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The Audience Reaction to Pan’s Labyrinth: Guillermo del Toro sees his film as an inkblot test. “If they are enraged by the bleak hopelessness, or they are enthralled by the beauty and the poetry and the hope in the film, it’s equal to me. I think that it’s a movie that is going to make people react emotionally, hopefully. What I would love is, ideally, if this movie connects with you, it should create an almost perfect simulation of what it is to be a kid again, both by the beauty and the fear, because both things are dialed up. The brutality is dialed up, artificially, and the fantasy is dialed up, artificially. It’s like doing a deep tissue massage to the soul, to try and reach the point where you will react to the violence and say, ‘Oh, my God.’ It’s so over-the-top that it will affect you. And the fantasy is also so over-the-top that it will affect you. It’s a simulation of a moment in childhood that you have. That’s why it’s a fairy tale for adults. Kids don’t need that extreme pushing.”
The Filmmaking Trio of Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro González Iñárritu: “I love, and openly enjoy, them doing well. I saw Children of Men and I see the envelope of storytelling clearly being pushed. I have a clear sense of that huge movement forward. Or, I see Babel and I see the Japanese episode in Babel and I see him trying something completely new in his set of storytelling tools and concerns. It’s easier for me to enjoy that than it is to enjoy my own stuff. I don’t know why. I’m fat and an ex-Catholic. It takes a lot for me to accept a compliment.”
The trio of talented friends pass their scripts back and forth to each other, and Cuaron even credits del Toro with coming up with the ending to Y Tu Mama Tambien. But based on their previous work, it would be easy to assume Inarritu might not be into the fantastical stories del Toro chooses to tell. del Toro laughed, “I think that Alejandro, for example, loved Hellboy but he hated Blade 2. He berated me for over two hours for making Blade 2. I had to pull off of the freeway and park in a parking lot. I finally said, ‘Listen, man, I need to have lunch. I apologize for having made Blade. Can I now have lunch?’ He said, ‘No, you don’t understand. It appeals to the vilest of human emotions.’ I said, ‘Dude, it’s a Tom and Jerry cartoon.’
We’re sincere with each other. When Alfonso and I finished Great Expectations and Mimic, I called Alfonso and I said, ‘So, it looks like we both made giant insect movies,’ and we laughed about it. We really take it in stride. I didn’t like the screenplay for 21 Grams. I said to Alfonso, ‘Thank God you disjointed the narrative because linearly it would be ridiculous.’ We f**k with each other. It’s good. It’s a good thing to have in your life.”
