Independent Film Guide
Navigating the 'Labyrinth' (Continued)
GDT: Not so much. I wrote it in response to the fact that the entire world changed after that. I think September 11 is a point of crossroads in the history of the 21st century. It will not be easily forgotten. It broke the known world balance, and then it was taken as a leverage point to even break it further. I wrote it in response to that. And I'm not sure that we would have arrived at the same [level of] almost barbaric greed that we are [at] right now, in other ways.
MF: Greed?
GDT: The scale of greed, corporate greed, right now is truly barbaric. It's essentially as terrifying as Genghis Khan but on a larger scale. Principles and lives and countries and everything are being railroaded for statistic money. Because the people that are really pushing this stuff through, they have so much money that it doesn't even matter anymore as money, it's just numbers and statistics. So it's a scary world. I really think it is.
Pan's Labyrinth
Directed by Guillermo Del Toro
Theatrical Release Date December 29, 2006
Released by Picturehouse
Run time 112 min.
Genre Fantasy, Drama, Mystery, War
Rating R
Theatrical Release Date December 29, 2006
Released by Picturehouse
Run time 112 min.
Genre Fantasy, Drama, Mystery, War
Rating R
MF: Would it be parsing things too much to say that the fascists in the film stand in for corporations?
GDT: No, because the fascists stand for anything that has an intolerance to opposition and imagination. I really think they represent the official line of thinking. You either think this way, or you become an enemy. [Apply that to] corporate greed, to government, to organized religion, whatever you want. And imagination is the ultimate playground of freedom. Imagination should always be free and irresponsible, in that sense; but disobedience, on the other hand, should be done very responsibly.
MF: This is true. Was the situation you portray in the film -- those rebels and those characters and that battle -- based on actual historical events?
GDT: Oh yeah, they existed. Not that battle, not concretely, no. The real repression started four years later, on a full-blown scale. In 1944, what we depict in the movie could have happened. I am not saying it happened, but it could have. There was resistance already in '44, and there were skirmishes of rebels and military police already in 1944 or before that. So yeah, it was a time when that happened. [The fighting] was really in full force in '48, because by 1948 the Allies had already left Spain alone in the hands of Franco, so Franco was much bolder.
MF: Let's talk about the fairy-tale aspect. These days when people think of fairy tales, they think of Disney. But this movie was based on darker stuff, like Grimm's original fairy tales and Hans Christian Andersen. Were there particular stories that influenced you?
GDT: There's plenty, because most of the motifs in the film come from tried and true motifs of fairy tale lore. But originally fairy tales were not only very sordid in what they told -- like they included mutilation, cannibalism, incest, eye-gouging, whatever you want -- but they were also told in very sordid environments, in which the miracle of spirituality or magic occurred. To give you an example, 'Hansel and Gretel' is set during a famine, a brutal famine in Europe. And the parents' solution to that famine is to abandon the kids in the woods to die. So that's the origin, that's the context of 'Hansel and Gretel.'
MF: And then someone eats them, right?
GDT: And then someone could eat them -- because it's a cannibalistic witch. But out of that, magic occurs. And I thought this movie was, in a strange sense, truer to those fairy tales than the bleached, Disneyfied versions of that universe that we are used to now.
MF: I know from the marketing and the press notes that this film is supposed to be an escape into Ofelia's imagination. But when I was watching the movie, it was possible to watch it and think that it was real.
GDT: It is real.
MF: That's what I thought! How much of that did you leave open to interpretation?
GDT: A lot of it. But I happen to believe it's real. One sign that it's real is the little flower at the end, effectively blooming in a tree that's been dead for decades, if not centuries. So if you ask me, I'm on your side.
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GDT: No, because the fascists stand for anything that has an intolerance to opposition and imagination. I really think they represent the official line of thinking. You either think this way, or you become an enemy. [Apply that to] corporate greed, to government, to organized religion, whatever you want. And imagination is the ultimate playground of freedom. Imagination should always be free and irresponsible, in that sense; but disobedience, on the other hand, should be done very responsibly.
MF: This is true. Was the situation you portray in the film -- those rebels and those characters and that battle -- based on actual historical events?
GDT: Oh yeah, they existed. Not that battle, not concretely, no. The real repression started four years later, on a full-blown scale. In 1944, what we depict in the movie could have happened. I am not saying it happened, but it could have. There was resistance already in '44, and there were skirmishes of rebels and military police already in 1944 or before that. So yeah, it was a time when that happened. [The fighting] was really in full force in '48, because by 1948 the Allies had already left Spain alone in the hands of Franco, so Franco was much bolder.
MF: Let's talk about the fairy-tale aspect. These days when people think of fairy tales, they think of Disney. But this movie was based on darker stuff, like Grimm's original fairy tales and Hans Christian Andersen. Were there particular stories that influenced you?
GDT: There's plenty, because most of the motifs in the film come from tried and true motifs of fairy tale lore. But originally fairy tales were not only very sordid in what they told -- like they included mutilation, cannibalism, incest, eye-gouging, whatever you want -- but they were also told in very sordid environments, in which the miracle of spirituality or magic occurred. To give you an example, 'Hansel and Gretel' is set during a famine, a brutal famine in Europe. And the parents' solution to that famine is to abandon the kids in the woods to die. So that's the origin, that's the context of 'Hansel and Gretel.'
MF: And then someone eats them, right?
GDT: And then someone could eat them -- because it's a cannibalistic witch. But out of that, magic occurs. And I thought this movie was, in a strange sense, truer to those fairy tales than the bleached, Disneyfied versions of that universe that we are used to now.
MF: I know from the marketing and the press notes that this film is supposed to be an escape into Ofelia's imagination. But when I was watching the movie, it was possible to watch it and think that it was real.
GDT: It is real.
MF: That's what I thought! How much of that did you leave open to interpretation?
GDT: A lot of it. But I happen to believe it's real. One sign that it's real is the little flower at the end, effectively blooming in a tree that's been dead for decades, if not centuries. So if you ask me, I'm on your side.
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