One Week from Tonight...

Pan's Labyrinth will be up for six Oscars: for best art direction; for best cinematography; for best makeup; for best original score; for best original screenplay; and for best foreign language film.

Guillermo del Toro--along with two other esteemed colleagues from his native Mexico: Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men); and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel)--have produced three of 2006's cinematic treasures. Although they're competing against each other in several categories, Pan's Labyrinth is the one that made it to the Best Foreign Language Film category, as it is conducted entirely in Spanish. In Spanish; in Spain, 1944 Spain, at that...

I must digress. By the time my father got my mother out of Vichy France in late fall of 1940, a number of their friends and colleagues had gone to Spain--and some had died--for the Republican cause. The moment I saw that the backdrop of the movie entailed the early years of Franco's regime--with the vestigial remains of "los republicanos" still hiding out in the hills--I was hooked. I thought of the kind pension owner in Madrid, who'd shrugged his shoulders and told my mother not to worry, when her coat had accidentally brushed by a vase situated on a table and had knocked it down.

Let me return to Pan, here. Already engrossed more than the norm, here comes a little girl, Ofelia--subtly, delicately, yet forcefully--played by an age-appropriate young actress, Ivana Baquero. A little girl, alone with her books, more painfully aware of her surroundings than she's letting on. She's on her way with her very enceinte mother to meet her new stepfather, one of Franco's Captains. As portrayed by Sergi Lopez, el Capitan Vidal is a self-absorbed, crueler than cruel, monster. This, quite frankly, is not what I was prepared for, and what made even grown people grimace in the theater, especially the second time I saw it. I hadn't averted my eyes the first time, though.

Ofelia: let me return to Ofelia. The trailer had given her an almost Alice In Wonderland feel, down to the smock-covered dress. That's what I'd thought I'd been in for: Alice. And, indeed, in a combination of Alice In Wonderland, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, the Wizard of Oz, and Grimm's Fairy Tales, Ofelia proceeds to speak with fantastical creatures; to open doors where there were none a moment earlier; to disobey and have to deal with the consequences--in effect, to be the entranced child she reads about in her fairy tales. She has no choice, for the reality of her enforced existence is more than she can bear. And, true heroine that she is...

My first thought, before I'd even seen it the first time through, was that this movie is "ethereal in its simplicity."

This is a marvel of a movie. Guillermo del Toro both directed and wrote the screenplay. What will happen next Sunday is anyone's guess, but my money's on at least four out of the six.

Need I say that Ninina needs four popcorn boxes, a piece of chalk, a smock, and red slippers?

Post-Oscar Monday: well, we won three: Best Art Direction; Best Cinematography; and Best Makeup. It should have been all six--it's a real shame that the Academy did not--could not--did not want to--realize that this is one of the very best and most original movies that's come along in a long time, irrespective of language and country of origin...Felicidades, Guillermo!