Where did you get the idea for Pan's Labyrinth?
I'm a big fairy tale fan and I've always referenced them in my films. Cronos, Mimic and Hellboy, they're ultimately fables, and that's why many of them start and close with a voiceover. I felt that after The Devil's Backbone and after shooting Hellboy and after 9/11, there was something I could only express through a fairy tale. That's why Pan's Labyrinth exists.
This movie continues the fascist fairy tale concept that was a key facet of The Devil's Backbone.
The idea was that The Devil's Backbone represents the end of the Spanish Civil War, but the sad truth is that Pan's Labyrinth shows that the war never fully ended, it just kept going on secretly, underground. If the character of Jacinto in The Devil's Backbone was a proto-fascist, Pan's Labyrinth's Vidal is a full-blown, shiny-boots fascist - he's the guy Jacinto wishes he was. So it's a continuation of the fact that, if you pit innocence against fascism, or you pit innocence against war or brutality, there's a story to be told about it.
Pan's Labyrinth is so well-developed, it feels as though the story is one that you've been carrying around and aching to film for some time.
The first sketches of the idea for Pan's Labyrinth have been in my notebooks since 1993, so in a sense that's true. But the story itself emerges from many things. Some of them were in the first draft of The Devil's Backbone. The other thing that helped a lot is I discovered a book called The Science Of Fairy Tales [Edwin Sidney Hartland, 1891] - that explained how these fables essentially dwell in primal archetypes. Which was very interesting, because that made it connect with two of my favourite things: Carl Jung - the Jungian idea of the archetype - and alchemy.
When I started designing the movie I did some of it very esoterically. For example, finding alchemical stuff for the phases of the moon. I didn't know where I was going, but I was studying the symbols and the possibility of doing a fable in that sense. The Science Of Fairy Tales made me realise that there's this primal form of human oral fable - the purest form of narration. I really started digging into it, which is what this whole thing is about. [Flicks through a wonderful book full of delicately written notes and phantasmagorical drawings.]
With your movies, it seems as though your intention is to creep-out rather than horrify the viewers.
As much as I absolutely love horror, it seems to me that - and I'm not being ironic here, I swear to God - the only time I've attempted a full-out horror film was Mimic. I love the visual coding of horror, but I don't like the jump scares. I like the idea of the pervasiveness of certain types of images. I like the fact you can have certain textures, sounds, surfaces and shapes that subliminally sink under your skin - if you're paying attention. A scary movie, as such, is more like an attention-deficit-syndrome type of movie that needs a different type of audience. Many people who like horror movies may not even get my movies, they may not think they're scary movies. Maybe that's because my movies are more interested in the poetics of horror than in the form.
Whenever I watch your films I always sense that there are subliminal links between them.
There are. The way I phrase it is that these movies all rhyme, but you'll not be able to see it movie by movie. The best way to watch Pan's Labyrinth is after you've seen The Devil's Backbone, to realise how they rhyme together. At the end of the day, all my movies more or less rhyme with each other, they create a little stanza of what I think life, or the world, is. They are important movies to me, not necessarily to the rest of the world. But to the people that do get them, they'll be strong movies. I actually think of The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth as mirror movies. One is a male movie and the other is a female - The Devil's Backbone is the brother and Pan's Labyrinth is the sister.
Do you think every film you've made was leading towards the creation of Pan's Labyrinth?
I think so. For instance, it's impossible for me to understand Pan's Labyrinth without Hellboy, either thematically or aesthetically. Everything in Pan's Labyrinth is sets - I've always been obsessed with building them - and I think they're better than in any of my other films. I also think the creatures are better than any of the other creatures - with the possible exception of Abe Sapien in Hellboy and the Reapers in Blade II, which are absolutely beautiful monsters. But how could I acquire the craftsmanship without doing the other movies? I couldn't. I had to fuck up X number of times before getting it right, and I think this time I did get it right. I think, unapologetically, that it's a movie I love more than my others - without a doubt.
One of the greatest facets of your work is that you've retained that unquestioning, all-embracing fascination with the fantastical that most kids originally possess, but have drummed out by schooling and the system.
I do... I remember Picasso saying it took him decades to relearn how to draw like a child. That's a very interesting and a very real thing, because essentially we all grow up like the girl in Pan's Labyrinth, with someone screaming, "Magic doesn't exist - not for me, not for you, not for anyone!" And I had, "Fuck you, you were born in Mexico, you cannot make fantastic movies... screw you, you'll never do this, you'll never do that!" But I willingly, stubbornly, and at the same time innocently, grew up through those things saying: "No, I know there's magic." So I have the certainty that things like fauns exist.
That's a secret magic I've never, ever lost - even throughout the most harrowing experiences in filmmaking. That primal lustre of still believing in purity and the state of grace that can be achieved by remaining true to yourself in the direst of circumstances. I think the moment you lose that, that's the moment you start to stumble without purpose, because before that you stumbled with a purpose. The golden rule I repeat over and over again is that art is not about being right, it's about fuckin' up on your own terms. That's the main reason my movies remain wide-eyed. But there's a second, very simple reason - the fuckin' monsters! You should get a boner every time you create a monster. And if you get that boner when you create that monster, God bless you, man!
Pan's Labyrinth, OUT NOVEMBER 24
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