Hacker Cinema
Pan's Labyrinth
El laberinto del fauno
2006 · Film · 118 min
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
In post–civil war Spain, 10-year-old Ofelia moves with her pregnant mother to live under the control of her cruel stepfather. Drawn into a mysterious labyrinth, she meets a faun who reveals that she may be a lost princess from an underground kingdom. To return to her true father, she must complete a series of surreal and perilous tasks that blur the line between reality and fantasy.
10 positive11 neutralfrom 21 commenters
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21 comments on Hacker News
Here is the full list of the 551 movies and TV shows being removed: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/
Top movies include Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, The Graduate, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Room, Silver Linings Playbook, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Pan's Labyrinth.
I agree with your point on #3, but I think it'd be pretty disingenuous to suggest that your proposal for how #3 manifests is the most common way it manifests currently. In other words, at least in American media, it feels like it's the opposite of what you've suggested: media must contain gay characters, or contain characters who are not heterosexual in the traditional sense, and that other representation check boxes must be met. Now to be clear, I think what you've suggested for #3 is also bad. I think it's bad for outside forces to twist art to ensure it follows the "correct" social values, and I feel this way regardless of whether or not I agree with the social views present in a given piece of art. I also agree with that you the Chinese studio is not being a-political here, but instead is saying something more like "don't infect our Chinese social values with your modern progressive western values." I think people are forgiving of this mostly because they're so exhausted by the incessant push for modern media to have the "correct" progressive values. (I'm not suggesting that people _should_ be forgiving of the Chinese company in this case, but just describing why I think it's happening.)
For #2, I think it's a lot more of a grey area. In principle there's nothing wrong with a piece of art pushing its own social and political agenda, but it can become oppressive if it becomes too widespread or forceful. I can imagine that any era prior to the late 90s, the refusal to show anything other than heterosexual and traditional relationships on screen must have been frustrating for some folks, even if they did not have any issue with traditional heterosexual relationships in principle. The same could be true now: an audience could exhaust on having the same moral message crammed down their throat, even if there's nothing particularly wrong with the given moral message in piece of art when taken as a singular instance. A non-social and non-political version of this might be similar to super hero movie fatigue. The first run-up of Marvel films was a lot of fun, but after another decade of them and 60 more films (or whatever it's been) I'm much less tolerant of each new entry, even if I would have enjoyed prior to becoming so over-saturated. And, as I tried to outline in my initial comment, I think there are better and worse ways to go about this. Something like Pan's Labyrinth is aggressively anti-fascist and pro-feminist, but it's universally loved because it didn't put its message above its art, and didn't cram its message down its viewer's throats. It did not alienate its viewers by attempting to winning culture war points, but instead told a beautiful story.
Lastly, I'll say that I agree with a lot of your points, and I think hiding behind BOTH SIDES of this debate is an elephant in the room: people are leaning on principles, but often just find the speech itself to be objectionable. In other words, if they agreed with the speech then scenarios #2 and #3 wouldn't bother so many people as much. I think this is sort of unavoidable when it comes to contentious cultural topics, but I've done my best to stick to the "principles" side of things here. It's important to be open minded here, and understand that the free speech principle (eg: an artist is free to create any work they want) should be separate from my perception of the art. (eg: I really hate this piece of art because of the social values present in the art.)
I recommend you go through an exercise I learned a few years back in college[3]. Get into a quiet, comfortable, but alert state (meditation or a cup of coffee often works) . Somewhere you can be undisturbed for 30-60 minutes. Get yourself a few sheets of paper and a pen you like. It's advised you actually hand write this. Maybe turn on some quiet contemplative music -- movie scores often work[1].
Set a timer for 30-60 minutes and begin to write down every conceivable thing you might want to do, anything that seems cool, honorable, worthwhile, interesting, amazing, serene, invigorating, beautiful, or otherwise just iconic/archetypal of your interpretation of what a great life might include/entail. The only rules are you must not limit yourself by thinking it cannot be accomplished, is out of reach, or other "pragmatic" style self limitations, and you must not list things you think you ought/should do where those things are coming from a place that doesn't seem truly genuine to who you are -- they are externally informed. Try to shoot for 100 things.
Ok, got your list?
Now you're going to refactor it into categories. Categorize it into any pattern set you observe. I wont mention any here as it will bias your own groupings. But I really do believe patterns _will_ emerge if you look at it long enough. Try to distill themes of values and what is important to you, excites you, has meaning/purpose to you.
After many days you may want to start to think and begin to pursue these things either concretely (a specific item on your list) or thematically (find ways to incorporate meaning to what you're already doing). Books about habits[2], goals can help with bringing them into fruition. This exercise can be used to help you map out things that matter, reflect on things you have done that you previously said would matter (gratitude), and later on redone to help evolve as you grow.
If I find that you're stalling/procrastinating in overwhelm or negativity I often apply my "Next pizza" rule (I love pizza). I think about what might represent the next pizza in my life (sometimes literally, usually figuratively) and focus on getting there. Focus on doing the best monday through friday on the things that matter I can so I can get to that next pizza (reward).
[1]: Perhaps the fountain, interstellar, or pan's labyrinth.
[2]: such as atomic habits or tiny habits
[3]: this exercise is similar to, but smaller than, the future authoring program https://www.selfauthoring.com/future-authoring
Or if you make a film about child abuse in which a child actor pretends to be abused, can you arrest the actor who abuses? If any depiction of the act is a crime, then you can.
This issue came before the US Supreme Court about a decade ago and they ruled that the depiction of a crime is not a crime so long as the depiction can in any way be called "art". In effect, any synthetic depiction of a crime is permitted.
However that ruling predated the rise of deep fakes. Would the SC reverse that decision now that fakes are essentially indistinguishable from the real thing? Frankly I think the current SC would flip since it's 67% conservative and has shown a willingness to reconsider limits on the first Amendment (esp. speech and religion).
But how would we re-draw the line between art and crime? Will all depictions of nudes have to be reassessed for whether the subject even might be perceived as underage? What about films like "Pan's Labyrinth" in which a child is tortured and murdered off-screen?
Do we really want to go there? This enters the realm of thought-crime, since the infraction was solely virtual and no one in the real world was harmed. If we choose this path, the freedom to share ideas will be changed forever.
I don't buy this article's premise (that there is too much recycled, unoriginal content).
You could make this same argument for all forms of art (music, TV, theater). They can all be explained the same way: the barrier for entry has decreased.
Anyone can upload music to Soundcloud or a video to Youtube. Now there are whole albums/TV series/movies being produced on these content networks as a result of a kind of indie discovery that never existed before. This is wonderful!
The benefit of all of that discovery is the same drawback: that anyone (good or bad) can enter the market. That means in order to capture the "average" audience you have to water down and dilute what is popular to appease everyone. Most pop music is unmemorable. Most pop movies are unmemorable. BUT, they are good enough to capture a wide enough audience to convince them to pay for it.
That doesn't mean there isn't great film to be found. Or music. It just requires a bit more discovery than your local pop Top 40 radio station or whatever they're peddling in the box office.
There have been so many great films in the last 20 years with original stories. Here's a bunch that I just rattled off the top of my head without much thought:
Boyhood, Interstellar, Inception, Spirited Away, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Wall-E, The Intouchables (now called The Upside), Pan's Labyrinth, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Amelie, Slumdog Millionaire
One thing that's really helped me learn languages is watching tv shows or movies with native subtitles. I had this revelation years ago in Spanish class. At the time, I had taken years of Spanish in school and yet I could barely speak or understand Spanish.
One day, our teacher made us watch Pan's Labyrinth with Spanish subtitles. It was such a struggle to watch, but because the movie is so good we paid attention anyway, and context clues help you along the way.
I vividly remember the next morning on the subway to school, where there were two men speaking Spanish and I suddenly realized I could understand everything they were saying. It totally blew my mind that I could finally understand Spanish!
I used this same technique years later when I lived in Italy for a summer. It was a lot of work, but I did the following:
1) Learned enough basic Italian grammar that I could translate a sentence by looking up words & conjugation rules 2) I watched Italian movies, both good and "blockbuster" ones, with English subtitles so I could understand the movie 3) Then, I re-watched the movies with Italian subtitles. If I saw/heard a sentence I couldn't immediately understand, I'd pause and hand translate it
Even though Spanish & Italian are quite similar, this was still surprisingly effective. I also enjoy watching movies, so it was also quite fun =)
There's probably some science as to why this technique works, but I don't know. It's probably because watching tv/movies is most similar to real-life conversations, as opposed to what you get in a classroom or a book. I never knew how to write an essay in Italian, but I also never cared.
To elaborate, MI 1 and 2 can very much be seen as the glorified daydream of a child imagining himself to be a pirate. (There are certainly some books that play with this sort of thing, but I'm not remembering them at the moment. Pan's Labyrinth and Sucker Punch are movies in this vein.) Hence the zaniness of the world, and Guybrush having little personality of his own beyond a naive aspiration and a certain wit--he's a sort of surrogate for the player. The ending of MI2 suggests this is very much the case, but leaves it ambiguous. An MI3 by Gilbert would undoubtedly have continued along these lines.
CMI pretty much eschews the MI-as-daydream idea altogether in favor of MI as a sort of off-Disney world/production, meant to be taken at face value, with Guybrush becoming more of a character in his own right rather than a player surrogate.
In another part of the world which consumes movies voraciously. An Indian movie called "Bahubali" which had lot of special effects (of varying quality), was made for 40 million USD. It is a two-part release so each one cost about 20 million and made ~100 million. The second part is yet to be released.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baahubali:_The_Beginning
One can imagine the special effects from efforts like these become mainstream, reducing the cost.
A related read: https://qz.com/674547/hollywoods-special-effects-industry-is-cratering-and-an-art-form-is-disappearing-along-with-it/
Another movie that was heavy on special effects and story (but light on the wallet) was Pan's Labyrinth (Cost 20 Million USD, made ~80 Million USD).
> I'd say you want an interesting but expect incredible production values
Smoke was an interesting movie, and cost $7M. (It didn't make much more but it wasn't a failure.)
Moon was a fantastic movie, and cost $5M. The little CGI it had was pretty obvious but didn't affect the viewing experience. (It also made near-zero returns.)
Requiem for a Dream was - and remains - an outstanding film. It flopped in box office but must have made pretty penny on home sales.
Dead Man is an interesting movie, and still one of my favourites. It works on the audience for the same reason Apocalypse Now does: episodic films in general are considered "artsy" and hard to chew, but turn them into thoughtful road movies and the audience enjoys the experience.
Pan's Labyrinth is just damn good. It cost €13.5 to make, and grossed $37M. Home sales must have added even more since then.
All the films above are both interesting and, in terms of bloated Hollywood budgets, were cheap to make. I would take any one of them over the perfumed sewage that floods the film theaters. And for reference, I did see Doctor Strange in a cinema so I do have a metric for calibration. My opinion stands.
Have you considered looking towards foreign films, which may have a different way of telling a story? Some were popular in the US, like Amélie and Pan's Labyrinth, and of course there's the Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Foreign Language Film.
Less popular ones include those listed at http://the-artifice.com/best-foreign-films-last-15-years/ , like Run Lola Run/Lola rennt, Noi the Albino/Nói albínói, Moolaadé, Second Skin/Segunda Piel and The Celebration/Festen.
No Hollywood film has covered female genital mutilation, which is the topic of Moolaadé, and Festen is part of the Dogme 95 movement,"to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology."
There's also Russian Ark/Русский ковчег, which is a single, uninterrupted, 87-minute take through centuries of Russian history while going through the Winter Palace at the Hermitage Museum. Or any number of other lists of notable foreign films, like http://www.salon.com/2015/01/24/7_must_see_foreign_films_that_didnt_get_an_oscar_nod_partner/ or http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-foreign-language-films-decade-so-far .
Even if you're a staunch ally of safe, conservative family entertainment for its own sake, Disney was pretty damn crappy for a while. Look at their animated stuff in particular for plenty of mediocre storylines and bland animation (e.g. The Aristocats, The Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood). Children deserved better!
Eventually some meaningful competition from the likes of Don Bluth started to push them in the right direction (Secret of NIMH, Land before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, etc.) and not too long afterward they were doing things like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin. Quite an improvement, though I dare say the storylines have never quite caught up. (Of course, all of Bluth's stuff would later be undermined as it was sequel-ized to Hell and back, like The Land Before Time XXIV: Teach Your Kids Roman Numerals Edition...)
Right now, though, after seeing Pixar's homages to Ghibli, I'm anticipating the impact of recent works like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which really pushed some boundaries in Japan. (If you're not familiar with it, I'll just say... imagine if Pan's Labyrinth had been actively marketed to little children as a happy family film and an homage to Alice in Wonderland... and then translate that willful deception and the profound darkness onto Sailor Moon.) If it does make a splash in the youth entertainment industry at large, that will be quite interesting indeed.
Wow, someone doesn't like movies very much. "But the dismaying fact remains that the majority of art-house cinema treats science fiction as a means to acquire a veneer of philosophical gravitas, while freeing the auteur from the burden of writing a story that makes the slightest bit of sense."
Science Fiction aside, you could say much the same thing about "Groundhog Day," "It's a Wonderful Life," and "Pan's Labyrinth." Any movie with a bit of "magical thinking" and "what if..." That's the whole point of huge swaths of movies from every category of cinema! Even romance and drama -- with seemingly solid footing in reality draws on the implausible to make things interesting. You really think a successful Richard Gere would fall head over heels in love with a prostitute (even one who looks like Julia Roberts)?
If you want "science" why are you looking in "science fiction"?
Many of the sci-fi action films that have persisted are about ideas, and this elevates them far about the sort of films that pass for most science fiction these days. Just like in twenty years people will watch Inception and Pan's Labyrinth and everything Michael Bay has done will be wiped clean from memory.
Life Stinks
The Producers (new one, I haven't watched original)
Pan's Labyrinth - talks about serious issues but adds a fairy tale to shield audience
You Don't Mess with the Zohan - Adam Sandler movie, more silly than usual, but also takes on Middle East conflict with a positive (perhaps American) spin.
Fight Club ... deals with boredom of your average no-direction man, and how he finds a way to occupy himself.
(M) The Vanishing - from 80's not the American version (didn't see American version) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096163/combined
Overall I like silly movies, I'd list 5 Adam Sandler movies, and add 'The Animal' to them, and watch them any day of the week.
It was Pacific Rim, but regardless of director (loved Pan's Labyrinth), this movie is clearly catering to the Michael Bay mindless action crowd which, while having fans of all ages, generally are targeted at teenagers. Maybe that's disputable? Personally I don't think so... Also, it's not so much that people loved the trailer, more that it was 3000 comments of people explaining how much they "just came", and not a single critical voice. I really doubt that would be the case on HN if it had been submitted/allowed here.
What movie was it? If it was Pacific Rim as it sounds like, then that reaction could make sense. Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) is directing it.
It might not be that movie though. Still, have you seen the top raved about films on HN (there was a frontpage show hn on this recently)? Pretty obvious, typical choices. And there is nothing wrong with that. I'm cool with your reddit opinions. Just weird to use comments about a movie as an example against reddit and then swing over to endorsing HN.
Yeah, most of the silliest things in The Hobbit movie [er... "Part 1"], where "silly" sometimes turns into "cringe-inducing", were places where they expanded a couple of sentences in the book into a long drawn-out super-CGI-heavy battle/chase scene.
I can forgive the moviemakers some poetic license, but these sequences typically feel very out of place, like very expensive padding, and detract from the general atmosphere rather than adding to it.
The worst, in my mind was the whole undergound goblin battle sequence ... realllllllllly long and repetitive, resembling a roller-coaster ride more than anything else. That sort of thing is great for Transformers Part VI, but it's utterly out of place in the Hobbit.
The book was not an action adventure, it was much more about exploration, leaving the familiar for the wider world, a sense of wonder, whimsy, etc, and the movie often just completely flubs this.
I really, realllly, wish stupid movie politics hadn't resulted in Guillermo del Toro quitting, because I think he could have done a much better job at capturing the atmosphere of the book. Pan's Labyrinth is a much, much, better movie, and shows a deft touch with this sort of material that Jackson (though I respect him greatly) just doesn't seem to have. Nature, for instance, in Jackson's movies is basically a very pretty backdrop; in Pan's Labyrinth, on the other hand, it's a presence, fantastic, a little threatening, full of portent and vast depths. That's the sort of sense The Hobbit should have had.
This is very cool and pretty insightful. The Matrix represents itself perfectly, looking very similar to the code itself. Pan's Labyrinth was also close, and Bambi for that matter. Its interesting to see how closely we associate a movie with the colours in it, even if we dont recognize that association.
What specifically do you think is missing? Remember, it's only the 20 most popular films in a given year.
Oldboy (Korea), City of God (Brazil), Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico), and Spirited Away (Japan) are all on those, and that's not an exhaustive list.
>>Perhaps he subconsciously doesn't believe in his success?
Maybe the guy watching movies is trying to relax?
I used to have bad self insight into how worn out I was. Now I try to listen to my body and take it easy when needed.
Sooo... Today I exercised. Tomorrow I'll watch Pan's Labyrinth, which I just bought on Bluray. And I won't read up on a few class libraries I want to learn more than seeing that movie again... :-)
Edit: I should write out the point simpler: Maybe the guy has a bad year/decade for some reason beyond his control (family, health, stress, etc).
There is also a second Dartmoor video on James Watson's site. It uses the music by Javier Navarrete from "Pan's Labyrinth" film.