A Little Calvin & Hobbes, A Pinch of For Whom The Bell Tolls

I saw Pan's Labyrinth for the first time last night, though I'm having a bit of difficulty deciding how to discuss it. That I enjoyed it is probably worth mentioning. I liked the designs of the unusual creatures we meet during the movie. I think I need more viewings to draw connections between each of Ofelia's tasks, and the ongoing struggle between the fascist (or Francoist) captain and the rebels who are ostensibly communists, I suppose, since that was the opposing side, though I wonder how many of them ascribe to that philosophy, as opposed to simply hating the fascists.

I like that the movie seems to raise the possibility that everything Ofelia sees concerning the faun and the fairies could just be her imagination, or might simply be indicative of the inability of the adults to perceive things as she can. Or maybe it's all other humans that lack her level of perception. We never meet any other children, so we can't really test whether it's a case of children beng more aware of the fantastic, hidden things around them.

I'm surprised as to just how evil (or maybe just completely certain of his superiority and correctness) the captain is portrayed. Until his last few moments in the movie, I felt nothing but digust towards him, and anything that frustrated or defied his will was worth cheering about (even if that was usually bad news for whatever was doing the frutsrating). I hadn't bothered to check the rating, so the level of violence demonstrated caught me off guard (I wouldn't have though you could collapse a man's face with a bottle). I wonder if it's meant to relate to children's tendencies to see things in extremes, good or evil, little gray, and so the rebels are shown to be people struggling to survive in caves, deeply concerned about each other, but willing to die to change things, while the Captain and his men are usually smug, and fairly unconcerned with inflicting pain upon others.

It's a beautiful movie, with a bit of ambiguity at the end, allowing you to choose which ending you would prefer, depending on your mood or what you want to get out of it. I'm not sure what it says about me, that I want to go with the more fantastic, magical ending, but can't shake the creeping doubt that the more "realistic", sad ending was the true one. Which is silly, since no one's told me it was one or the other, and I should just go with the one I prefer. I'd really need to watch it again to get more out of it, I believe, and I just might do that.

Then there was 28 Weeks Later, also viewed last night. I enjoyed it's predecessor, and I had high hopes for this one, but I didn't feel altogether pleased with it. I think the problem was it used basically the same theme as 28 Days Later, namely that whether they're "infected with rage" or not, people are capable of committing vicious and violent acts against other people. All the infection seems to do is remove a lot of extraneous reasons (such as fear or greed). Plus I'm not sure why we needed a sequence of someone (n this case an infected human) jamming their fingers into a person's eye sockets in this film, after we already had one of those in the first one. I'm not certain whether these films are meant to be an indictment of militaries given their tendencies towards less than warm and fuzzy tactics (the captain in 28 Days Later promising his soldiers women to keep morale up, or the scorched earth, kill everyone infected or not policies in 28 Weeks Later). It certainly doesn't make them look very heroic, but few people do come of looking that way, in either movie, and the ones that do tend to die horribly, so it may be more of a statement on what people find neccessary to survive. Still, I was disappointed. I suppose zombie movies just aren't really my cup of tea.