Article on Pan’s Labyrinth and the success for Spanish Cinema
Mainstream Success of Del Toro Film
May Bode Well for SpanishLanguage Cinema
For those of us who are learning Spanish or enjoy using it as a second language, there is
perhaps no easier and more fun way to become familiar with the varieties of spoken
Spanish than to make the movie theater a "classroom." Spain, Mexico and Argentina all
have active film industries, and filming sometimes takes place in other countries of Latin
America as well. And when you get a chance to see their films, you can experience
Spanish as it is spoken in real life.
Unfortunately, those chances don't happen very often in the United States and many other
English-speaking areas, especially if you don't live in a major city that has at least one
art-house theater. Typical suburban and rural movie theaters seldom, if at all, play
Spanish-language movies.
But could a change be coming? For the first time in a decade and a half, a Spanishlanguage movie has broken out of the movie ghetto of art-house aficionados and native
speakers. In early February 2007, El laberinto del fauno, also known as "Pan's
Labyrinth," passed $21.7 million is U.S. box office receipts, making it the most
successful Spanish-language film of all time in the U.S. The record was previously been
held by Como agua por chocolate ("Like Water for Chocolate"), a Mexican romantic
drama period piece.
That doesn't exactly put Laberinto in blockbuster territory, but it does put it in the upper
stratosphere for foreign-language films, Mel Gibson productions excluded. Laberinto was
in the top 10 at the box office for three weekends before breaking the record, and in wide
release it was showing on more than 1,000 screens nationwide.
Laberinto's success can be attributed to several factors:
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Unlike many art-house Spanish-language films, such as most of those made by
Spain's Pedro Almodóvar, Laberinto has an accessible story line. There's no
convoluted plot, no necessary-to-understand deep symbolism, no cultural
references to confuse the foreign viewer. Even if you go to the movie not
knowing who Franco was, you'll understand the motives of the soldiers in this
movie.
Unlike some art-house Spanish films whose sexual content is so strong they get
an NC-17 rating (for adults only in the U.S.) and thus won't be shown by many
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mainstream theaters, Laberinto has none. While the violence is extremely strong,
that is less of a barrier to widespread showing of a film than explicit sex.
Several martial-arts foreign-language films have drawn large audiences in recent
years, and the use of subtitles hasn't seemed to hurt Gibson's success as a film
director. Perhaps American audiences are becoming more accepting the ideas of
subtitled movies.
This film is rich in visuals, not dialogue. So there is less subtitle-reading required
than in many other foreign films, and very little is lost in the translation.
Although they're not household names, the film's director, Guillermo del Toro,
and one of the stars, Doug Jones, were already known to American audiences for
2004's "Hellboy" and other films.
Laberinto had the backing of Picturehouse, a major motion-picture studio.
The film garnered six Academy Award nominations, a fact played up in
advertising.
For better or worse, this film was promoted while underplaying the fact it is
foreign-language film. According to accounts in various Internet discussion
groups, many people arrived at the theater not knowing they would be seeing
something in Spanish.
As upbeat as all that may sound in terms of seeing a better selection of Spanish-language
films at your local theater, at least three factors work in the opposite direction:
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Almodóvar's Volver had many of the same things going for it as did Laberinto: It
is said to be the most accessible of Almodóvar's films, it had major studio
backing, and one of the stars, Penélope Cruz, has strong crossover appeal. Yet the
film struggled to get over $10 million at the box office, about the maximum for a
top art-house film, and has yet to reach much of the mainstream audience despite
Cruz's Academy Award nomination as best actress.
English remains the dominant language of the film industry, even in areas where
Spanish and other languages are spoken, so there's little incentive to put a lot of
money into a Spanish-language film. Not all that long ago, I visited a multiplex is
Guayaquil, Ecuador, and all the movies save one were in English. And that one
exception was María llena eres de gracia, a U.S. production.
Even though some 30 million U.S. residents speak Spanish at home, that market
has yet to be specifically exploited in a major way by the major film studios. In
many U.S. communities with a large Spanish-speaking population, it is easier to
find (especially in video stores) cheaply produced Mexican movies than quality
productions that might appeal to a broader English-speaking audience.
So what will 2007 bring? At this writing, there are no Spanish-language blockbusters on
the horizon. That's not surprising, however; specialty movies that stand the best chance of
picking up a mainstream audience tend to be released in the U.S. late in the year, as were
El laberinto del fauno and Volver, in part so they can pick up buzz from the various film
awards. The good news is that the success of del Toro's film shows that the right Spanishlanguage film can find an audience, even in the U.S.
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Review of Pan’s Labyrinth
Guillermo del Toro's imaginative El laberinto del fauno has become the most popular
Spanish-language film ever to show in the United States. And it's little wonder: The film,
marketed in the U.S. as "Pan's Labyrinth," is a visually stunning, extremely well-crafted
tale that skillfully mixes two disparate genres, being both a war film and a children's
fantasy.
While the film's marketing has stressed the fantasy aspect, this is no children's movie.
The violence in the film is brutal, even more intense than that of Schindler's List, and the
film's villain, the sadistic Capitán Vidal, played by Sergi López, comes as close as can be
to evil incarnate.
The story is seen mostly through the eyes of the captain's stepdaughter, Ofelia,
convincingly portrayed by 12-year-old Ivana Baquero. Ofelia moves with her late-term
pregnant mother to northern Spain, where Vidal is in charge of soldiers defending the
Franco regime from well-organized leftist rebels. While Vidal sometimes kills for the
sake of killing, and hypocritically indulges himself while countrymen are starving, Ofelia
finds her escape in a world where she is seen as a potential princess — if only she can
fulfill three tasks. Her guide in the world, which she enters through a labyrinth near her
new home, is a faun played by Doug Jones — the only non-Spanish-speaking actor in the
movie (his words were seamlessly dubbed in).
The girl's fantastical world is frightening and reassuring at the same time, just like you
might expect for the nightmares of a 12-year-old. It's incredibly detailed, and the visual
feast it provides belies the film's reported $15 million (U.S.) budget, little by Hollywood
standards but a major investment in Spain.
Most of the film's action takes place in the historical world, where the captain must
contend with betrayal from his inner circle as well as a stubborn leftist insurgency. Vidal
shows no mercy to his foes, and the film at times becomes excruciating to watch for
anyone who hasn't become insensitized to torture, war injuries, up-close surgery and
arbitrary killing. And in a side plot that calls attention to the fairy-tale aspects of the
overall story, Vidal awaits from Ofelia's mother the birth of a son, to whom he hopes to
pass on his pathetic legacy.
The combination of the two film genres comes across has less of a split personality than
might be expected. Del Toro ties the stories together primarily through Ofelia's character,
and both worlds are filled with danger and an utter lack of comic relief. Although not
really a horror film, it becomes as frightening and suspenseful as the best of them.
Linguistic notes: The film is entirely in Castilian Spanish. As shown in the U.S., the
English subtitles often appear before the spoken word, making it easier to understand the
generally straightforward Spanish.
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For those familiar with Latin American Spanish but not that of Spain, you'll notice two
main differences, but neither should prove to be a major distraction: First, it is common
in this film to hear the use of vosotros (the second-person familiar plural pronoun) and
the accompanying verb conjugations where you'd expect to hear ustedes in most of Latin
America. Second, the main pronunciation difference is that in Castilian the z and the c
(before e or i) are pronounced very much like the "th" in "thin." Although the difference
is distinct, you probably won't notice the differences as much as you'd think you might.
Also, since this film is set in World War II, you'll hear none of the anglicisms and
youthful lingo that have permeated modern Spanish. In fact, with the exception of a
couple choice epithets loosely translated to English in the subtitles, much of the Spanish
of this film isn't all that much different than what you might find in a good third-year
Spanish textbook.
The End
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