Pan’s Labyrinth
by Shannon on Tuesday, 19 of June, 2007 at 8:57 am
I just got a chance last week to watch Pan’s Labyrinth on DVD. for those of you who haven’t heard about it (where have you been) it’s a movie from the director Guillermo del Toro the guy who directed Blade II and Hellboy (don’t let those movies deter you, this one is good, not that that the other two aren’t they just aren’t on the same level).
To put it simply, this movie is excellent. It does all the things a good fantasy should do in my opinion. Makes you question reality. Is set against a backdrop that reinforces the fantasy aspects and makes reality just that much harsher, and is in some ways a metaphor for what is happening in that “reality”. The setting is Spain post WW II and is rife with the political tensions of the time. Fascists are taking hold in Spain, and though there are a few groups of rebels trying to fight, the fight seems hopeless. When the movie opens, the main character Ofelia and her mother Carmen are on their way to a remote and old mill that Ofelia’s new step father–Captain Vidal–has converted into a military outpost to scrub the back country of the last of the rebels. Carmen is very pregnant, and weak, and it is obvious that Captain Vidal wants little to do with Ofelia. In fact, his very demeanor is cold and calculating. They did a great job with character development with all the characters, but Vidal’s very presence is foreboding, and the details in his character make him more so.
Ofelia is a dreamy girl, who lives in her own fantasy world and carries with her books of fairy tales and magic. Despite her mother telling her it is time to give them up, she holds on to them as her lifeline. Once at the old mill, Ofelia finds the entrance to a labyrinth and is drawn to it. But one of the locals–a woman named Mercedes who is a serving woman for the Captain–warns Ofelia it is dangerous and befriends the young girl. From there the darkness of not only the labyrinth but the mill and the people in it begin to ooze out into the open.
Ofelia finds eventually in the center of the labyrinth a faun or pan. traditionally these are tricksters in myth, and don’t usually bring good things to those who see them. But Ofelia is entranced by the faun and the story he has to tell her, and agrees to take on three tasks to prove she is worthy.
Despite the fact that Ofelia is a young girl, this is not some touchy feely,fairy tale. There are moments of violence in this movie so quick and brutal they are lodged in my mind. And from that first act of violence, committed by the Captain against a local old man and his son, the shadows begin to lengthen in the movie. Ofelia falls deeper into the secrets of the labyrinth, Mercedes tries to keep her own secrets from the Captain, and Carmen becomes weaker and weaker as her time to give birth nears.
The tension between the story lines builds and eventually hits a head on collision. Ofelia’s fantasy world, and brutal “reality” intersect, and the results are not pretty.
Still it’s hard to say if the movie ends badly or not. I suppose it depends a lot on how you look at the world. At where you draw the lines between the real world and the world in your head. That is in essence the theme of this story. The derailing of reality, and the subtle hidden world that lies beneath. Not just the fauns and fairies that are hiding, but secrets, loss, fear, and oppression. The things we hide from ourselves and others. All of us carry our own myth, our own fantasy world in our heads, but it is a fantasy of who we are and why we do the things we do. A fantasy of what it is to be human, and what the difference is between good and evil.
I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. It’s one of the rare movies that you can watch time and again and take something from it every time.
Happy viewing.
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