Jun 23, 2015

I probably won't get to rewatch this (I'm going to watch Cronenberg's Crash this week though!), but will say I'm a big fan. The film is strongly influenced by Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (an all-time favorite of mine), a movie also set in post civil war Spain about a young girl who uses fantasy to wrestle with, not escape from, her harsh reality. Whereas Erice's film has a haunting and mysterious quality that gets under the skin (part of its elusiveness was to avoid censors), Del Toro's film is far more direct in the allegory embedded within his vividly realized fantasy world. That simplicity, however, enables his anti-fascist fable to achieve its own power and emotional resonance.

 

Jun 27, 2015

man i don't f--- with subtitles, if it's important they'll say it again in God's language

 

Jun 25, 2015

Watched it last night, and it affected me more or less as it did the first time. Colours and special effects are glorious. The film is aMAZEing.. :P

okay dad jokes aside, it's pretty darn excellent, and Del Toro's best. It weaves fantasy fiction and realism really well allowing for one to comment on the other: War kills imagination, Imagination provides respite from war. Transcendence is found in death, through sacrifice, what must be given to end war.

Ultimately, the story is about an innocent girl who dies during post-civil war conflicts. Regardless whether you take the underworld to be true or false, her death is real and presents a painful view into the atrocities committed during this time. Also into the psychology behind warfare and those involved in it: i.e. the Captain in particular.

Contrast is the film's chief function in style, theme, art: light and dark, good and bad, reality and illusion, innocence and depravity. These contrasts observe with little pretense the psychology of wartime affects, made visible through the girl's vivid imagination and self-discovery.

87/100 - Excellent

 

Jun 23, 2015

Exactly. We also have a Listening Club as well for albums that I'll be revamping shortly.

 

Jun 23, 2015

We're back! I was discouraged after the flop but some FlickYouCrew members have persuaded me to try to keep this going.
This week we'll be attempting one of the most successful nonUS films of all time, Pan's Labyrinth.

Spoiler

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