The Pale Man

** New approach. Taking a look at things through my perspective.**

Synopsis

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a gritty fairytale piece set in post-war Spain. It follows young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero)  as her stepfather, Capitan Vidal (Sergi Lopez) , terrorizes the rebels. Ofelia fights to save her mother and unborn brother by completing tasks given to her by the mythical fawn, Pan(Doug Jones). After her mother dies, Ofelia sacrifices herself for her brother and becomes a princess in a fantasy world. Pan’s Labyrinth

is a deeply layered film with stunning visuals and an intricately formed environment. Eugenio Caballero and Pilar Revuelta won the Oscar for bringing Del Toro's vision to life on screen through production design and art direction. Their collaborative effort was meticulous, artistic, and imaginative. Through their art, they take an inaccessible world and make it a hyper-realistic experience for the viewer.

The Pale Man's Den 
“The one who gorged on excess was banished to a den in the netherworld... He kept a watchful eye on a dagger… Once the blade was removed he collapsed unto himself and faded from existence.”(The Pale Man’s Legend) Del Toro drops twelve-year-old Ofelia into this den to complete the task of retrieving the Pale Man’s dagger. Beautifully capturing the era, this scene addresses all the themes of the film. As Ofelia works towards a right of passage, the boundaries between reality and fantasy fall away. The visual motifs comment on the connection between deviant behavior and a child’s imaginative ability to create monsters to explain that behavior. 

Ofelia's Room 
Upon arrival, Ofelia is instantly at odds with her natural world and retreats by reading a book of fairytales that come to life before her eyes. The color palette of her new room is shaded in blues, greens, and grays denoting a cold impersonal place. The sparseness suggests that it was furnished out of efficacy

 not embellishment. Despite the fact that Captain Vidal has money, he chooses to live in a world of strict utility. In a room with unconventionally high walls and low furniture, she is always placed in the lower third of the frame to subtly put forward the notion of submission. Ofelia is forced to reside in Vidal’s home and by extension she is confronted with a new set of values.
Concept and Construction 
When Ofelia’s book animates itself, the color palette from the fantasy world bleeds into her reality. Reds, golds, and browns fill the empty page demonstrating the dramatic contrast between her reality and the

fantasy world she is about to enter. She follows the magical instructions, drawing a door on the wall with magic chalk and when it opens an enchanted world is revealed.  The warm tones of the fantasy world are embryonic.  This is a direct reflection of Ophelia’s subconscious. Her young brother is about to be born and her mother falls ill. This threatens two lives that she deeply cares about. The color palette and shapes are uterine like her mother’s belly. They have 

biological and intimate connotations for Ofelia and the viewer.The contrast between worlds is showcased as soon as Ophelia enters the Pale Man’s chamber. She climbs into the entryway on a small wooden chair from her room, immediately creating a sharp distinction between reality and fantasy. The fantasy world is incredibly organic. Tree-like columns rooted in a red-checkered floor support the cavernous lair. Lights in the ceiling represent the lunar cycle. 

Monsters and Men
The first sight of the Pale Man sitting at his banquet table is extravagant. It is a direct replica of Vidal’s kitchen table in an earlier scene, making a strong comparison between the evil actions he commits, and the manifestation of a monster in Ofelia’s mind. The Pale Man sits motionless at the head of the table on a blood red throne. This visually establishes the monster’s power while comparing him to Vidal. Both characters are two-dimensional representations of malevolence. This is yet another visual representation of the link between Ofelia’s subconscious and her fantasy world. The fireplace behind the monster is a direct replica of his likeness. It

mirrors his eyeless face and gaunt jaw. The fireplace increases his menacing presence in the shot. The key light in the scene comes from directly above the monster causing harsh shadows and immediately denotes danger. The dome above the monster’s head displays hieroglyphic paintings of the monster throwing, stabbing, and eating small children. The images link the evil creatures inner workings with an ancient tradition. Each image is a more threatening foreshadowing of his capabilities. The paintings reveal the Pale Man’s evil nature while giving the chamber a sense of timelessness.
Brutal Disobedience 
As she leaves, she admires the beautiful feast placed before the Pale Man. The table is filled with ham, red gelatin, grapes, and wine.  Each treat is a dark temptation. The camera slowly pans across the feast and as the movement pauses the monster’s long pointed fingers are revealed motionless on both sides of 

a gold platter that holds two eyeballs. Against Pan’s warning she eats one small grape. The monster comes to life. This act of deviance shows Ofelia’s need to rebel against authority as she finds her place in adulthood. Rebellion in her fantasy world results in a near death experience and visually mirrors her entire coming of age experience, while referencing another commonly used mythological device. The Pale Man puts the eyes into the slits in his hands and advances towards Ofelia. 

He cannot see unless his hands are immobilized. This is an outward visual of the monster’s half-life curse. He stumbles and staggers giving the impression he hasn’t walked in several lifetimes. 


Sights for Sore Eyes

It took over six hours of make-up to get the pale man to look like the monster he does in the picture above. Dave Jones, who also played Pan the Fawn, was also the Pale man. He often had to wear the suit for thirteen hours a day. I'm sure things looked a little different from his perspective, but I must say... it was worth the effort. 

No Country: 2nd Installment

In No Country for Old Men there is a strange juxtaposition between what can’t be seen and what can’t be heard. The door creaks as Chigurh enters Moss' hotel room in the infamous battle scene, but the viewer never sees the door open. He turns the air valve on his captive pistol but his weapon is never seen. Chigurh is never visually in the scene but his presence is still strong. Conversely, what can’t be heard is equally unsettling. Only Chigurh’s footsteps can be heard. He is never heard breathing and when he gets shot he doesn’t even grunt. In each case the same unnerving feeling is achieved.

            The film is a  textbook example of how to use sound. Each element deals with loudness, pitch, and timber. The Coen brothers eliminate speech and music from most of the clip and strip it down to an intense use of noise. The mixing is perceptive. The overall feel is achieved in an intense and artistic way. All of the sounds are diagetic and it improves the overall believability. The attention to detail heightens the quality of the film. It is meticulous in every way. It is never underwhelming even though it is often very bare bones. No Country for Old Men is a superb example of how to successfully and artistically use sound in film. 

New Approach: A Turning Point

Sadly, I didn't consider the fact that I would eventually run out of Nicholas Ray films to watch. So now instead of focusing on one director I'll use a couple of blogs a week to dive into films that have caught my attention. 

This Week: No Country For Old Men... The Sound of Perfection

In No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers are clearly genius in their attention to detail. The entire film is a masterpiece and the sound design is nearly perfect in my opinion. Even the weakest scene in the film still holds up under scrutiny. Each scene has several interesting sound motifs. The two main characters weapons’ have motifs. The sound of flies always accompanies death. Each character has a wind motif as well. It uses over 40 sound bridges in scene transitions alone. I thought the use of sound to aid editing was clever and it took the film to a higher level. The film also employs a strong sound perspective. It's always heard from the viewer’s POV. It was delicately and realistically done.

Even though they never actually share any screen time, there is an electric scene where the two main characters have an incredible exchange. Anton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem is a hired assassin who finally meets up with Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) because there is a transponder in the two million dollars he stole from a Mexican drug deal gone bad. In the scene Chigurh has a shotgun with a silencer and a captive bolt pistol (an air tank and hose that shoots out a small metal disc and sucks it back in.) Moss’ only weapon is a shotgun.

The design of this scene is an interesting look at complexity vs. simplicity. Even though something relatively simple happens in the clip, forty-three different diagetic sounds are heard and there are over eighty different sound transitions. In this clip the wind motifs for both characters meet for the first time. The fidelity of the clip doesn’t hold up, but it works nevertheless. The gun's clicking, the wind, the lock hitting the ground, and the sound of the trigger are louder than they would be in reality but the shotgun blast is much quieter. These little details become one intense scene that is full of a tension I've never experienced before in the movies...

Where will it go from here?