A del Toro interview

This interview with Guillermo del Toro at Ain't It Cool News includes some interesting context for Pan's Labyrinth:

When I was a kid, when I slept in the guest bedroom of my grandmother’s house, at midnight, a faun would come out from behind the dresser. ...

I find that the girl in the movie is not so much trying to escape reality, which is the way that it would normally go. She’s actually articulating the world through her fantasy. So the things in her fantasy would reflect things in the real world. It’s not really her way of coping with the real world, more like interpreting. ...

The worst acts of violence are those that occur in a household, and a civil war is that. A civil war is a war in the household. ...

A friend of mine was being beaten with a bottle. And the only thing I noticed was that the bottle was not breaking, like in Western movies, like John Wayne breaking the bottle over someone’s head. ...

What I try to do is create a world that has a mythology behind it, and then I try not to explain the mythology. I think the minute you do that, the mystery goes away. ...

The real test for the girl is not so much the test, but seeing how she learns from her mistakes and seeing how she is capable of following only her instincts and disobeying the rest of the influences. It’s about her being her own little person. ...

There’s a tale called “The Three Hairs of the Devil.” [Here's a link to it.] The devil is asleep and a guy pulls one hair, and he can ask one question, whatever he wants to know. And there’s a town where water won’t flow, and the town is dying of thirst. So the guy pulls the hair and asks the devil, “Why is water not flowing in the town?” And the devil says, “If you look under a stone, you will find a giant frog. Kill it, and the water will flow.” That’s fairy tale logic. ...

The tale just has to be told, it’s not a logical exercise. Why does Cinderella need to leave at midnight and not 1 o’clock or 2 a.m.? ...

The movie tries to tell you that for every character in the movie, there is a moment of choice. The movie is based on the crossroads, the labyrinth, right turns, left turns, choosing where you go. And it’s a theme for the doctor, a theme for Mercedes, a theme for the mother, who chooses obedience, for example. ...

To me, the grotesque is beautiful. ...

I think it defines who he [Vidal] is, what an unstoppable guy he is, that he is sewing his own mouth. And he becomes, essentially, the Big Bad Wolf at that point.