REALITY + Đà Nẵng Film Forum invite you to a screening of Guillermo del Toro's grim, gorgeous 2006 Mexican/Spanish fairy tale Pan's Labyrinth.
It's 1944, and eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) arrives with her pregnant mother at a remote mill in the mountains of northern Spain. Her new stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi López), is stationed there to hunt down the rebels hiding in the surrounding forest. He polishes his boots, winds his father's broken watch, and cares about exactly one thing in the house: the son he's certain his wife is carrying. Ofelia would rather be reading fairy tales. She follows a stick insect into an overgrown stone labyrinth behind the mill and meets a faun, who tells her she is a lost princess and sets her three tasks to prove it. Meanwhile, the housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) is keeping secrets of her own, and the two halves of Ofelia's life start pressing in on each other.
Del Toro builds the fairy-tale world and the war with the same care, and both are frightening. The Pale Man, a creature who keeps his eyes in the palms of his hands and sits before a feast nobody is supposed to touch, is a monster people remember for years. Vidal is somehow worse. Doug Jones plays both the faun and the Pale Man under heavy practical makeup, and the film won Oscars for its cinematography, art direction, and makeup. It's violent in places, and it plays by the rules of the oldest fairy tales, where breaking a rule costs something real.
Film Club selections are screened in their original languages and shown with both English and Vietnamese subtitles.
Discussion will follow the screening.
Hosted by Michael.
Screening is for people 18 and older.
Event is free. Please buy things to support REALITY!