DS: PAN'S LABYRINTH

A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning...

PAN'S LABYRINTH - English subtitles

In 1944 fascist Spain, a girl, fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun in the center of the labyrinth. He tells her she's a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again.
This movie teaches us how children survive the real world, which they are not prepared for, and how adults forgotten this ability, disregard it as nothing, missing its "power"

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

PART 7

PART 8

PART 9

PART 10

PART 11

TRIVIA
Received 22 minutes of applause at the Cannes Film Festival.

Mexico's entry to the Academy Awards, in the category of Best Film in a Foreign Language (2006).

In 2007, this film became one of the few fantasy films ever nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars.

After the first week movie theaters in Mexico had to place signs over the movie posters warning about the graphic violence as parents were taking small children to see it.

Guillermo del Toro is famous for compiling books full of notes and drawings about his ideas before turning them into films, something he regards as essential to the process. He left years worth of notes for this film in the back of a cab, and when he discovered them missing, he thought it was the end of the project. However, the cab driver found them and, realizing their importance, tracked him down and returned them at great personal difficulty and expense. Del Toro was convinced that this was a blessing and it made him ever more determined to complete the film.

It took five hours for Doug Jones to get into The Pale Man costume. Once he was in it, he had to look out the nose holes to see where he was going.

Doug Jones was the only American on the set and the only one who didn't speak Spanish.

Doug Jones had to memorize not only his own lines in Spanish (a language he does not speak) but also Ivana Baquero's (Ofelia) lines so he knew when to speak his next line. The servos in the head piece that made the facial expressions and ears move were so loud, he couldn't hear her speak her lines.

The faun's legs were not computer-generated. Guillermo del Toro created a special system in which the actor's legs puppeteer the faun's fake ones. The actor's legs were later digitally removed.

Ivana Baquero was too old to play the lead part originally written for an eight- or nine-year-old, but Guillermo del Toro was so impressed that he revised it to accommodate the 11-year-old actress.

The English subtitles were translated and written by Guillermo del Toro himself. He no longer trusts translators after having encountered problems with his previous subtitled movies.

Guillermo del Toro said that he felt the character of Pan was too dark and sexual to play in a film opposite an eight-year-old girl. The film is only called "Pan's Labyrinth" in America, other English-speaking countries, German-speaking countries, The Netherlands, and Scandinavia; everywhere else it's called "The Labyrinth of the Faun."

Björk was so affected by this film that after seeing it, she went home and wrote the song "Pneumonia".

The ruined town seen during the opening sequence of the film is the old town of Belchite, which was also used by Terry Gilliam for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The town was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War and never rebuilt.

It has been said that, for the fairy eating scene, Doug Jones had to bite condoms filled with fake blood.

According to disc 2 of the DVD, it only took 25-30 minutes for Doug Jones to get into the Pan suit.

Doug Jones stated on disc 2 of the DVD that the Pan suit was the most comfortable, and well made suit he had ever been cast to wear. Thanks in large part to the suit being divided into many sections, having the legs anchor to his hips and not his shoulders distributed the weight better, and having the stomach section separate from the shoulder section gave him better range of motion.

According to director Guillermo del Toro the scene involving the Giant Frog was to be shot in an extravagant dome "tree" set. However, 3 days prior to shooting, he realized that the Frog wouldn't seem so giant in the massive set, and the Tree Tunnel set in the movie was constructed in 2 days, and then shot.

On disc 2 of the DVD, Guillermo del Toro points out that he intentionally placed "Faun" references throughout the movie, including: -The horn pattern on the heard board of the Mother's bed -Above every door in the mill house is a simple faun carving -At the head of the stair case is a faun head carved in the railing -The Fig tree (home of the Giant Toad) is shaped like the faun horns -The blood pattern in Ofelia's book.

Is the last New Line movie to be available in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. All subsequent films are released exclusively on Blu-ray. (Jan. 2008)

On the supplementary DVD, Guillermo del Toro states that the movie has a deliberate pattern of three's - the story revolves around three women (Ofelia, her mother and Mercedes); the faun has three pet fairies; Vidal is always accompanied by two lieutenants (thus, the fascist regime is represented by three men); Ofelia must complete three tasks for the faun; in the Pale Man's lair, there are three vaults from which Ofelia must choose from. This is in direct imitation of fairy tale / mythological traditions that usually has a hero/heroine performing three tasks.

In his director's commentary on the DVD, Guillermo del Toro says that actor Manolo Solo was nearly killed when one of the horses fell on top of him.

SPOILER: And although audiences have interpreted the film's bittersweet ending as everything from a religious metaphor to a psychological allegory, del Toro offers a simpler, but more poetic, explanation, that of "I always think of that beautiful quote by Kierkegaard that says the tyrant's reign ends with his death, but the martyr's reign starts with his death. I think that is the essence of the movie: It's about living forever by choosing how you die."

Pan's Labyrinth - Makeup and Special Effects