It's A-maze-ing...pun intended

Journal Number 3 time, 'Behind The Scenes'. For this journal I sat down with some people and watched the infamous Pan's Labyrinth. I'll begin by saying that this movie was written, directed, and produced by Guillermo del Toro himself. The script came from many years of del Toro's notebooks, in which he constantly keeps character ideas and plot bits, eventually these random idea's gathered up into a cluster of thoughts that became the movie, and trust me when I say you can tell.

The cinematography in this movie is done by Guillermo Navarro, who won many Academy Awards for his work in this movie and is credited for movies like Desperado and Hellboy. There is amazing camera work in this movie, but nothing out of the ordinary if you take a quick look at the rest of Navarro's work. Another thing that can be noted is the music. The film won an academy award for the original score in this movie and throughout the movie according to the DVD Commentary, del Toro was striving to reinforce the magical mood that surrounds the movie. Overall del Toro picked appropriate actors, using a combination of new talent and recognizable Spanish actors.

I think it was the combination of all of these that caused this movie to get such a great critical reaction. Roger Ebert even said 'It's a fairy tale of such potency and awesome beauty that it reconnects the adult imagination to the primal thrill and horror of the stories that held us spellbound as children.' it's obvious this was well received by the critics. As for audiences it had mixed reactions and seemed to be a love hate. From searching online and asking people who have seen this movie it seems that it is either a love or hate movie. However, it is very obvious this movie took a lot to create and was carefully put together.

That is my behind the scenes on Pan's Labyrinth.