Word: labyrinthes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...little too taken with detail. Basically, his undercover-cop duo (Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell) are pretending to be high-level, freelance drug smugglers making a deal with a Hispanic cartel that does not think small, and in the first part of his film Mann dawdles them through a labyrinth that's not conventionally menacing. Foxx and Farrell don't have a lot to do in those passages, which permits us to spend plenty of time with Li, who plays the criminal gang's enigmatic financial whiz, and that time is scarcely wasted. Mann never explains why she has fallen...
...Another adult twist on a child's fable is Pan's Labyrinth. Writer-director Guillermo Del Toro flawlessly laces a Lewis Carroll-like fantasy of an underground kingdom into the realistic story of a sadistic officer (Sergi López) in Franco's Spain and a wily insurgent servant (Maribel Verdú), fighting for possession of a sad, dreamy child. It's got sumptuous special effects and, finally, a mournful wisdom about love, honor and death. Also a standout was Climates, from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. This minor-key étude of love, sex and selfishness used minimalist strategies...
...source is Del Toro's own capacious imagination. The inverted logic of a child's dreams rarely has had such a secure equilibrium. And it is brilliantly visualized by Guillermo Navarro's cinematography, a severe symphony of dark shades in the house, more dramatic color contrasts in the labyrinth...
...Toro calls Pan's Labyrinth a child's dark fantasy for adults. Certainly it's not for children. Even the grown-up audience in Cannes was jolted by the Captain's acts of violence towards others (he shoots a suspect in cold blood after smashing his face to pulp with a broken bottle) and himself. The scene in which, after having his own cheek cut open, he sutures a pretty severe gash in his mouth, earned the audience's applause...
...Most "adult" is Del Toro's belief that the world into which young minds soar or retreat is fragile indeed. The ending should not be revealed, except to say I've never encountered it in a children's book nor movie. While Ofelia burrows into Pan's labyrinth, the world outside - the real one - plays by a harsher, more violent, set of rules. Learning the difference is the beginning of maturity, the end of childhood innocence...