When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?
— John Maynard Keynes
When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?
— John Maynard Keynes
smarties — Sunday, 22 April 2007
by Donald W. Taylor II
S. and I went to see Pan's Labyrinth (Official, IMDB, Wikipedia) last night at the Arlington Cinema and Draft House (Vincent Vega: "You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? ... It's the little differences ... you can walk into a movie theater and buy a beer. And, I don't mean just like a paper cup, I'm talking about a glass of beer").
It is not a film for the faint of heart. I thought it was going to be like The Dark Crystal, but it was more lake a cross between The Dark Crystal, Schindler's List and Saw. It was similar to the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in that it used the bleakness and evil of wartime to heighten the contrast with the wonders of the fantasy world. However, it was just too graphic for my increasingly squeamish tastes and definitely not a kids' film.
On a side note, I find it strange that I am becoming so adverse to depictions violence in the media as I get older, but fancy myself to spend my days philosophically and strategically starring into the heart of darkness. On the one hand I routinely fantacize the destruction of millions in a full-scale nuclear exchange or find myself like the character Roquentin from Sartre's novel Nausea, unable to look at a mound of earth without being overcome with disgust at the wanton superfluence of it all, yet unable to see someone get whacked with a stick on television. Maybe I'm deceiving myself, or maybe the intellectual fatigue of it overflows to the realm of visual depiction.
The most interesting effect on me of Pan's Labyrinth is that I left the theatre with a whole new impression of the most offensive, disgusting, morally degraded episode of South Park to date, Woodland Critter Christmas (season 8, episode 125, 15 December 2004). I had previously found it cleaver, but marred by how over the top it was. Now I see that it contains a real insight and a brilliant spoof of all fantasy stories.
Throughout Pan's Labyrinth a creaky old fawn keeps on giving Ofelia instructions for her next mission: kill the toad under the tree, bring back the key, put this potion of mandrake root under your mother's bed. All the while I kept thinking, "Princess of another realm, my ass. Remember the lesson of the lioness and the boy in the red poof-ball hat. This guy is evil and having you do all his dirty work for him." When the fawn instructs Ofelia to take her brother and bring him to the labyrinth I knew I had his number. He's going to want to do something awful to that infant. And of course he did.
In the structure of such stories it is accepted that fantasy creatures who announce themselves as such are good, but fantasy creatures lack guile? Fantasy realms have radically different laws of physics and evolutionary developments, but all intelligent beings happen to have exactly the same system of valuation as our own? What I have learned from South Park is don't trust fantasy creatures who want to send you on magical adventures.
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Donald W. Taylor II Washington, D.C. United States of America taylordw@goodleaf.net |