If you’re looking for a fanciful romp through splendid fairylands, I’d rent plain old “Labyrinth” instead of “Pan’s Labyrinth.” The latter is a dark exploration of the terrors of growing up, set against a violent backdrop of fascist Spain in 1944. There are some fairies, but all in all, it’s a little short on Muppets, and at no time does David Bowie sing.
This Academy Award-winner tells the story of young Ofelia, who is forced to leave her girlhood behind for a life with her pregnant mother and terrifying stepfather. Urged to abandon her love of fairytales, she instead delves deeper into an imaginary world to cope with the frightful creatures that inhabit real life.
However, her fairytales are more like nightmares. Between the terrible violence and the menacing imaginings, this is one of the scariest movies I have seen in awhile. Like “Alice in Wonderland,” this story is about the complex fears of leaving childhood behind. For poor Ofelia, a fear of adulthood is utterly, horrifyingly warranted.
Watching her mother suffer through her pregnancy as a virtual prisoner of the dreadful father, leeringly expecting a son, Ofelia has no reason to look forward to being a woman. She declares that she will never have a baby, and as scary as Pan and his cohorts may be, they are not as scary as womanhood.
This movie was not as lavishly imaginative and gorgeous as I thought it would be, but it was also more moving that I expected. There was a very real story here of violence, torture, heroism and sadism, and it was suspenseful, exciting and heartbreaking. The flights of fancy serve to make the action in the real world that much more powerful. Ultimately, Ofelia’s dreams do what the richest dreams do; they help to make the tragedies of real life bearable.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” is currently available to rent.
“Fay Grim” is ‘90s independent cinema fixture Hal Hartley’s “Henry Fool.” This movie suffers from an excess of cool, as so many do. The entire enterprise is a fish out of water, and the results are not good. Above all, Parker Posey as Fay Grim, while looking very cool and pretty, fails to deliver any emotion beyond smirky, quirky chic. Ask her to make us believe that she’s worried about her son, or that she needs her brother, and you’re out of luck.
The conceit here is that a self-conscious, chatty aesthetic is imposed on the genre of the spy movie, but this ends up robbing the good from both kinds of film, for an awkward pastiche of mismatched tones. A labyrinthine spy thriller in acted out by a bunch of people who never convinced me that they had a stake in the complex story.
The story sends Fay to Paris and other foreign climes on a goose chase for some lost journals of her erstwhile husband Henry Fool. While on the surface bombastic nonsense, the notebooks have been deemed to contain espionage secrets. This works as a metaphor for the entire film, only I never uncovered its hidden meaning.
While Fay is swanning about Europe looking super cool in a stylish coat with I must admit a very becoming hairstyle, a small army of eccentrics is in New York, decoding things and speculating articulately. In this context, the script and actors work. When made to run around, shoot guns, and emote, things fall apart.
Above all, this movie is entirely emotionless. I need something to hold onto in a movie, and I never found it in “Fay Grim.” Interestingly, this movie had a multi-format release, so if you live in a big city, you have the option of renting it or going to see it in theaters. Some people think this is the wave of the future. For once, those of us in humbler ‘burgs don’t have to feel left out.
“Fay Grim” is currently available to rent.
Contact Asia Frey at afrey@lagniappemobile.com.
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