Comments on To Know Everything

To call PAN'S LABYRINTH a "pretty, grim fairytale" that is uninteresting misses the mark. I think PAN'S is incredibly fascninating and complex. It works on so many different levels (fairytale, political commentary, metaphysical mind-trip). That said, I am fair enough to say that LIVES is also an excellent film. Why the fight? They're both two of the best films of 2006. Taken together, they work well in conversation about the nature of totalitarian regimes.

Oh, I just recalled from Annie Wagner's interview that there seemed to be a kind of rivalry between them, that's all. Pan's Labyrinth was fine, but it seemed fairly shallow to me.

It was also such a loving tribute to civil disobedence. I saw it this weekend as well and loved it.

This weekend I watched 300 in the awesome Cinerama, at a very early matinee on Saturday.

It was wonderful!

Shows you what critics know.

Oh, I think Pan's Labyrinth is plenty complex, even at its most archetypal. Everyone underestimates fairy tales.

The Lives of Others: I didn't pick up on that parallel. I don't think it really exists. An actress may wish to understand a playwright, but the vice versa seemed more about aesthetics. Mutual protection, yes, but mutual understanding? And that (abortive) protection is only possible through via mutual misunderstanding.

That said, I love both movies.

No, no. I mean simply as people (although professions are part of that certainly factors into that). I mean that no matter how well we feel we know another, we can never know them perfectly. A person may think they know what someone is like, but the can't ever really know another person's mind. And the ideal behind romantic love is two people becoming one, some impossible metaphysical fantasy.

With the couple, there are some deceptions they know about, there are things they choose not to know about each other, and then there are the things they think they know but are wrong about.

Of course I know you mean people as people--but we are introduced to those characters through their professions, and those play an important role in their characterizations. And I just don't see your assertion, that either character deeply cares what's going through the other's mind. Where is that asserted? Their relationship is about the time-honored themes of a) hot sex, and b) not talking too much about politics. I think the point of the film is that Communist repression estranges even lovers from each other, making them willfully oblivious to the partner's mind. For a romantic--and I believe FHvD is--that's the ultimate tragedy.

That theme, as I read it, stands in direct opposition to the Stasi's all-consuming hunger for knowledge.

So, I'm with you, as long as you switch "parallelism" to "perpendicularism."