He played a closeted aristocrat in Maurice but that was before anyone outside of Britain knew who he was.

Sirens came after he started getting pretty famous, didn't it?

Yes to Sirens which is some of his most charming and subtle acting.

Surely he could do something else with his acting skillz? *Has* he done anything else? I frankly can't recall.

I found him quite appealing as Edward Ferrars in "Sense and Sensibility". And he was good in "About A Boy" as well, which is a comedy but not primarily a rom-com.

Weetabix:

I watched Pan's Labyrinth, which knocked my socks off. Did people know Doug Jones, who played both Pan and Pale Man was one of the Gentlemen in "Hush"?

As for the ending, I think I'm one of those glass-is-half-empy people because I just cannot see that denouement as happy. It's bittersweet at best and terribly sad, and even if the fantasy realm was real (the fact that the Queen had Ofelia's mother face is rather suspect though), that world is a beautiful, but terrible place. I mean, the realm is explicitly called "The Underworld" -- surely that's some kind of metaphor for death. Not that I found the film depressing, mind you -- the film is too vibrant for that. I wouldn't have had it any other way, and really, the power of the film rests on the very ambiguity of the ending.

One of the things I will say is that, if you think seriously about Pan's Labyrinth, you are forced to come to the conclusion that most fantasy realms are as self-justifyingly classist and exclusive -- and, logically, as brutal -- as any fascist government.

Which is an offputting conclusion to come to. But one that does make the film richer. Just, I cringe a little, because a lot of the social analysis, both texty and subtexty, might have been hard to parse by an American audience (though I think Spaniards would get it pretty quickly).

Yeap. Pan's a sinister character right from the start and the tasks are horrifyingly gruesome. Which I loved. Quite different from the usual white-washed fairy tale stuff I got fed as a child.

I've heard the film described as a political fable, but I don't know. There is very little subtlety in its politics, which was painted in an extremely broad stroke in service to the story. (I mean, it felt right that the non-fantasy realms had clearly-defined heroes and villains so that when the two realms merge at the end it felt right and inevitable, but it's not like Republican side had squeaky clean hands, you know?) The background of the aftermath of the civil war was cooped to provide parallels to the fantastic realm and to illustrate the greater theme of the story, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.

Didn't he do another movie, Bitter something - kind in the Sirens timeframe?

Didn't he do another movie, Bitter something - kind in the Sirens timeframe?

BITTER MOON which is quite a bizarre piece of work (Polanski at his most minsanthropic) with Peter Coyote, Kirsten Scott Thomas and Emmaneul Sangier (sp?).

He was also in LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM.

They both might be described as comedies of sorts, but romantic ones? NSM.

He also did a medical drama with Gene Hackman as the baddie.

Frank beat me to both Bitter Moon (which I love a lot, but could probably not watch now--it suited my mood at the time) and Lair of the White Worm.