Pan's Labyrinth (WARNING: spoiler alert)

I tried to write this blog earlier, but I was so emotional after seeing the matinee of Pan's Labyrinth, I couldn't deal.

It's hard to tell now, but when I was a mere lass, I looked a helluva lot like Ivana Baquero. I also acted much like her as well (granted, not in Franco's Spain, but we have a similar preference for books over, er, people, and rather wild imaginations coupled with stubborn personalities and errant behaviour). So when the girl suffered on screen, it was like watching myself be put through absolute torture. And (DON'T READ ANYMORE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS) when the child died, I lost it. It felt like I was watching someone murder me, or my child. I sobbed the whole drive home. Really really brutal.

Anyhow, I have now seen the films by the so-called "three amigos" that have generated so much buzz this awards season, and honestly, besides the fact that they were made by three Mexican directors, they have very little in common. Moreover, while Cuaron and Del Toro could conceivably put in the same class of brilliant, fantastic, artistically-devoted storytellers of the highest order, Inarritu is more along the lines of a Paul Haggis. A Crash Paul Haggis. A slightly-less-innovative Paul Haggis.
See, the thing is: Cuaron and Del Toro's films have staying power. They aren't manipulative. OK, they are, but not so obviously. The most important thing to Del Toro is his characters. To Cuaron the keys are the relationship of humans to their landscape and to each other. Inarritu is more interested in the topical.
Also, Cuaron is by far the most experienced and proven filmmaker, the kind of director whose movie you should see on his name alone. While Del Toro's Hellboy was promising, it did not prepare me for the spectacular frighteningly beauty and story-telling originality of Pan's Labyrinth -- Del Toro has the mark of a more focused and surprising Peter Jackson. Inarritu only has Amores Perros, Babel and 21 Grams, which, at this point, shows a lack of storytelling variation. Each of the films have similar structures and all have flaws despite the fact they have been critically acclaimed. The first was far too long, the second too sprawling, and the third, let's face it, dull. The only thing Inarritu has done right, as far as I am concerned, is to get Gustavo Santaolalla to score his films... if it were up to me, Santaolalla would score half the movies made.

I'm also a big fan of Guillermo Navarro's cinematography -- he's done some clunkers, but I think PL and Zathura more than make up for the others, which probably weren't his fault anyway.

Right now, I'm reading Pamuk's Istanbul. I know he won the Nobel and all, but I can't not fall asleep reading it. Seriously. I never had much desire to go to Turkey (it's one of the few places I don't have a desperate need to visit) and any possibility that any such desire might crop up has been permanently sliced, diced, and buried in the Mariana Trench.