The Associated Press has a new interview with Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro that foregrounds the Narnia connection which, until now, had only been mentioned in passing — if at all — in the other interviews that I have read:
Guillermo del Toro was asked to direct “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” but he turned it down because, as a lapsed Catholic, he couldn’t see himself bringing Aslan the lion back to life.
Instead, he put his dark, fervid imagination to work on an original story, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a bloody and harrowing fairy tale that incorporates elements from C.S. Lewis’ beloved Christian allegory and various other classics of children’s literature.
Set during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, “Pan’s Labyrinth” shows why del Toro’s sensibility is somehow both perfectly suited and utterly alien to the gentle “Narnia.” He subjects his hero, an 11-year-old girl whose mother has married a captain in Gen. Francisco Franco’s army, to shocking violence and vexing moral quandaries.
“I’m not proselytizing anything about a lion resurrecting. I’m not trying to sell you into a point. I’m just doing a little parable about disobedience and choice,” del Toro said. “This is my version of that universe, not only `Narnia,’ but that universe of children’s literature.” . . .
Del Toro said Ofelia is an amalgam of himself and his 10-year-old daughter. His movies frequently incorporate autobiographical elements and center on children whose parents are absent or dead. Although del Toro’s parents are alive and he says he has a good relationship with them, he was raised largely by his conservative Catholic grandmother (“She was like Piper Laurie in `Carrie’,” he said).
“I’ve spent the rest of my life recuperating from my first ten years,” del Toro said. “It’s a brutal time of learning, and I think that I tried to bring the violence that I felt — moral, spiritual, and even physical — into the movies.” . . .
FWIW, the press screening for this film was one of several that I missed this month, due to a very busy schedule, but I believe the film opens in Vancouver in a few weeks, so I’ll catch it then.
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