REVIEW: Pan’s Labyrinth
What a weekend. I was idiotically tired yesterday, having had an attack of insomnia Saturday night that left me gasping for air, completely winded. This was not the fault of the movie, mind you. It was merely stress.
Enough of that. Ladies and gentlemen, Pan’s Labyrinth.
I don’t care what you have to do. Sell the family silver and drive a hundred miles, pack your lunch and cancel that dinner you’ve been putting off anyway. The point is, drop everything and Go. See. This. Movie. It’s in Spanish with subtitles, so it’s not going to be playing everywhere, but this movie is worth at least a tank of gas, admission, and popcorn to see. Guillermo del Toro has struck gold. There is not a single wasted scene or line in this movie. It is soaked with beauty and terror, peril and wondrousness.
It is after the Spanish Civil War, and Franco is tightening his grip on the country. It is a dangerous time to be a woman alone, and so Ofelia’s mother is probably glad to have found a protector in Capitan Vidal, who is hunting down guerrillas in the mountains. The guerrillas are all that is left of the Revolution, and the Capitan seems the ideal man to exterminate them, being utterly ruthless and devoted to his duty, not to mention his sense of order. Ofelia’s mother is pregnant with what he is certain is his son, so he summons her out to his base in the mountains because “a son must be born where his father is.”
Ofelia is an imaginitive child, full of fairy tales and daydreams, and her innocence is imperiled immediately. We are never certain of how her father (a tailor) died, or how Vidal managed to get his focus off himself long enough to marry her mother. Instead, our world is hers, and the things she doesn’t question we don’t either. Her father is gone and her mother is her mainstay.
Her mother, however, is very ill, enduring a difficult pregnancy. Which leaves Ofelia alone and adrift, her only source of kindness the housekeeper Mercedes–who has secrets of her own, any one of which could easily kill her. It is dangerous to be a believer in the Revolution in Franco’s spain–or Vidal’s house.
When Ofelia meets a fairy in the woods, she is introduced to another world, lying under the skin of this world like an orange under the peel. In this world is a faun, a creature so old that only the trees and wind can pronounce his early names. He gives her a book and three magic stones, and tells her she is a princess–but they must make sure she is worthy of her kingdom.
Thus starts an odyssey through the darkest fairy tale I’ve seen for a while.
Pan’s Labyrinth (or, more properly, Labrinto del Fauno) is gorgeous. The scenery is magnificent, the CGI is top-notch (the faun and the Eater both are detailed enough to give me nightmares) and the acting is first-rate. Special mention must be made of Maribel Verdu, who plays Mercedes with such fierce tenderness and restrained heart-thumping fear your pulse ignites every time she’s on screen. Ofelia is played by a child actress, Ivana Baquero, who is so luminous and vulnerable anyone with children (and quite a few people without) will want to protect her.
The movie’s timeline is exact, and its symbolic unfolding–Ofelia’s acts in the magical sense having echoes in the “real” world–is a thing of beauty. Del Toro takes scenes that would be unwatchable and grotesque, and transforms them with the addition of little details–a pile of children’s shoes, the worn handle of a knife, a doctor’s face as he is presented with a choice between killing his patient or becoming an accomplice to torture and murder. There is stark violence and scenes of chilling danger, but it never goes awry into gore for gore’s sake. Here is the world, del Toro seems to be saying, in all its bad and good. Do what you want with it.
This is not a film for children, despite its fantastical nature. This is a fairy tale for adults; del Toro invites us into a world of childhood fantasy we have lost and then shows us how the trick of believing is often killed by adult compromises.
As her mother retreats deeper and deeper into illness, Ofelia is stripped systematically of support and approval. The faun gives her three tasks that must be completed before the moon is full and the portal back to her own world–the princess’s magic underworld where there is no pain or sorrow–can be opened. Typical of a child, Ofelia is flattered to be thought a princess but also concerned for her mother and her baby brother. What to a child is seamless–yes, I am a princess, I will take my brother with me and I want to save my mother–becomes seamless for us. In less-sure hands this would have become just a tangled menage of story about the unconscious greed of childhood. In del Toro’s it becomes a meditation on the selfless power of a child’s love.
The faun is perhaps the greatest creation in this movie. True to fairy tales, he is an ambiguous creature. He could be telling the truth, or he could be the deadliest liar Ofelia will ever face in her whole life. He could be an ally…but the glint in his eye means you’re not so sure. The viewer is left to alternate between believing in him as Ofelia does, and suspecting that he is just another dirty trick played on a sweet vulnerable child in the process of growing up.
I won’t give out any more spoilers. I will say the ending made me cry in the best way, because my heart was full. It would have been very easy for the director to punk out and try to tack a shallow ending onto this profoundly deep piece of art, but he remained true to the story’s promise and fulfillment.
The movie was so good I drove home in a state of creative shock and didn’t speak for two and a half hours, just digesting the stuff that had crawled into my brain.
For writers: This movie isn’t just Muse crack. It’s a five-course French meal with the finest wines, sherbet between to cleanse the palate, and a good cigar before going to bed with the love of your life. Go see this movie. Take your writer friends. Your Muse will thank you in the best way. If your head is not stuffed with new ideas and your creative muscles not pumped afterward, then…well, just go. Go again, for God’s sake.
If you want to know where Pan’s Labyrinth is playing in your neighborhood, I suggest going to Fandango and typing in your zip code as well as the title. Seriously, if you can go without lattes for a few days to get the entrance fee, go see this movie. I’m going to be taking Monk and the Kiwi and the Sullen Teen, and I will probably go see it alone again once or twice. The last movie I was this excited about was V for Vendetta, fer Chrissake.
And Mr. del Toro? I salute you. Thank you for giving us something so wonderful. You’ve got to admire a man who is so straight and pure when it comes to his art, a man who loves monsters in movies so much he wants them to step into the light. The dude is CRAZY, and has offically made my list of Top Five People I Want To Meet In My Lifetime.
Maybe just so I can hug him for Pan’s Labyrinth.
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January 25th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Lil – hubby and I saw this last year August – world premier at Frightfest (after Cannes, that is) months before its actual due date release here in London sometime December, and we have exclusive artwork from this event which they gave out free to everyone who attended the film premiere at the Odeon in Leicester Square – both eerie and fantastic – let me have your addy and I can post some of it onto you. Or I can scan it in and email it to you?
We were fortunate enough to have his nibs there, introducing the movie and everyone went wild. It was singularly one of the most beautiful, eerie and evocative movies I had ever seen and I cannot wait to own a copy on DVD.