My summary and "go see it!" is here. Some bits of ***SPOILERy*** goodness from the film follow...
SPIRITED AWAY... The movie opens with Ofelia and her mother traveling in a caravan through the woods on the way to the husband's camp. When the cars stop to allow the mother some time to rest, Ofelia stumbles upon an old carved stone idol or marker set back a few dozen feet from the road. I had a case of film deja vu, flashing to SPIRITED AWAY, a pretty perfect match in mood and material. If ever anyone attempted to do a Miyazaki film with live action and human actors, I'd tell them to get Guillermo del Toro on board.
The Captain, his watch, fathers and sons... When the Captain has a dinner for local high-falootin families and military, an officer tells a story he heard about the Captain's father. He died on the battlefield, and with his last breath, he smashed his pocket watch and ordered that it be given to his son, so that he could know the exact hour and circumstance of his death, on a battlefield. The Captain does carry with him a pocket watch, one that he keeps oiled and tuned to precision. It does in fact have a cracked glass face, so it seems the story could be true. If it is, then the Captain has thwarted his father's wish by restoring it and keeping it in working order. I wasn't sure what to draw from this.
Before hearing the story, we see him focus on the watch more than once, monitoring the punctuality, or lack of, of those around him. Those instances helped fill in his fascism and devotion to order and progress. Upon hearing the story, and seeing something of a wavering look in the Captain's face, I thought that he might have some reason to resent his father, or perhaps knows some secret about him that would contradict his reputation as a great soldier and leader. Nothing like that ever quite surfaces.
His relationship with his father is not brought up explicitly at all. Maybe his insistence at having his own son born near him is an expression of it, though. Perhaps he's simply, diligently, repeating history. Perhaps he was born and raised near battlefields himself, because his father wanted his son near him...
Or maybe he didn't know his father very well at all, and wants to know his son. Perhaps he received the watch, but no mention of his father's last wish, and his fascist nature drove him to repair the timepiece without any thought as to the meaning of its smashed face.
That's what I like to think, what I want to think, and what I first thought when the story about his father's death was told. That he unwittingly fixed/broke his father's memorial. That makes him a slightly pitiable, human, even tho the cause of his mistake is his inhuman behavior.
But maybe more in line with his ultimate adult outcome is the idea that his father was something of a monster and he ended up, or even always wanted to be, just like daddy, with a celebrated military career, and even, ultimately, the death in battle with a message and smashed heirloom for his son.
There's definitely a story and meaning in it, but I'm probably trying to read more than I need to. I've got that problem all over the place. =)
At the end of the film, when the Captain is confronted by the rebels and servants, he makes ready to make a final request, one that might involve bestowing his watch upon his son one day, along with a message. Of course, Pedro and Mercedes summarily put the kibosh on that. Bullet hole in the cheekbone. That's GOTta hurt!
Obey... The following bit goes a good way toward summing up the Captain's nature regarding order. The good doctor disobeys the Captain's orders when he "takes care of" the tortured prisoner. When the quietly seething Captain asks him how he could do that, the doctor tells him something like, "Not everyone can obey without questioning... Not everyone is like you, Captain."
The movie successfully took me in by getting me to wonder about the possibility that the faun, keeper of the labyrinth and Ofelia's test proctor, is misleading her, taking advantage of being her only source of information about her destiny, and duping her into accomplishing tasks that are not meant to help her at all, but free or empower himself instead.
The possibility of the Captain having some connection to the supernatural also blipped into my mind a couple times, but alas, everyone knows, only human beings can be such frickin jerks.
Hand-eye coordination! Man! That baby-eater in the banquet hall! Frickin wonderfully creeptacular! An ingeniously freaky creation.
Child logic... When the fairy first appears to Ofelia, its shape is that of an insect. When it appears again to her at night, Ofelia very matter-of-factly corrects the creature, showing it a picture of a proper fairy from one of her storybooks. The creature studies it, then sort of flexes itself, and finally transforms into the Ofelia-approved aspect a fairy should have. Just so freakin good. That's exactly how that ought to work!
Allright, enough rambling recapping...
Keep on keepin on~
p.s. I *know* there's more going on here than what's on the surface, but I'm honestly not knowledgeable enough to tackle commentary on Franco's Spain or willing at this point to attach real world historical metaphorical significance to the blind baby-eater or the tree-starving toad (who was hideously fun =)
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