Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)1

Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is many things. Much like his ear­lier work, The Devil’s Backbone, it is a mix­ture of ele­ments from dif­fer­ent gen­res – the war-time period drama, the fairy­tale fan­tasy and the hor­ror film – all jum­bled up together with his numer­ous comic-book influ­ences to cre­ate a film that is at once absurd, grotesque, melo­dra­matic and yet sen­si­tive, emo­tional and fas­ci­nat­ing at the same time. Through his films, he shows a clear obses­sion with the fan­tas­tic and the macabre, and while many of his pre­vi­ous films are almost con­sumed by this obses­sion, tee­ter­ing on the brink of becom­ing noth­ing more than show­cases for fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures, here is his most mature and sat­is­fy­ing film yet. It is about a sub­ject that is evi­dently close to his heart: the impor­tance of imag­i­na­tion in a dark, vio­lent world. It is his mas­ter­piece. Warning: Spoilers ahead! The set­ting is World War II, Spain. A sickly, preg­nant widow and her daugh­ter, in finan­cial limbo, are forced to live with treach­er­ous Captain Vidal (played to men­ac­ing per­fec­tion by Sergi Lopez) in a rural home in the woods. Vidal does not intend to be a kind, lov­ing hus­band or father, but is in fact only con­cerned for his unborn child. The young daugh­ter, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, in a won­der­ful per­for­mance), avoids the chaos hap­pen­ing around her by indulging her­self in her numer­ous books of fairy­tale fan­tasies. However, she is inescapably aware that her mother might die and poor Ofelia will be left alone with her mon­strous step­fa­ther, Vidal. One night, she trav­els into the woods where she finds some sort of a gate­way. But to what? Out of the shad­ows appears a creaky, faun (Doug Jones) who mis­takes her for a princess and sends her out to com­plete three tasks. Only then will she be allowed to return to her king­dom through the afore­men­tioned gate­way. Parallel to this fan­tas­tic tale is the ever-real strug­gle of resis­tance sol­diers attempt­ing to ambush the evil fas­cist army led by Vidal. The sol­diers are aided by a spy (Maribel Verdu) who poses as the maid of the house that takes care of Ofelia and her mother, and Vidal’s per­sonal doc­tor (Alex Angulo) as they scheme to find ways to pro­vide food and med­i­cine to aid their cause for lib­er­a­tion. Another thing to note about the dif­fer­ence between Pan’s Labyrinth and del Toro’s pre­vi­ous fea­tures is the height­ened level of real­ism he cre­ates. That’s not to say that the film strives for any form of real­is­tic por­trayal of World War II, but in com­par­i­son to his other films, with the excep­tion of The Devil’s Backbone, this film is about a real time and place. But what sep­a­rates this film even fur­ther from his other films is Ofelia’s world of fan­tasy, which in fact may not actu­ally exist. In his pre­vi­ous films like Mimic and Blade II, fan­tas­tic crea­tures such as moth­men and vam­pires actu­ally inhabit these realms of real­ity. But here in Pan’s Labyrinth, all the won­der­ful, intri­cately and lov­ingly detailed mon­sters and crea­tures present in the film may exist only in Ofelia’s young mind. Sure, the magic root which the faun says will make her mother bet­ter works. There are other signs in the film which also sup­port the fact that these crea­tures actu­ally exist. But why can’t any­one else see them? It could pos­si­bly be because she is a child and, as in all fairy tales, only the young and pure at heart can see such mag­i­cal things. But how do we know for sure if they are real? We don’t, and there in lies the beauty of the film. Whether or not her fan­tasies are real, Ofelia’s quest to trans­port her­self and her unborn brother to her great king­dom gives her hope for a bet­ter life. The end­ing of the film only serves to make the ques­tion of the exis­tence of this world which only Ofelia sees even more ambigu­ous. Ofelia dies at the hands of Vidal but enters into her mag­i­cal king­dom. Whether Ofelia has really trans­ported her­self to her king­dom or if the film’s clos­ing moments are only of a lost dream, we will never know. The tragedy of the film is all the more poignant because of the ironic vic­tory of the resis­tance sol­diers. Like Ofelia, these sol­diers had a dream of a bet­ter world. While on a large scale, for the bet­ter­ment of a soci­ety, a dream has been achieved. However, the lin­ger­ing doubt of the ful­fil­ment of Ofelia’s own dream is heart-shattering. Real or not, the fan­tasy aspect of the film has been cre­ated with close atten­tion to detail. The struc­ture of Ofelia’s fan­tas­ti­cal jour­ney bor­rows dili­gently from the famous fairy­tales of age, with every step of the jour­ney fol­lowed like bread­crumbs on a yel­low brick road. Some might even say too closely. Yet it is these so-called ‘clichés’ that make this film such an enter­tain­ing expe­ri­ence. Del Toro takes all these fairy­tale ele­ments and makes them all his own by incor­po­rat­ing a kind of sen­su­ous, dev­il­ish mis­chie­vous­ness to Ofelia’s var­i­ous encoun­ters with a child-eating mon­ster and rav­en­ous gar­gan­tuan toad to name a few. Del Toro makes each of Ofelia’s encoun­ters scary, com­i­cal and inge­nious in their exe­cu­tion. Here is a man who takes fairy­tales seri­ously. To aid in mak­ing del Toro’s world of fan­tasy and dreams a real­ity are Guillermo Navarro’s lumi­nous pho­tog­ra­phy, Eugenio Caballero’s set designs, Javier Navarette suit­ably mourn­ful score, and, of course, the beau­ti­ful and grotesque works of the cos­tume and make-up depart­ment. The trees in the woods have a spi­rally, Burton-ish qual­ity about them and the archi­tec­ture looks as if it came out of a Mike Mignola comic (whose Hellboy was the basis of del Toro’s film). Next to Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow and Alex Proyas’ Dark City, this is one of the most well-crafted fan­tasy films I’ve ever seen. It seems that this time, it is not del Toro’s young hero that comes of age, but rather del Toro him­self. With all the crea­tures that fas­ci­nated him and of which he tried des­per­ately to bring to life in the alter­nate real­ity of cin­ema, he has finally under­stood that what was impor­tant was not that they may never truly exist out­side of his own fer­tile imag­i­na­tion, but that they even existed at all in his con­scious­ness. The hope and sheer plea­sure that one’s own imag­i­na­tion gives him or her­self is bound­less and del Toro under­stands that. After an entire life spent read­ing fan­tasy books and comic books, watch­ing films of all sorts and expand­ing his fan­tas­ti­cal world of fic­tion even fur­ther, del Toro has made a film that reaches out not only to the young at heart but also the young in mind.