the great god Pan lives again

It's very hard to sleep cramped up in economy class, so sometimes I watch a movie.

(this post sat on the backburner while I was busy in Germany and England, getting ready for my UK interviews. Currently I am in Switzerland working with the kla.tv team, which I shall report on.)

I am indeed in Europe and I have been in preparation mode for the series of interviews and presentations we intend to do. I have at least 3 interviews here in GB and of course I’ll be blogging about that and much more, but first a movie review.

-What, Shumway?! I want to hear about your missionary work of bringing free speech back to the Old Country. I want to hear of run-ins with the law and them putting you on the rack at the Tower of London!

All in good time, my friend. First I have to review the movie I saw on the plane from Denver to Frankfurt.

I never go to movies or watch TV so I had no idea this was a film that premiered way back in 2006. I thought it was new. I’m no film (wow that was good) or food (mmm. delicious. the end.) critic so I’ll just show you the screen shots and add some commentary.

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It’s 1944. The fascists won the Spanish Civil war six years ago but scrappy communists still fight on in mountain pockets of resistance. A wealthy woman and her daughter are chauffeured to a country villa where her 2nd husband, a captain in Franco’s army, commands a brigade of cavalry, rooting out the rebels and bringing them to swift and brutal justice.

The daughter Ofelia, is innocent, curious and beautiful. And she loves to read, especially fantasy and fairy tales. She brings a stack of books, bound together with twine, and always has her nose in one. “Oh, put your books down and get some fresh air!” sez Mom.

Ofelia also likes to run off and observe all the wonderful and mystical stuff in the woods. She meets a little praying-mantis-like creature that is actually a fairy of some sort. “Hey, mama, guess what? I saw a fairy!”

“Oh, sure you did,” says a loving but distracted mother, too busy to pay attention to Ofelia’s imagination-driven nonsense, and worried about the upcoming visit with her husband and the their child that she’s carrying.

Ah, but it truly was a fairy, and it guided Ofelia to a labyrinth in the woods. Ofelia finds the middle of the labyrinth and finds a passage to an underground realm, “where there are no lies or pain”. There she finds the faun.

The faun gives three difficult tasks, in order that she may achieve immortality and the doors of the depths be opened to her and she can regain her status as princess of the underworld.

To help her achieve these tasks, the faun gives her a magic book full of blank pages, but when Ofelia stares at a blank page it fills up with mysterious images. These give her hints on what she’s to do.

Dozing and waking, I didn’t pay attention to the movie close enough to know what the devil is going on here.

Meanwhile, her mother is trying to please her fascist husband, the stern and mean Captain Vidal, whose only desire seems to be to see his son born, serve Franco, and kill commies.

Here’s Ofelia soiling her slinky dress as she approaches the giant bullfrog that she has to feed with some magic silver balls or something:

Ofelia’s mother is very sick as the birth of her son approaches. Ofelia goes to the faun, who tells her to put a mandrake root under her mother’s bed, and regularly feed it blood.

from wikipedia: Because mandrakes contain deliriant hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids and the shape of their roots often resembles human figures, they have been associated with magic rituals throughout history, including present-day contemporary pagan traditions.^[2]

Captain Vidal finds the mandrake root and thinks it’s all silly nonsense. Momma agrees and throws the mandrake root into the fire, scolding Ofelia for her crazy thinking. Mothers married to fascists just don’t understand.

Thus, without the magic mandrake root which Ofelia could hear screaming when it was tossed into the fire, mother goes into painful contractions and dies giving birth to Ofelia’s half brother.

Now I fell asleep here and missed a part but I checked on what happened. The maid at the country estate is secretly on the side of the righteous commie rebels. She helps Ofelia in various ways, but her collaboration with the rebels is discovered and she’s imprisoned. She escapes and stabs evil Captain Vidal many times (but doesn’t kill him). Then she frees Ofelia who also was locked up and O. escapes to the labyrinth with her baby brother. There the faun suggests that in order to finally open the doors to the underworld O. should cut her baby brother and offer some blood as the blood of innocents is necessary to open such doors. O. refuses. Captain Vidal appears at the labyrinth, takes back his son and shoots Ofelia. O’s blood drops onto an altar a few stories underground and that does the trick; the doors to the underworld are opened to princess Ofelia’s immortal soul. Now she’s dressed in red finery and can finally reunite with her true father.

O has some snazzy red shoes in the underworld.

Back up above ground, Mercedez the maid, surrounded by the peasant hero commies, finds O. and Captain Vidal. Vidal knows his goose is cooked and gives the boy to Mercedez. He says at least tell the boy of the time of his father’s death. Mercedez says fat chance this kid aint gonna know anything about you, sucka. A righteous rebel guns down Vidal.

As the cleaned-up, red-shoes Ofelia approaches her father below, her mortal body succumbs.

Now O. can join Satan I mean her father and be princess of the underworld again.

She’s happy.

And signs of her abound in the woods.

Analysis: Hollywood, and by extension Guillermo del Toro and the Mexican and Spanish movie industries as well, produce a bunch of satanic crap. Stop supporting these goons. Cancel your netflix, roku and hulu and pick up a book, for crying out loud.