Pans Labyrinth
Dec. 19th, 2006 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootObjectively: this is a magnificent film.
Subjectively...
Born in Spain 1939, she would have been 5 at the time of our heroine Ofelia's adventures; 5 and living in the country on her aunt's farm. Resonances, echoes of her old stories and those of my grandparents remain with me. Grandfather was the youngest son of a count, a voluble armchair socialist - and yet also scornful of the local communist mayor, who came after him for payback when the time was right. My grandmother would tell the story of how, roaring drunk, he faced the mayor and friends, and only a local chum saved him, convincing the crowd that grandad was a doctor. He was, but not the kind that practiced medicine . The lie saved his life, and they imprisoned him. As he was taken away to prison, the mayor sat my heavily pregnant grandmother down at a table they had prepared for her; he poured wine out in front of her and bid her watch. They burnt her house down.
Grandfather returned only for the newly victorious nationalists to recall the liberal opinions voiced in his newspaper column, and they took him to prison again. When he came back, he had no teeth. He wore wooden ones to the end of his days.
My mother was there for all this in a way; she was the bump my grandmother carried at the infamous table. Her early childhood was spent in the country and from her I learned a strange mythology; poppies in the field meant death all right, to any farmer, for where they grew was no crop, and famine has ever been the great danger on the peninsula. Not to her though; she would take the stalks and break them and suck the white milk inside, wondering why everyone didn't do the same. Nuts and grains and flowers were always her favourite food; they joked she was half human, half rabbit.
She always shuddered at the idea of fairies, a habit which must have seemed strange to my father. He, as an imaginative child in post war Glasgow, would have preferred to face a dozen redcaps than the grimness of Easterhouse. My mother considered such fantasies ghastly and frightening. Though her stories were often just tales of hearth and farms, the rabbit man and mushroom hunting, a strange thread sometimes emerged from the tapestry; her left hand being tied behind her back so that she would learn to write dexter, to the preference of nuns and priests, her mother telling her that the stars were just dead things (leaving her with the impresssion that god 'wasn't very nice') a firefly killed because people feared its supernatural status as a harbinger of death, a ufo she saw when gathering flowers, faces in the wood whorls, malign and alien; even as an adult, she would see strange beings peek around the curtains at her. Dad used to tease her about it.
I recognised her world, the great twisted trees, the guards around the door, the men in the wood, the old stones and strange insects; even some of the monsters seem familiar. I do not know the place, though the landscape is familiar. But that is not what makes Pan's Labyrinth great. If my family had been born and bred in the East End, this film would still be the best thing I have seen all year.
Note to self: Ofelia and Miranda are related, though I don't know which one came first. Time should make it obvious, but it can't be trusted where fairies are concerned.
Subjectively...
Born in Spain 1939, she would have been 5 at the time of our heroine Ofelia's adventures; 5 and living in the country on her aunt's farm. Resonances, echoes of her old stories and those of my grandparents remain with me. Grandfather was the youngest son of a count, a voluble armchair socialist - and yet also scornful of the local communist mayor, who came after him for payback when the time was right. My grandmother would tell the story of how, roaring drunk, he faced the mayor and friends, and only a local chum saved him, convincing the crowd that grandad was a doctor. He was, but not the kind that practiced medicine . The lie saved his life, and they imprisoned him. As he was taken away to prison, the mayor sat my heavily pregnant grandmother down at a table they had prepared for her; he poured wine out in front of her and bid her watch. They burnt her house down.
Grandfather returned only for the newly victorious nationalists to recall the liberal opinions voiced in his newspaper column, and they took him to prison again. When he came back, he had no teeth. He wore wooden ones to the end of his days.
My mother was there for all this in a way; she was the bump my grandmother carried at the infamous table. Her early childhood was spent in the country and from her I learned a strange mythology; poppies in the field meant death all right, to any farmer, for where they grew was no crop, and famine has ever been the great danger on the peninsula. Not to her though; she would take the stalks and break them and suck the white milk inside, wondering why everyone didn't do the same. Nuts and grains and flowers were always her favourite food; they joked she was half human, half rabbit.
She always shuddered at the idea of fairies, a habit which must have seemed strange to my father. He, as an imaginative child in post war Glasgow, would have preferred to face a dozen redcaps than the grimness of Easterhouse. My mother considered such fantasies ghastly and frightening. Though her stories were often just tales of hearth and farms, the rabbit man and mushroom hunting, a strange thread sometimes emerged from the tapestry; her left hand being tied behind her back so that she would learn to write dexter, to the preference of nuns and priests, her mother telling her that the stars were just dead things (leaving her with the impresssion that god 'wasn't very nice') a firefly killed because people feared its supernatural status as a harbinger of death, a ufo she saw when gathering flowers, faces in the wood whorls, malign and alien; even as an adult, she would see strange beings peek around the curtains at her. Dad used to tease her about it.
I recognised her world, the great twisted trees, the guards around the door, the men in the wood, the old stones and strange insects; even some of the monsters seem familiar. I do not know the place, though the landscape is familiar. But that is not what makes Pan's Labyrinth great. If my family had been born and bred in the East End, this film would still be the best thing I have seen all year.
Note to self: Ofelia and Miranda are related, though I don't know which one came first. Time should make it obvious, but it can't be trusted where fairies are concerned.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-19 09:38 am (UTC)It was fascinating reading this about your family-it becomes all too easy sometimes to place historical events outside of your own experience into an 'other realm' all of their own, and reality can easily be distant almost to the point of fantasy. But of course, the very very best fantasy stories are those that happen close to us-in the shadows and behind our skirting boards. Those that help us see the magic hidden round the corner just out of sight. Now when we do see the film it will be even more immediate-I will be able to say this is a story of a time and place not so very distant from here and now, and the fantastical will be all the more poetic and vibrant - as it should be.
Your mothers' mythology has an enchantment of its own as well-and your family sound remarkable. Guillermo del Toro could no doubt find another film in their stories and experiences. I almost feel that reading this post that I have just seen it :)
Strange famiilies
Date: 2006-12-19 10:36 am (UTC)Haven't seen The Devil's Backbone yet, no idea where to find it!
Lots of love to you and Suzette, wishing you both the best of health.
Re: Strange famiilies
Date: 2006-12-19 04:55 pm (UTC)I have my own personal mythologies (?? is it possible to have personal mythologies?) though. I did have some rather odd experiences as a child-ones that hit that odd world between certain waking events and possible dream ones or odd occurances. One was where I saw an orange spot of light grow on the wall beside my bed and the heads of what I knew to be an angel and a demon formed and had a converstation of what my future would be like and whose side I was on, a resurrected hampster, and a mysterious duplicate 50 pence piece that appeared overnight in a jar-exactly the same to the original in every way, even down a scratch on the coin.
I never had normal odd things happen. Just plain odd ones.
Suz had an appointement today with the surgeon-who told her she is healing up nicely but to still take it easy for another month. All in all expected and good-nothing scary or bad at all.
Though we did discover today that some $£"*&!!! has been creaming off money from our bank account using our switch card details-probably grabbed via a phone order to our local dominoes pizza place a while back. Fortunately the bank covers it so we have not actually lost any money-but it does mean I have to get a new card and that means changing all my online card payment details with a new issue number, which is a pain.
Our own fairy tales
Date: 2006-12-21 09:54 am (UTC)I think we do create personal mythologies, dreams and experiences that blend. sometimes we even link reality into them, our schoolteachers and sweethearts, enemies and bank managers. In fact, your work always makes me think of myths old and new, the house in America, the bottle with the trapped explorers, the brother and sister with the dangerous game, the two sisters with the rotting fruit, the kite flying in a field of the dead...they have stories, or I can stare and begin to create stories from them.
Sorry to hear about the fraud. Yay for insurance!
Re: Our own fairy tales
Date: 2006-12-21 10:21 am (UTC)The great thing with the fraud is that its actually a crime against the bank-not against us. Which means the bank replaces all the lost money. We didnt know that when we first suspected the fraud so we had a small panic-but now its more just a hassle (especially updating my paypal account as they dont let edit issue numbers (which is incredibly dumb of them as it is the single piece of data most prone to change other than an expriary date and could be easily changed if they wanted). We are not going to be using Dominos pizzas ever again though-too insecure with card numbers read out over the phone and repeated outloud by staff. The same goes for any other takeout place that doesnt store card details so staff cant get them.
Re: Our own fairy tales
Date: 2006-12-23 12:41 pm (UTC)Re: Our own fairy tales
Date: 2006-12-23 02:09 pm (UTC)