Pan's Labyrinth
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro
Picturehouse
2006
Rating:


Labyrinths were once used to trap malicious spirits and beasts (such as the minotaur), but they were popularized during the Middle Ages as a substitute for the pilgrim's journey that most couldn't financially afford. To fill that void the labyrinth was created to symbolize the difficult passageway to God, who was metaphorically located at the labyrinth's center.

"Pan's Labyrinth" is about the quest of 11-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) on a hard path to transcendence during the early reign of "Generalissimo" Francisco Franco in 1944 Spain. Ofelia and her pregnant mother Carmen (Adriadna Gil) move to a mill in the wilderness to be with Ofelia's stepfather Captain Vidal (Sergi López). Vidal has relocated to the forest to squash a band of Republican rebels that, unbeknownst to him, is being helped by his maid Mercedes ("Y Tu Mamá También's" Maribel Verdú).

Ofelia escapes the repressive horrors of the Franco regime by retreating into fairy tales. When Ofelia arrives at her new home one of her fantasy stories seems to come to life. A flying stick bug appears to Ofelia and transforms into an insect-like fairy to bring her to the monstrously horned Pan (Doug Jones), the faun or satyr that resides over the labyrinth near the mill. Pan relates the legend of the fairy Princess Moana who ventured into the human world and forgot her regal past. The fairy princess suffered until she finally died, but her spirit is immortal, and her father the King awaits her return. Pan claims Ofelia is that princess. To prove her regal fairy worth, Ofelia must perform the tasks set out for her in the magical Book of Crossroads before the moon is full. Ofelia never knew her father and is eager to escape from Vidal by any means possible so she's ready to believe Pan's story.

Mexican writer-director Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy," "The Devil's Backbone") never makes clear whether Ofelia is fantasizing all of this or if she has truly stumbled onto a magic realm. Del Toro also makes the realms of fantasy and reality equaling terrifying and fraught with sadness, even if Ofelia's tasks are filled with the imagination of Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away." The first task put before Ofelia is to force a giant albino toad to eat chestnuts to make a dying fig tree blossom and obtain a key, just like Chihiro in "Spirited Away" must bathe a Stink God. Later she encounters the Pale Man (Jones), a monster with flabby skin and eyes in his hands who resides over a massive banquet. Ofelia is only placed in danger when she dares to eat anything from the table.

Like del Toro's "The Devil's Backbone," set at the end of the Spanish Civil War, the director finds it easiest to understand the evil of dictatorial rule under the auspices of the black-and-white, good-and-evil of the child's fantasy. Ofelia's trial parallels that of Mercedes as she helps the guerillas: Mercedes must obtain a key that unlocks a shed full of provisions, Vidal holds a banquet while the rest of Spain starves and Mercedes is asked to make a sacrifice in the name of the cause. Ofelia's chore to make a once glorious tree blossom is symbolic of Spain's downfall under Franco. As Vidal talks of a "clean Spain," Ofelia becomes covered in filth. The aims of the guerrillas are no more quixotic than those of Ofelia. When Vidal says "The war is over and we won, and if we need to kill every one of these vermin to settle it, then we’ll kill them all, and that’s that," del Toro pushes the allegory into the modern American political arena. If, as in all fairy tales, "Pan's Labyrinth" contains a moral, then it is the importance of individualism and the questioning of authority.

"Pan's Labyrinth" re-imagines Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" as a Spanish folk dream equally influenced by Victor Erice's 1973 film "Spirit of the Beehive," Neil Jordan's "The Company of Wolves" (1984), Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter" (1955) and the literary works of Arthur Machen ("The Great God Pan," "The White People"), Lord Dunsany ("The Blessing of Pan"), Algernon Blackwood ("Pan's Garden") and the labyrinth-obsessed Jorge Luis Borges. Like any great fairy tale "Pan's Labyrinth" is populated by an evil stepfather, monsters both human and supernatural, a sibling in danger, a strange forest world, and an act of self-sacrifice that marks the end of childhood. Del Toro fills his film with resplendent images that breakthrough the boundaries of magic and realism, such as when Ofelia makes an entrance amidst chicken feathers that float around her like confetti.

Del Toro has proven himself to be a master storyteller of modern fables with films like "Cronos," the underrated "Blade II," "Hellboy" and "The Devil's Backbone" — all films that brought poetry to pop narratives — but "Pan's Labyrinth" is his finest work, a superb fairy tale of elegant savagery.

Posted Monday, January 22, 2007

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