Pan’s Labyrinth

Rating

Director

Guillermo del Toro

Screenplay

Guillermo del Toro

Length

119 min.

Starring

Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Doug Jones, Alex Angulo

MPAA Rating

R (For graphic violence and some language)

Review

Forced to live in a hillside villa in Spain during the reign of Francisco Franco, a young girl tries to escape her misery through the fantastic world of Pan’s Labyrinth.

Hoping desperately for a son, ruthless Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez) married the widowed and pregnant Carmen (Ariadna Gil) in order to produce an heir to carry on his name. Against doctorial advice, Vidal moves Carmen and her daughter Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) to his command post that lies on the ruins of an ancient labyrinth.

Ofelia, an imaginative child who clutches dearly onto her fairy tale books, slowly uncovers a world that will hopefully make her immortal and heir to a throne. She discovers a Faun deep in an ancient labyrinth built to protect the last gate of a forgotten kingdom, the eternal one Ofelia hoops soon to visit. She is requested to complete three tasks, any of which she fails will end her chances at immortality.

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro takes an energetic and dark approach to fairy tale storytelling. As many such stories had more subversive meanings when they were written, he has used his own story as a metaphor for the human desire to secure ones place in Heaven.

Adults are classically blind to the “realities” of children’s fantasies. It has been often suggested that because of their innocence, kids can see things in reality that would not otherwise be seen. This concept is delivered for most of the film and when we discover the truth about what’s real and what’s not in the final moments, we understand that Ofelia was simply trying to escape the horrors around her.

Baquero’s quiet and desperate performance is heart wrenching.  Though we know she is doomed from the beginning, we cannot help but hold out hope that she will somehow find her escape through the door of eternity. At the extreme opposite of her selfless determination is the selfish and brutal Captain Vidal. As in classic fairy tales, the story’s heroin is often faced with the ultimate embodiment of wickedness. Sergi Lopez gives us that cruelty, malice and viciousness we expect.

Pan’s Labyrinth isn’t your typical, sanitized Disney fairy tale. Many of the original stories such as Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were terrifying and gory tales. They were meant not to advise children of how to behave, but scare them into behaving as prescribed.

Although Pan’s is hardly a cautionary tale for Ofelia, it is still a dark and violent homage to those stories of old. This moral is reversed instead warning adults to avoid the pitfalls of greed, malice and vengeance. Ofelia is merely caught in the crosshairs attempting to escape.

Pan’s Labyrinth features beautifully visualized fantasy worlds and the gritty reality of World War II Spain. Mix these elements with an already effective, literate and engaging script and you have the kind of film that sparks the imagination and should encourage discussion of the repressive nature of our society and the overwhelming willingness to tone down reality in order to keep us from accepting our own terminal future.

Review Written

January 29, 2007