe movie reminds of the common Latin American writing style of magic realism. When I read A Hundred Years of Solitude after watching the movie I got really strong vibes from it. It's that mix of fantasy and reality where you can't tell where one ends and one begins, because both are equally unbelievable
No, unfortunately that's the only one I've read, but the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a couple other books that are similar and I'm sure if you ask around you'll get a lot of suggestions
My favourite attribute of Guillermo Del Toro's visual style with his monsters is their ability to both horrify and mystify, be ugly and beautiful, be degenerate monsters yet somehow majestic creatures all at the same time.
Oh, I'm definitely watching the Devil's Backbone. The Spanish Civil War is such a fascinating event, so I'm glad Del Toro himself made two whole films dealing with its themes.
I'm sorry you never read up on history beyond high school, and encourage you to educate yourself to the best of your ability, but you can cool off trying to pass your little grade school-level takes as grand theses. I don't take that bait.
Johnnythewizard The Mage yes, the republicans in Spain did horrible horrible things. They not even allowed men to vote, but also women!! They created a democracy and fought for human rights! Such terrible people. They definitely needed to be executed. It is good that we got Franco, who saved Spain. He was so good that the other good dictators around like Mussolini and Hitler decided to help him make Spain a better place.
The Devil's Backbone is a much less "fantastical" movie. It's a ghost story, and (in my opinion) one of the more powerful ones. I haven't seen The Shape of Water yet, but Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone are my two favorite del Toro movies as well as just two of my favorite movies. - Nick J.
Das Leben Der Anderen ist better. And I love El Laberinto Del Fauno, but Das Leben ist just better. Also, they decided it was going to compete for México instead of Spain, I think is way more spaniard than mexican
Two things I loved about the film that weren't mentioned: the astonishing soundtrack and incredible forests from Sierra de Guadarrama, Segovia (Spain). But it's always difficult to fit everything in so little time! Cheers!
I love Pan's Labyrinth, but Del Toro made a terrible mistake in the story. A "key" plot element is the temporary theft of the key to the lock on the storage shed, taken to enable the rebels to steal stores from the shed (duh). But the rebels didn't sneak into the compound to break into the shed stealthily - they raided the compound with gunfire and grenades! In which case they didn't need the key, they could have just forced the lock to get into the storage shed because there was no need for stealth.
first watched this movie in spanish class last year and immediately fell in love. I've rewatched it so many times since and i get more impressed every time i watch it. so i was so excited when i saw that crash course did a video on it
Very well saud. Love Del Torro. I watched Pan's labyrinth years ago and with the success of Shape of water, it's nice to see people are actually wanting to watch Pan's labyrinth. Great movie and amazing points of view with characters.
As mad as the world is today, it seems reasonable to consider that Ophelia's 'fantasy world' is real. At this point, if someone told me that thunder was, in actuality, giants rolling boulders downhill, I'd be open to the suggestion. That said, 'Pan's Labyrinth' is an amazing film - beautiful, horrifying and unforgettable. Thank you, for a nicely done analysis.
Esta es una de mis películas favoritas me recuerdo de cuando yo estaba chiquito mi Mamá me mostró este película, me encanto, y también me asusto pero eso no cambia que esté película es una de las mejor películas que yo visto en mi vida. Bien hecho hablando de este película!
This movie has always intrigued me. I saw it for the first time at 12 (behind my parent's backs' of course) and have not re-watched it since, but I can still remember the pale man, the giant toad, the faun, the torture/interrogation scene, and the deaths of Vidal and Ofelia quite clearly. Even though I couldn't conceptualize it as a "great" film at the time as I was quite young, clearly the film and its imagery has stayed with me (for over a decade no less!). Maybe I'll have to give it another watch, but my list of movies to watch/re-watch is so massive at this point it might be a while. Still, I'm sure a few more months or years won't hurt me because I'm clearly not forgetting this movie anytime soon.
"It's a fairy tale about a child, but a violent, R-rated film clearly made for adults." Then how come my parents let's me and my older siblings watch it when we were all younger than 10?!
Ofelia's quest could also be symbolic for her journey into maturity, her death being the end of her childhood and her rebirth in the faery realm as a young woman. In faery tales, the colour red is often associated with a young woman's maturity e.g. Red Riding Hood.
The interpretation where Ophelia is escaping into a fantasy world is only superficially valid. There's a short shot when the rebels break into the room where Ophelia was being held (meaning the door was still locked, btw) wherein the camera pans down to show an open "chalk door." Ophelia is not in this scene, so she cannot be there imagining it. The "fairy tale world" portion of the film is meant to be a literal part of the film's reality. It's an easy detail to miss, being less than a second long, but that proves it emphatically.
In Korea, this movie was soooo famous for its 'child-friendly' poster that made parents to watch this movie with their kids which didnt end well. hahahhhaha
Lmao I'm laughing imagining families freak out over this hahahahhahahahah
😂😂😂
Knob oh god. Imagine the look on both the child and the parents face when Vidal brutally beat the farmer’s face repeatedly.
My dad took me and my sister to watch stepbrothers when we were kids. We got all the way to the drumset scene
it would still be rated R
I wish I could believe that Ofelia really did survive and live eternally in the underworld, but saying that someone "returned to the kingdom of their father" is a common euphemism for death in many cultures, so I imagine the fairy tale was only an allegory for her situation, a way for her to wrap her mind around things that are unfathomable to her as a child. She was always going to die. That's the point - war is cruel, senseless, and people die for no good reason.
When analyzing the alignment of the faun, it’s important to remember that he never wanted Ofelia to be obedient. At the end, he reveals that she passed the test by not sacrificing her brother, and in the second trial, the knife is found in the one she chooses herself, not the one the fairies direct her to. Even the first trial, I believe she was told to “shove the rocks down into the toad’s mouth” which she also ended up not doing, instead tricking it into eating the stones. All that taken into consideration, I think it’s plausible that the faun wanted her to agitate the Pale Man. After all, if you can pass the trials by completing 2 out of 3, it’s not a good test. But why would he want her to anger the Pale Man? I think it, as well as everything else he does, is to teach Ofelia disobedience. He’s preparing her to be a leader, and if she accepts commands without question, she will expect her people to do the same. She has to wake the Pale Man, so that the faun can get angry with her, so they can see if she remains rebellious even when there’s backlash. As we can tell from Vidal, obedience leads to tyranny and fascism, and if Ofelia is obedient without thought, she will be a tyrannical and fascist leader.
Perhaps the same end could have been reached if she had been taught to be more questioning rather than being disobedient but I like the thought you put into it.
"Of course it's all happening inside your head, but that doesn't mean it's not real" -Albus Dumbledore
Omg i love you
Yesss! And also: "Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light".
weird. just finished deathly halows 2. then wanted to see if i kill giants is like pans labarynth. mr del toro is always a name that makes me look twice, cancel my plans and go get popcorn.
🌋 Mind blown.
a fictional character said it, and that doesn't mean is not true.
The practical effects have aged so well. The Pale Man looks just as terrifying as over a decade ago.
Man I was hoping for a mention of magical realism, a common theme in Latin American literature, since Pan's Labyrinth is such a perfect embodiment of it!
Emily he obviously like most americans do not understand it or know about it.
We talked about it a lot after the screening of the film and a co-worker of ours (whose grandparents had to deal with the revolution and Franco for years after that) brought it up. It was a wonderful conversation but all of us sort of agreed that we weren't sure where to go with it in this episode. But it's something we'd like to revisit. I even felt sad that we left it out, but... honestly... I think we could all talk about this movie forever :)
- Nick J.
I imagine this co-worker saying now "I TOLD YOU GUYS!"
Silvia has every right to :D
- Nick J.
I think talking about M.R. is out of place. Spain and Latinamerica are not the same! (even if they have a lot of similarities and Toro is Mexican) and Pan's Labyrinth happens in a truly spanish context, but even more, the M.R. is not about "fantasy worlds" nor the merging of them with the reality: it is about supernatural as something proper of the reality and everydayness, and it is under the perception (and memory) of people
Pan's Labyrinth is so good that I always forget that the dialogue is all in Spanish. I just went to rewatch it after seeing this video and was shocked to find that there are subtitles!
Robert Baillargeon same!!! I watch this movie since I was a kid
there is also the fact that the faun's actor did not understand spanish, he is speaking phonetically all his lines
There are some really interesting parts of the dialogue which work way better with Spanish than they would in English- For example, when Vidal greets Carmen and Ofelia he says "Bienvenidos." Because Carmen and Ofelia are female, he should have said "bienvenidAs," but the fact that he doesn't represents that he's mainly addressing his unborn son inside Carmen- keep in mind as well that they don't KNOW its a son, reinforcing Vidal's misogyny and pretty chilling confidence. There are also things like the Faun addressing Ofelia as 'usted', effectively using the third person (or second person formal) to speak to her, showing the deep respect he has for the princess
Your comment doesn't make sense. What has to do with quality the fact that it's not in english? You sounded very ignorant. Showing you only watch movies in your language, denying yourself of masterpieces just because they have subtitles... What a shame you are, little man.
@@AlbertoFolres Reread his comment and if you dont understand, reread again. And if you still dont understand read his direct replies and consider how many thumbs up hes gotten, and that you are misunderstanding what he meant.
Btw its you and your attitude that isnt coming off well. The original comment is fine. Me dgio este porque entiendo más que un lenguaje.
Guillermo del Toro didn't win the Oscar for this one, but now the universe balance has been finally restored.
And the whole Mexican trinity of directores have Oscars of their own.
On top of that, he's the sweetest person ever.
yaddar so Toro Innaratu and who else?
JgL_07 Alfonso Cuarón, Iñárritu and del Toro. The three compadres.
How do you know he’s sweet?
R Ree He's tasted him.
yaddar I preferred this over The Shape of Water. They're both beautiful but the pacing of El Labirinto del Fauno is much better and so beautiful
I heard someone explain it as “No matter how cruel and scary the fantasy world is, the real world is more cruel and more scary.”
Which is how I read the film
There are two things you didn't mention:
first off, Ophelia's story mirror's mercedes' story. Both are young, female and disobedient. They live in the same house and throughout the story acquire a knife and a key to help them. Both are also big sisters trying to protect their little brothers.
The second thing is that Ophelia's red shoes might be a reference to a fairytale of a girl who bought red dancing shoes instead of black shoes for church, she was punished when she went to the dance and couldnt stop dancing, she either danced to death or had her legs cut off by a soldier (after which they, with the shoes, danced away).
Nice
So clever 😀
Woooaaah I never got the parallel stories thing 😃
It's a reference to both that, and The Wizard of Oz.
The wizard of oz contains bright red shoes and both the protagonist in the films is a girl
Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite films of all time, probably in the Top 3. Not only that, but this movie might be the film I think of as being the closest to a "perfect" movie. Thanks for this episode. I really anticipated this, and I wasn't disappointed. Great job, guys! :)
P.S. I will watch The Devil's Backbone as soon as I can.
It's a very different experience but I think you'll enjoy it :)
- Nick J.
Akshat Nagarkar +
No piece of art is truly perfect, but a definition for a "perfect" piece of art that I've found quite useful is that there is nothing you could think of adding or subtracting from it that could conceivably improve it. If Pan's Labyrinth fits that definition for you, then I think you should feel quite justified in calling it a perfect movie.
Sackobooks In that respect, I do indeed see Pan's Labyrinth as a "perfect movie", since I feel like nothing is out of place and I feel completely invested in every scene. Thanks for your opinion.
A week ago i found out that the actor who plays the fuan also plays the fishman in shape of water
And Abe Sapien of the Hellboy movies
The great Doug Jones!!!!
- Nick J.
he also did most of the motion capture for the ghosts in Crimson Peak
And the pale man too!
I think Doug Bradly was also pinhead from the hell raiser franchise
I am a huge fan of practical effects. I am always amazed by the creatures del Toro is able to bring to life.
Moving Parts Gaming (
And he's in Star Trek Discovery, and isn't his talent just something to behold. I saw someone describe he and Andy Serkis like this: "Most actors pretend to be other people, but Serkis and Jones pretend to be other things"
If it helps, Pan was an interesting figure in mythology. He was both good and bad. During the day, his music would make people ecstatic and joyous. Yet at night, that same music would drive them mad with terror (which is where the word panic comes from). So Pan represented nature, and in a way life, in its entirety: beautiful yet terrifying. This may be why the faun acted as he did.
The thing Ophelia was looking for was meaning. Purpose.
Reality is a horrible place, usually controlled by abusers like Vidal and enablers like Carmen. We go on about how everything happens for a reason and how everything works towards the good, but this is not so. Think of all the children who are born into completely hopeless situations. How many live their whole lives in misery, how many are sold as slaves or who suffer all types of abuse or who die from starvation.
The fantasy realm is just as dark and cruel as reality in this movie because darkness and cruelty pervades Ophelia's life. Imagination is very powerful, but one can seldom imagine healthy behaviors or safe homes or happy situations if that isn't what you've experienced in life.
And yet, by imagining the fantasy world, Ophelia can at least think of herself as having importance and purpose. She doesn't have to acknowledge the possibility that she's just another little girl who will suffer and die for no reason at all at the hands of the greedy, the cruel, and the stupid.
The coping mechanism that she uses cannot make a safer world, but she can imbue her struggles with beauty and meaning, and draw enough strength from that to fight and to live what little life she has with some measure of agency and principle.
It’s important to note the faun forcing Ophelia to sacrifice her brother was a test, and she was able to enter the magical realm solely because she herself made the ultimate sacrifice of death
I think the biggest clue (at least if I remember correctly), is that when Vidal locks Ophelia in the room before she drugs him, she had to have used the magical chalk the Faun gave her in order to have escaped. I think it's the only way to explain her getting out of that room.
And yes, everyone should watch The Devil's Backbone.
The thing about Pan's Labyrinth is that every proof that the fantasy world is real also proves otherwise. When Ofelia went in that quest where she opened the portal with a piece of chalk, right after she left the room, the wall came back to normal and the drawn door made of chalk had disappeared, but in the end, when Merecedes goes looking for her, the door is still there. Also, in the labyrinth when the walls opened for Ofelia to pass and closed before Vidal arrived, it would've been certain that the magic realm was true, but soon after Ofelia arrives the center of the labyrinth, so does Vidal, which means he must've found another way and same goes for Ofelia. The mandrake root, though, is a fair point. Of course, it could be just coincidence, but we know it's not the case. Either way, I like to believe the underworld realm is real, even though when she finally got to her kingdom we saw her mother and father as queen and king, and then it cut to Ofelia dying, so she could've been delirious at that point. BUT IT WAS REAL! ;--;
This fact is nicely foreshadowed in the beginning of the movie when the narrator says that "the princess escaped the underground world eluding her keepers"
Something that I love about classical fairytales is that as much as everything in fairytale worlds is magical and whimsical, it is just as deadly as the real one.
This movie left me confused and heartbroken. The review has helped make some sense of these feelings but I don't know if I could ever bring myself to watch it again.
Japanthewoman when did u watch it
I was heartbroken too, because I interpreted the fantasy as having been completely in her head and thus the ending is pure tragedy
I watched this movie when I was 9 and it traumatized me, such a horrible movie for a kid
Yes.
Unsatisfying ending.
Beautifully filmed ugliness.
It’s November 2022 and it’s very interesting to see that on 5:35 you’re talking about Del Toro while referencing Pinocchio ;-)
Guillermo del Toro and Tim Burton are my favorite directors because they both do gothic and weird art.
omg same
Tim Burton used to make interesting movies, nowadays he lost his touch. Del Toro is still making fascinating new movies, but I believe pan’s labyrinth was his peak.
Can yolu evaluate on this a bit more? I found your comment very interesting.
@@Sebentheyargimachine you mean elaborate not evaluate
Perhaps Guillermo del Toro’s greatest gift to modern cinema is the production (and now popularization) of fairytale films that are specifically on an adult level.
The film's ambiguity was my favourite aspect. Even characters/places nominally favourable the protagonist, like the stick insect, faun and labyrinthare ambivalent, and even sinister. Personally, I was half-expecting the Faun to turn on Ofelia all the way through the movie. This is much truer to the roots of fairy stories, which are much deeper than simple black-and-white modern morality.
Really? Del Toro is always super preachy and binary good/evil... Using fascists as demonic personification of "pure evil" for example, is more than just unambiguous, it's fascist. The only way to justify this would be to say that the whole film is very deeply inside a child's mind, but there aren't any real clues to say that our child is an unreliable narrator...
@@lhpoetry I was referring more to the fantastic elements, but I agree the political -sub- text is where del Toro falls down. It's ironic that the sorts of creators who can conjure such ambiguity and nuance in fantasy become so dogmatic and Manichean when it comes to reality. Though that itself illustrates the tension between ideology and imagination.
@@TomorrowWeLive: Fair enough. I came into the film after taking a History and Memory Spanish Civil War Literature class, so I was shocked. Fair to say the SCW wasn't Del Toro's primary focus, but I felt similarly about the Shape of Water, which also created dehumanized caricatures of evil, which I think are dangerous because it encodes the message that evil isn't inside of us.
You guys just had to play a rendition of the lullaby song. *cries in a corner*
That was my addition. Blame me. *hands you a tissue and cries a long side you*
- Nick J.
Del Toro's obsessed with fancy monsters. What an incredible guy :)
why, tho, all his movies have monsters
Luis Sierra monsters are usually simplified ways to represent complex situations; showing a monster's complexity shows that things are never that simple, even if they were actually monsters.
tahsin musarrat where are you from?
The shape of water scarred me lol
As a native Spanish speaker I'm amazed and grateful for the excellent pronunciation of the Spanish names. You guys have a really high standard!
Michael is Latino, so it probably wasn't that hard for him.
I first watched this film because I heard it had a lot of critical acclaim, and at the end of it, I didn’t really understand why. It was a beautiful film, but I knew there was a deeper meaning I wasn’t comprehending. This video really makes me realize how fantastic this film is, so thank you for that! Because of this video, I’m going to watch Pan’s Labyrinth again!
Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite films of all time. It's beautifully woven together, and provides an elegantly stark contrast between the beautiful and the horrific. The ending still makes me cry every time I watch it.
3:46, I don't know how you couldn't break out into tears at the end of your synopsis; the ending of the movie is one that I will carry with me to the end of my own days.
On a Friday night when my friend and I were still in college, we wanted to go out for a movie. She presented two choices: a movie called Smokin' Aces and a foreign film I had not yet heard of: Pan's Labyrinth. I still bring up that fateful decision to her to this day and am so glad we both chose to see Pan's Labyrinth that night.
I love Pans' Labyrinth, because it shows my grandfathers' homeland as it truly was during his time there and why he had to escape to Cuba. My grandfather and others like him would appreciate this film more so than US audience who have no idea of Spaniard History. I am not saying US people don't know anything of it, just that it is different when you are from that country and experienced that regime first hand.
Magical Realism at its finest. One of my favorite movies of all time. Magnificent and captivating storytelling, set design, acting, directing, editing.
I love that he uses real costumes for his monsters, i’m so tired of CGI
I saw ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ when it came out in theaters. I sat balling my eyes out at the end and walked out of there a changed person.
Del Toro is my favorite director, I love his style of film making from the experimental writing, to the wonderful and occasionally terrifying character design. Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth are my particular favorites
3:50 it can also be interpreted that flower bloomed because she got rid of the toad sapping the life from that tree and now it’s beginning to bloom again because of her. Both a real and fairytale explanation to it just like the rest of the movie
The script for this film is so beautiful. Only Guillermo could write something like it. 💜
We do this film in my Spanish 3 class every year. The question they are all asked to answer in an essay is "Is the fantasy world real or not?" Having watched it 20x or so now, I can honestly argue both sides and have had students do so well on both sides.
Would you mind giving some short pro's and con's. More interested in con's since I'm on the pro side.
Frane Šustić I guess she won’t be replying :(
One of my favorite movies! I'm glad you finally covered it 💚
Thanks! It's also a favorite around our office. Such a wonderful film!!!
- Nick J.
I REALLY want more films of this genre. Where the fairytail realm is just as brutal and unforgiving and corrupt as the real world. Combined with the practical effects, it is its own genre of film that rarely gets made sadly
Un gran video como siempre, una obra de fantasia moderna que merece existir en la cultura popular y la memoria de los lectores o expectadores junto a alicia en el pais de las maravillas, el mago de oz y el viaje de chihiro.
Gracias!
- Nick J.
Vicente Ortega Rubilar +
Que Es Un Fantasma?
Bien dicho, Vicente.
Some translate please
Could you do Pedro Almodovar? It would be amazing to see a crash course vid on one of his films like Volver!
El Laberinto del Fauno. Epic movie
One of my favorite movies of all time. Definitely not to be confused with “The Labyrinth” with David Bowie
A detail that backs up some of what you were saying is that Vidal staggers in the exact same way towards the end as the pale monster did.
Guillermo del Toro is my favorite director. Thanks for this video! Pan's Labyrinth is beautiful.
This movie is absurdly beautiful, better than most Oscar winners out there. I still feel tingly when I remember the story. Del Toro is great at taking us to the most wonderful journeys.
Pan’s Labyrinth is a masterpiece. It’s one of my favorite movies of all-time. If you’ve never seen it I HIGHLY recommend you check it out. One of the best movies ever.
adub4ever +
I thing that a “The Shape Of Water” film criticism would be great because it is a great movie thanks to the amazing cinematography, music and history. It would also be great because it’s very recent.
I hope you make a video of this series of this movie.
I really love this movie, it's one of the cinematic masterpieces of the early 21st century. I can't point out a single thing which disturbs me and that happens very rarely. It's lightyears ahead of The Shape of Water which wins an Oscar for best movie...
This is a truly scary movie. I love it from start to finish even without the subtitles! The scenes communicate to you! PS The Devil's Backbone is one of my favourites. Fernando Tielveee!!!
I will never be able to forget two scenes in this film. One scene is, as you mentioned briefly, when Vidal bashes that rebel's face in for it's pure uncensored graphic imagery (too many films shy away from the brutality of real life). The second scene is when the Doctor gets shot by Vidal, because of how insanely realistic and well shot that scene was. I have NEVER seen a more realistic gunshot death in any film. Ever.
“Unless a nations life is at peril, war is murder.” Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
I’ve watched this movie so many times, with so many questions. Thank you this brings so much clarity to my confusion.
THe movie reminds of the common Latin American writing style of magic realism. When I read A Hundred Years of Solitude after watching the movie I got really strong vibes from it. It's that mix of fantasy and reality where you can't tell where one ends and one begins, because both are equally unbelievable
cool! Do you recommend any other books in this genre?
No, unfortunately that's the only one I've read, but the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a couple other books that are similar and I'm sure if you ask around you'll get a lot of suggestions
@@cutemedli7 I've heard Don Quixote is like that
Ah, these videos are so, so good. You have been an excellent host, and the editing is sublime.
oh im so glad youre presenting this and not some of the other hosts
My favourite attribute of Guillermo Del Toro's visual style with his monsters is their ability to both horrify and mystify, be ugly and beautiful, be degenerate monsters yet somehow majestic creatures all at the same time.
Oh, I'm definitely watching the Devil's Backbone. The Spanish Civil War is such a fascinating event, so I'm glad Del Toro himself made two whole films dealing with its themes.
My bud, you're barking up the wrong tree if you think you can sell me Francoist propaganda.
"I'm not a Francoist, but I blindly subscribe to the Francoist narrative of a lone dictator standing up to degenerates who deserved to be murdered."
k
I'm sorry you never read up on history beyond high school, and encourage you to educate yourself to the best of your ability, but you can cool off trying to pass your little grade school-level takes as grand theses. I don't take that bait.
Johnnythewizard The Mage yes, the republicans in Spain did horrible horrible things. They not even allowed men to vote, but also women!! They created a democracy and fought for human rights! Such terrible people. They definitely needed to be executed. It is good that we got Franco, who saved Spain. He was so good that the other good dictators around like Mussolini and Hitler decided to help him make Spain a better place.
The Devil's Backbone is a much less "fantastical" movie. It's a ghost story, and (in my opinion) one of the more powerful ones. I haven't seen The Shape of Water yet, but Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone are my two favorite del Toro movies as well as just two of my favorite movies.
- Nick J.
The fascist captain's death is one of my favorite scenes ever, and I haven't even seen the entire movie lol
One of my favorite films/stories of all time.
Nice. Was waiting all week for this.
i saw this movie in spain and i don´t remeber that happy ending. i remeber the movie ending on Ophilas death.
This should have won best picture years ago
Das Leben Der Anderen ist better. And I love El Laberinto Del Fauno, but Das Leben ist just better. Also, they decided it was going to compete for México instead of Spain, I think is way more spaniard than mexican
Two things I loved about the film that weren't mentioned: the astonishing soundtrack and incredible forests from Sierra de Guadarrama, Segovia (Spain). But it's always difficult to fit everything in so little time! Cheers!
I love Pan's Labyrinth, but Del Toro made a terrible mistake in the story. A "key" plot element is the temporary theft of the key to the lock on the storage shed, taken to enable the rebels to steal stores from the shed (duh). But the rebels didn't sneak into the compound to break into the shed stealthily - they raided the compound with gunfire and grenades! In which case they didn't need the key, they could have just forced the lock to get into the storage shed because there was no need for stealth.
When the music cut in so many emotions happened at once. Why you do me like that?
For sure in my top 5 films of all time
first watched this movie in spanish class last year and immediately fell in love. I've rewatched it so many times since and i get more impressed every time i watch it. so i was so excited when i saw that crash course did a video on it
My father took me to watch this Pan's Labyrinth when I was 13, under the impression it was a Harry Potter-esque kind of a movie...
This movie was terrifying as a kid
And I didn’t even watch the gore scenes
Just the pale man alone
Okay when the lullaby started playing at the end of the video I just felt this rush of sadness ahhh
Great episode!
I'm so glad this is a new series!
Very well saud. Love Del Torro. I watched Pan's labyrinth years ago and with the success of Shape of water, it's nice to see people are actually wanting to watch Pan's labyrinth. Great movie and amazing points of view with characters.
Aw that music! Don't forget to check out the Nerdwriter's take on this movie.
More excellent work Michael and team. Thank You All.
When I hear "Princess Moanna" I just think
MOANA. MAKE WAAAAY MAKE WAAAAY
I love his voice. And love a good critical analysis!
One of the finest films I've seen.
As mad as the world is today, it seems reasonable to consider that Ophelia's 'fantasy world' is real. At this point, if someone told me that thunder was, in actuality, giants rolling boulders downhill, I'd be open to the suggestion. That said, 'Pan's Labyrinth' is an amazing film - beautiful, horrifying and unforgettable. Thank you, for a nicely done analysis.
I didn't know you were doing CCs! Congratulations!
I remember this film! I watched it when I was in a film class in my junior school or something. It really freaked me out lol
I love it when Pan's Labyrinth music Lullaby was played at the end of the video.
I love Crash Course videos so much. Like thank you for sharing such knowledge.
i've nEVER CLICKED ANYTHING SO FAST IN MY LIFE
Anabel Paco-Cano yas same
go back to tUMBLR PLS
I really enjoy your explanations of the movie, but also your descriptions of what film criticism is, maybe more so.
hoped the character Mercedes had been mentioned more as a matron/savior figure
Amazing movie with a beautiful and yet melodic score throughout
I love these Crash Course Film Criticism videos. Please make more!
I saw this movie when I was 5. Still loving it after all these years.
Esta es una de mis películas favoritas me recuerdo de cuando yo estaba chiquito mi Mamá me mostró este película, me encanto, y también me asusto pero eso no cambia que esté película es una de las mejor películas que yo visto en mi vida. Bien hecho hablando de este película!
El Laberinto del Fauna is truly *the* masterpiece of 21st century film art. And also my favorite movie.
My 'soul' feel fulfilled. That was so good, man.
YES!!!! Love this film! Thank you for making an episode about it!
This movie has always intrigued me. I saw it for the first time at 12 (behind my parent's backs' of course) and have not re-watched it since, but I can still remember the pale man, the giant toad, the faun, the torture/interrogation scene, and the deaths of Vidal and Ofelia quite clearly. Even though I couldn't conceptualize it as a "great" film at the time as I was quite young, clearly the film and its imagery has stayed with me (for over a decade no less!). Maybe I'll have to give it another watch, but my list of movies to watch/re-watch is so massive at this point it might be a while. Still, I'm sure a few more months or years won't hurt me because I'm clearly not forgetting this movie anytime soon.
"It's a fairy tale about a child, but a violent, R-rated film clearly made for adults."
Then how come my parents let's me and my older siblings watch it when we were all younger than 10?!
Ofelia's quest could also be symbolic for her journey into maturity, her death being the end of her childhood and her rebirth in the faery realm as a young woman. In faery tales, the colour red is often associated with a young woman's maturity e.g. Red Riding Hood.
The interpretation where Ophelia is escaping into a fantasy world is only superficially valid. There's a short shot when the rebels break into the room where Ophelia was being held (meaning the door was still locked, btw) wherein the camera pans down to show an open "chalk door." Ophelia is not in this scene, so she cannot be there imagining it. The "fairy tale world" portion of the film is meant to be a literal part of the film's reality. It's an easy detail to miss, being less than a second long, but that proves it emphatically.
Really enjoyed the video, kudos on the writing!