Pan's Labyrinth

For my journal 3 assignment, I knew that I either had to watch a film that was foreign or made before 1960. So I chose to watch Pan's Labyrinth, created by writer and director Guillermo Del Toro. I loved this movie. It was much better than I expected and I'm very happy that I watched such an impressive film.
The number one thing that stuck out to me while watching Pan's Labyrinth was the beautiful cinematography, which the film won an academy award for. I could not stop thinking about the excellent effects and undeniably amazing camera shots. The lead cinematographer was Guillermo Navarro. Navarro won 9 out of 11 nominations for this film, including an Oscar. According to Cameraguild.com, Navarro began taking still pictures as a hobby during his teen years and later got a job as a still photographer on movie sets and then moved on to make his own documentaries and discover his cinematographic talent. Pan's Labyrinth showed his true gift for the art of film making, but he also worked on movies like Stuart Little, Hellboy, and Night at the Museum.
In an interview I found on moviemaker.com, Navarro was asked how the different environments and looks were created, and Navarro responded saying, "It was a total collaboration. We had wonderful costumes by Lala Huete and settings created by production designer Eugenio Cabellero. There is a strong influence of Goya's paintings in our use of light and darkness-there are dark interior scenes with single sources of light modeling faces. As the story progressed, we created bridges between the worlds of fantasy and reality. The different colors and camera movement in the real and fantasy worlds begin to blend."

Another thing that I loved about Pan's Labyrinth was the soundtrack. With original music by Javier Navarrete, I felt like I was being led through this fairy tale like film by the beautiful sounds. From lullabies to frantic and heart-pumping scores, you couldn't help but notice. During certain scenes where the main character, Ofelia, is discovering an entire underworld below the home that she has been forced to come to due to her mothers new husband, we are given a beautiful violin accompanied by a smooth piano and a voice of Ofelia reading us the story's from the book she has been given by the imaginative creatures that dwell within the labyrinth. Without the music leading us through the seemingly untouched forests and dark questionable temples, I don't think the film would have been such a hit.

I am so happy that I chose this film to watch, I had no idea that this film had so much beauty to it and could keep me so glued to the screen. I wasn't even botherd by the subtitles or the parts of the movie about war (which I don't normally like). It was a imaginative piece of art and I wish more film crews would put as much work into their films as the makers of Pan's Labyrinth obviously did.