THE CULTUREPULP Q&A: 'Pan's Labyrinth' director Guillermo del Toro




As promised to readers of the CulturePulp comic in this Sunday's Oregonian: Here's a slightly edited transcript of my 20-minute phone chat with "Pan's Labyrinth" director Guillermo del Toro.

“Pan’s Labyrinth” is a bloody, beautiful fairy tale for adults. Set in 1944, it’s about a girl named Ofelia who retreats into a world of fantastic monsters -- even as she’s surrounded by the real-life monsters of the Spanish Civil War. Del Toro and I talked about "Pan's Labyrinth"; his friendship with "Mexican New Wave" directors Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Babel") and Alfonso Cuaron ( "Children of Men" ); his love of Pixar's "Cars"; and his own fascination with the Spanish Civil War.

WARNING: We get into some major spoilers and plot points from "Pan's Labyrinth."



MIKE RUSSELL: The faun creature in "Pan's Labyrinth" is one of the best practical creature costumes I've ever seen.

GUILLERMO DEL TORO: One of the things that attracted me to it, technically and visually, is that the creature is real from head to toe: We made those legs operate in the real world.

Q. Those aren't CGI legs?

A. No. Those are absolutely physical legs. I was a makeup artist for many years, and I came up with a system for the legs -- to have the actor's legs puppeteering the fake legs, and then you digitally remove the actor's legs, which are dressed in blue.



Q. I read an interview where you talked about how the faun is a rock-star character.

A. I always thought the faun would have a transition. At the beginning, a feeble, creepy creature -- and then, little by little, it would become less odd and less funny and it would become more beautiful and menacing. And I always, for some reason, thought of glam rock.

Q. That's beauty and menace right there. And decadence.

A. Yeah. And "decadence" is a very important word in this type of movie. There is a lot of decadence in the aesthetic of it -- that has to go into a fairy tale.

Q. You reportedly gave up your fee and put it back into the movie.

A. Indeed.

Q. Why did you have to do that? And how was that money spent on the film?

A. Well, everything that could go wrong on this shoot started to go wrong. For example, we could not do the battle scenes the way they needed to be made -- because it was the driest season in the history of Segovia. So all of a sudden, we are slapped with about half a million dollars in extra digital effects for the bullet hits and the muzzle flashes in the guns.
It was quite tragic: These are effects that are completely invisible to the eye -- you don't even pay attention to them.

Q. It's like so many special effects these days: The audience only notices them if they're bad or if they're missing.

A. Exactly. But we spent a fortune on that, which was not calculated. So all of a sudden, the financiers said, "Do them some other way, or drop shots." And rather than drop shots, all the producers and I returned our fees.
And unfortunately for us, we returned them just like that: We returned them without seeking an advantage or seeking an edge or seeking a back end. We returned them in the spirit in which you return your fee: "Hey, here -- take it back." [laughs]
It is my personal hope that perhaps in the future they'll be moved by some personal experience during Christmas or something, and maybe they'll give it back -- but so far, contractually, no one has the duty to do it.

Q. Well, that's one heck of a set of producers you have, if they’re willing to stand by you like that.

A. That is the great thing about working with your best friends: Working with Alfonso [Cuaron], for example, becomes very important at those crossroads, you know

Q. You and your friends Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ["Babel"] and Alfonso Cuaron ["Children of Men"] are having amazing artistic years. How much have you commiserated on each others' 2006 releases?

A. We were on the phone last night, and we were on the phone this morning.

Q. All three of you?

A. Yeah. We talk quite often. I was talking to Alfonso last night and Alejandro was with him -- they were having dinner and drinks in Dallas, I think. And then I had my wife calling me telling me that Alejandro had called the house at 6 a.m. about the Golden Globes. ["Pan" was nominated for Best Foreign Film.]




Q. The scene in "Pan's Labyrinth" where Captain Vidal smashes a kid's face in with a bottle and the camera refuses to look away is one of the more violent things I've seen in a movie. Most filmmakers would have cut to the captain's face while it was going on, maybe splashed him with a little bit of blood, or had the bottle break. You did none of those things.

A. The violence in the movie is somehow contemplative. None of the violent moments in the movie are elaborate set pieces; every one of them is a violent moment that occurs in an almost too-sudden, offhanded way. It's the way it would happen in a war or in a brawl in real life -- you're talking to somebody, and all of a sudden you have a person smashing your face with something.

Q. It's like a cold splash of water in the face.

A. Yeah. It's a shocking contrast. The whole idea for the movie was to have a shocking contrast between fantasy and the violence of the real world. And 1944 Spain is particularly fertile ground for that.

Q. You've talked about the younger generation forgetting about the Spanish Civil War and Spain's fascism.

A. Yeah. It's always about the fascism.

Q. How much did that inform the making of "Pan's Labyrinth"? How does Franco's Spain inspire you as an artist?

A. In my teenage years when a batch of Spanish movies started to deal with the past -- movies like "Spirit of the Beehive" or Carlos Saura's "Cría cuervos"…. At the same time in Mexico, a huge wave of underground Spanish comics started to be published that dealt with that past. I was incredibly influenced by that, and by knowing exiles who were living in Mexico at the time.

Q. You grew up in Mexico, but there's this very strong identification with Spain in your movies.

A. Mm-hm. It comes from that. Two of the exiles that I met who became friends in my life -- they passed away already -- they came to Mexico very young, at age 4 and age 5. And nevertheless they always felt sort of ravaged by the involuntary exile they were living.

Q. Well, from the interviews I've read, I know you can relate to feeling like you've left your home.

A. Yeah. Now more than ever. What is curious is the two movies I've done about Spain were done after I left Mexico.




Q. Is Captain Vidal modeled on any real-life figure from the Spanish Civil War?

A. Yes. Most of the brutal moments in the movie come from oral accounts of things that happened during the civil war. The episode of shooting the rebel through the hand and then the face. The smashing of the face. Those came from oral accounts. The priest in the dining room saying, "God doesn’t care about their bodies because he already saved their souls"? That's verbatim -- taken from a priest who used to go to fascist concentration camps where Republicans were kept. He used to say to them, "I advise you to confess anything you know, because, you must know, God doesn't care anything about your body."

Q. God. What a justification.

A. If you didn’t know they were based on real accounts, they would seem a little overwrought and a little extreme. But unfortunately, they were based on reality.

Q. Have young genre fans in Spain been educated by your work?

A. Most of the young people have this strange conceit that the Civil War has been talked about enough. They're almost saying, "Enough. Enough with these movies. Enough with these books. Let's move on." Which I would say is a soft revisionist position, to a degree -- it's like they're saying, "We know we killed and were killed a lot. But can we now ignore it?"
What I do get a lot is, "The perspective of the fantasy allowed me to see the brutality of that moment."




Q. You've said that horror and genre are "the last refuge of spiritual filmmaking." Has spirituality disappeared from the other forms?

A. No, no! I very often find it. For me, Scorsese's films, until very recently, seemed very spiritual to me. "Raging Bull" was an incredibly Catholic movie for me, in many ways -- in the masochism and finding a smidgen of hope in being beaten. A smidgen of humanity in being pummeled. "Taxi Driver" is an incredibly guilty but incredibly Catholic movie. I find it in a lot of European filmmakers. I find it in "Babel," Alejandro's movie. I find it in Alfonso's movie, "Children of Men." These are very spiritual movies for me.
There was a moment in "United 93," towards the end, where the tragedy of it all nevertheless showed an almost intangible side of the human spirit that goes beyond bravery…. And I felt that on both sides of the tragedy, they were human -- eminently human. You didn’t get a one-sided, mustache-twirling terrorist driving the plane, and you didn't have the people on the other side simply saying goodbye to the people they loved. It was just absolutely devastating to me.
When I said that thing about genre, I didn't mean all of genre. It is only the genre that deals with the supernatural. I don't think that there is any spirituality in a gore movie, really -- it's very hard to find that, because it's realistic, and it's almost like a soft voyeurism. But there is a spirituality in other movies of the genre.
I think simply believing that creature that is not scientifically or rationally proven exists is a gesture of faith. You can call it suspension of disbelief; I call it faith.




Q. You told The Guardian: "Ofelia is a princess who forgot who she was and where she came from, who progresses through the labyrinth to emerge as a promise that gives children the chance never to know the name of their father -- the fascist. It's a parable."
It follows that the creatures in "Pan's Labyrinth" represent elements of the fascist political process, yes?

A. Partially. Some of them do. To me, the frog eating the tree from within represents the rich, you know? To me, the faceless guy that eats the children and, perversely, has an abundance of riches can represent the fascist or the church. And the faun is a neutral force that doesn't care if Ofelia succeeds or fails. He's just an observer -- and a willing participant who is not married to outcome.
And I think each of the little creatures is a transitional guide for the girl. I think her facing these challenges is important, in that she's dealing with her own bravery and her own resolve. People say to me, "But she fails two of the challenges!" And I say, "Yeah -- because they are only decoys."
To me, the faun is also the Pale Man -- a trickster who takes forms to test the girl. And the real test is not whether she gets the knife or she gets the key. The real test is: How does she respond to temptation?

Q. Sure. And in a movie like this, a lot of people will get hung up on the quest element.

A. Exactly!

Q. But the Hero's Journey is a different thing here.

A. The Hero's Journey in many a fairy tale is actually an oblique one: You are not testing about getting the actual prize; you are tested about your attitude about getting the prize.
I am a father of two, and so I see everything from "Barnyard" to "Cars." And I really loved the ending that Lasseter did in "Cars" -- because I love the fact that the little car doesn't win, and yet there's victory. I really found it profoundly educational and profoundly moving.
Because the quest is not about the prize; it's about how you go through it. I really believe this. I really believe winning is only half the pleasure. And I say this having gone through the Cannes Film Festival with "Pan's Labyrinth" and not winning the Palme d'Or. But I tell you: I am incredibly happy about having been there. And what I learned about me, and what I learned about the film, and what I learned about the world in going there? That's the prize.
And I think that’s the point of the movie. If you noticed, in the movie, when she reunites at the end with the faun and the rest of the magical world, the fairies that the Pale Man ate are there -- meaning they were not really eaten. It's like a con game. It works by misdirection. The whole bunch of tests are misdirection. And that’s verbalized in the movie by the king, who says, "You have spilled your blood rather than that of an innocent. That is the last test -- and the most important." If she had turned in the baby, she would have failed.





Posted: Sat - January 20, 2007 at 12:18 PM        

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