| For Tribune : THE KIDS AREN'T ALRIGHT (Pan's Labyrinth; Rampage) |
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| Monday, 20 November 2006 | |
 Pan's Labyrinth [8/10] Spain/Mexico/USA 2006 Starring : Ivana Baquero, Sergi Lopez Director : Guillermo del Toro ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rampage [4/10] Australia 2006 Documentary, with : Denzell Lovett, Marcus Lovett Director : George Gittoes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ both films released in the UK, 24th November 2006 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FINALLY delivering on the promise of his 1993 debut Cronos, Mexican writer-director del Toro - who has been moving between arthouse metaphysics (The Devil's Backbone) and Hollywood blockbusters (Hellboy) with largely underwhelming results - hits the bullseye with Pan's Labyrinth. A startlingly full-blooded - at times ferocious - fairytale-cum-horror-fable set in mid-forties Spain, it's a story that occupies two parallel, equally dangerous planes of reality: the brutalities of civil war, and the phantasmagoric realm of myths and monsters. These are the two worlds between which moves our spirited young heroine, the bookish, eleven-ish Ofelia (Baquero), after she arrives with her mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) at the sprawling rural estate in northern Spain that's to be there new home. With Ofelia's father long dead, Carmen has remarried: her husband is Vidal (Lopez), a martinet captain in Franco's army. Exploring the estate one day, the inquisitive Ofelia stumbles into a large stone labyrinth - the home of a horned giant who introduces himself as the faun Pan (Doug Jones). This is the start of a series of terrifying adventures for Ofelia - who must also deal with the more earthly horrors of Captain Vidal and his domestic reign of fear... A glance at the title, poster, stills and synopsis for Pan's Labyrinth might give the impression that the picture was somehow 'kid's stuff' - or perhaps a dark-edged romp in the Tim Burton mould. Such impressions would be far wide of the mark: hardened critics at advance press-shows have found themselves averting their eyes or wincing in discomfort at some of the more horrific sequences of what is often a tough, disturbing watch (the details and atmosphere influenced as much by Bacon, Brueghel and Bosch as Bunuel or Erice.) But proper fairy-tales were never meant to be fluffily pleasant: the beautifully-crafted, engagingly fast-paced Pan's Labyrinth is a startling collision of the Grimm (subterranean beasties) and the grim (totalitarian brutalities) - and its astonishing, ambiguous finale is all the more powerful when you remember just how long it was until Spain was able to wake up from the all-too-real Franco nightmare. THEMES of violence and desperate youth recur in Rampage, a noisily confrontational but ultimately overlong and unsatisfying documentary about Marcus and Denzell Lovett - a pair of African-American teenage brothers living in a particularly hazardous area of inner-city Miami where the prevalent culture is one of drugs, machismo, guns and death. Of the two it's 14-year-old Denzell who's most likely to escape his bullet-strewn environment thanks to his skills as a street rapper: but could he be perhaps a too "real" for the record-buying public? Rampage starts off as an arrestingly boisterous chronicle of the brothers, their family and their surroundings. Gittoes tries to replicate the angry edginess of gangsta rap with flashy, in-your-face camerawork and choppy, freeze-frame-happy editing - overcooked techniques which rapidly become wearing. It's only halfway through that the emphasis begins to change: there's a shattering tragedy in the Lovett family just as Denzell is starting to attract the attention of record-company executives, and the film gradually shifts into more conventional showbiz-documentary territory as the bereaved Denzell travels to New York and Australia in his attempts to obtain a record deal. It's in his native Australia that Gittoes is asked whether he thinks his crew's presence in Miami might have drawn extra attention and resentment to the Lovetts - making them into a tempting target for their trigger-happy peers. Gittoes isn't able to provide a satisfactory answer, and it's a sequence foregrounds disturbing questions about the whole enterprise: indeed, the more the film goes on, the more naggingly exploitative it feels. There's also more than a whiff of egotism in a project which ends up featuring an inordinate amount of screen-time - and underwhelming voiceover - for a director who, to say the least, lacks the presence of a Michael Moore or the sly skills of a Nick Broomfield. His creative 'talents' also decidedly rather meagre and laborious juxtaposed with Denzell's breezy flair - he leaves the wider political/economic/social picture frustratingly underexplored, instead insulting both his subjects and his audience by providing subtitles for much of the black participants' dialogue, even when it's perfectly audible and comprehensible. Neil Young 10th November, 2006 (written for Tribune magazine; online publication delayed due to FDA embargo) PAN'S LABYRINTH : [8/10] : El laberinto del fauno : Mexico (Mex/Spn/USA) 2006 : Guillermo DEL TORO : 120 mins (BBFC timing) : seen at Empire cinema, Bromsgrove (UK), 5th October 2006 - press show (CinemaDays event) RAMPAGE : [4/10] : Australia 2006 : George GITTOES : 108 mins (BBFC timing) : seen at Empire cinema, Bromsgrove (UK), 5th October 2006 - press show (CinemaDays event) |
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