Review: Pan's Labyrinth

Not sure if a deja vu denotes a "glitch in the Matrix" as the famous saying goes, but I've been getting constant flashes of repetition today. Maybe it's the fact that I've been teaching since 9am non-stop. Anyway, I decided to take a short break and write about a great film I watched a few weeks ago - Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.

It's funny and maybe not so coincidental that three of the year's best films (Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, Babel) were directed by Mexican filmmakers (Alfonso Cuaron, Guillelmo del Toro, Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu). Despite the massive differences in the themes and techniques used, they all have (at least) two things in common:
> amazing humanity
> a truly international character that makes them universal.

+ Pan's Labyrinth has been tagged as a 'fairy tale'. I have to say I don't really like fairy tales and hated the Lord of the Rings because of its arbitrariness. Yet, I couldn't but love this film, which beautifully combines the rawest and cruelest things that humans can do to each other with the kindest and most genuine feelings that humanity can produce.

+ Acting - and casting - is perfect. Ivana Baquero gives a passionate, measured, mature performance as Ofelia, the young girl at the heart of the story. The rest of the cast create a fascinating web of passions, secrets, lies and intrigue.

+ Guillermo Navarro's cinematography, Eugenio Caballero's production design, Lala Huete and Rocío Redondo's costume design and especially Javier Navarrete's music create a transcendental atmosphere taking us back in time and in space.

+ However, it is in the bringing together of all these different elements that the real beauty of the film lies. Pan's Labyrinth is more than a sum of its (great) parts. At some point I started to grow impatient with the apparent irrelevance of the two main subplots, only to feel embarrassed at the end, when everything came beatifully together.

Overall, Pan's Labyrinth is one of the best films of the year and I strongly recommend that you make an effort to find and watch it.

Review: Bobby

A few weeks ago I watched Emilio Estevez’s Bobby – a gripping film looking at the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy from the perspective of 22 fictional characters staying or working at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. the day of the assassination.

+ The cast includes an unbelievable amount of A-list stars being unveiled progressively throughout the first half of the film: Anthony Hopkins, Marting Sheen, Lawrence Fishburn, William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, Christian Slater, Heather Graham, Lindsey Lohan, Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under’s Rico) et al, including Estevez himself. These characters make up a fascinating mosaic of people from a variety of ethnic, social, economic and political backgrounds. The film is about them (and the society they represent) as much as it is about RFK (and the society he represents).

+ The performances – and the part of the script / direction covering human relationships, the fears, hopes and vibe of that era – are the strongest elements of the film. Demi Moore and Sharon Stone, while seemingly unrelated to the political narrative, give the best performance of their lives and possibly the best performance by an actress in a supporting role. They exhume an unbelievably rich blend of emotions, frustrations, experiences and regrets with only the subtlest of glances. The scene they share at Stone’s salon is a classic – the chemistry between them is electrifying.

+ The RFK footage is smoothly integrated into the film compensating for the somewhat shaky link between the assassination and the lives of the main characters.

+ Production and costume design is excellent without being overstated. Mark Isham’s music is good although it stays within the traditional confines of what we could call the “presidential film” genre (e.g. Marc Shaiman, Alan Silvestri).

+ Above all else, the film is a tribute to a “fallible” but brave hero. It fulfils a social service by reminding the older generations (and showing to younger generations) what politics and politicians can do for us, or indeed to mis-paraphrase his brother JFK, what we can do for ourselves through politicians. The parallels to today are absolutely striking: parallels to the Iraq war, to the organised attack on civil liberties, human rights and the environment, to the overtaking of government by extremists who at the same time devalue government itself in rhetoric and in practice.

- The film is not perfect, far from it. At times it is a missed opportunity. One cannot help but imagine what it would have looked like if Robert Altman was still alive and in charge. This is totally Altman territory; the central space within which parallel narratives/lives/snippets unveil and intersect. Estevez does his best and the outcome isn’t bad at all. But a more experienced and confident director could have turned this into the biggest human epic in decades. There is the stuff of Grand Hotel and Titanic in here but it is not always used to a great effect. Some of the scenes are too low-key or not very well integrated into the narrative.

- Indeed, the narrative itself is too apolitical and steers clear of any controversy regarding the assassination itself (which contained as many police “gaffes” - and has been the subject of as many conspiracy theories – as JFK’s own assassination).

- More importantly, there is a narrative gap between the entire film and its ending. The focus of the film up to the assassination scene is on the “real life” characters; it then shifts to RFK and the filmmakers never really complete the main body of the story. It’s as if we suddenly stop caring about what happened to the 22 characters and we only think about Bobby. Which arguably could be the point of the film (i.e. that we’re so consumed with ourselves until something larger than us happens). But even that realisation (that there is something else beyond our little private worlds) is too underdeveloped at the end.

Still, Bobby is an inspiring, moving, gripping film; one which could have been a truly massive classic; yet one which still is important and thought-provoking.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr: 1917 - 2007

Eminent historian, political observer, public intellectual, liberal Democrat and Kennedy adviser Arthur M. Schlesinger, who produced some of the most authoritative and perceptive writings on liberalism, JFK and the US Presidency, died yesterday.

"If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself."