Review: Pan's Labyrinth

Toe-Sock In the Maze of Good & Evil

Villains are never quite as villainous as when we find them at home within the quaint confines of a fairy-tale.

In fairy-tales the moral gray tones that make up the bulk of our 'real world' ethical spectrum are boiled away and all that is left are Good and Evil in their rarified capitalized incarnations. Good becomes sparklingly noble, painfully virtuous, and more often than not, boring.

Evil, a force that is often exaggerated to begin with, gets amplified to the nth degree. The violence that fairy-tale villains employ is utterly base, excessive, over-conceived, and many times, artistically delightful. Sure their smiles may be wicked and cruel but at least they appear to be having a good time as their challengers toil away, never letting us forget how difficult it is to be truly just.

In a fairy-tale, just about everyone owes allegiance to one side or the other. But there are ways that a storyteller can muddy the waters. One way of subverting this black-and-white moral matrix is to introduce a child. Children are neither Good nor Evil. They are innocent. It's small wonder that we find so many of them leading us through enchanted woods and haunted labyrinths.

Enter Ofelia, the 12-year-old protagonist of El Labertino del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth in America), the latest film by director Guillermo del Toro. Set in post-civil-war Spain, the film attempts to blur the boundaries between fairy-tale and reality. The story commences with the arrival of Ofelia and her very pregnant mother at their new home, an old mill in the mountains that has been fortified as a military outpost.

Ofelia's new stepfather, Capitán Vidal, distributes rations to the surrounding villages and leads his soldiers on expeditions into the woods to hunt for rebels. The Capitán is comically Evil in all the best ways. He is at turns horrifically violent, hasty, and thickheaded. He's unbelievably trusting of subordinates who hang around only to undermine his iron fisted rule for the cause of the Good. He tortures his victims and murders innocent people. All in all, not very nice.

Capitán Vidal is quickly established as Ofelia's chief antagonist. She escapes from his fascist household into the forest and is swift to find a nearby labyrinth because, um, what good is an old mill without its accompanying giant stone maze?

There, Ofelia stumbles upon an ancient prophesy and is initiated into an epic quest. To be reclaimed by her real father as the princess of the underworld, she must complete three tasks. Her forays into the labyrinth, although dangerous and terrifying, provide a welcome relief to her life at the mill where she must relentlessly evade her step-dad's fury. The film oscillates between events taking place in the 'real' world and those occurring in adjacent fantasy realms. These other realms literally exist in the margins, magically concealed behind secret doors that only Ofelia can open.

Even though the fantastic realms have been marginalized, del Toro is careful to blur the separation between the real world and the fantastic in subtle, disconcerting ways. Bullets from the rebels in the forest whiz by just as loudly as the faeries zooming around the labyrinth. The quests Ofelia must accomplish are simple and dire, mirroring the assignments that the rebels need to carry out to survive. These cinematic details, plot lines, and obstacles are designed to echo one another. They remind the viewer that, although these worlds may be separated spatially and behave by different rules, they share violence and the ever-present threat of death.

On an aesthetic level, Del Toro's creatures are wondrously imaginative and horrifying. They steal every scene. The fairies are simultaneously humanoid and deceptively bug-like. A large bloated toad turns one's stomach. The faun is a sight to behold; his character suggests incredible gentleness and compassion while betraying a potential for the most brutal of violent acts. Most horrifying, the Pale Man and his domain are the stuff of nightmares. He is a creature of the old Germanic fairy-tale tradition, the kind of corrupt monster with no redeeming qualities who feasts on infants. He may never be defeated, only eluded time and time again.

It is unfortunate that due to a marvelous trailer and previous experience with de Toro's equally stunning Devil's Backbone, I had built this film up to be some sort of life-changing event.

Pan's Labyrinth was great, but not quite the mind-boggling masterpiece I dreamed it would be. And it will no doubt be a masterpiece to many. At the very least it is a film everyone should see. See it for the faeries if nothing else.