For every child, the characters from fairy tales can creep from the pages of a book into the child’s bedroom and consciousness. No movie in recent memory conveys this message with as much skill and raw emotional power as Pan’s Labyrinth, opening in D.C. this Friday.
While best known for his English-language movies such as Hellboy and Blade 2, the film is neither writer and director Guillermo del Toro’s first Spanish-language movie nor his first documenting the Spanish Civil War (The Devil’s Backbone).
Pan’s Labyrinth, set in 1944 Spain after Franco’s victory over the Republicans, is quickly becoming the critics’ pick as the filmmaker’s finest work. And it’s easy to see why: with gorgeous cinematography and a wholly illuminating plot, Pan’s Labyrinth succeeds in almost every way imaginable, weaving fairy tale fantasy and political commentary with style and grace.
In the film, the line between good and evil is drawn with a starkness one would expect from a fantasy movie. Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl enchanted by the world of literature, travels with her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil) to live with her cruel stepfather in a heavily wooded region of Spain. The stepfather (Sergi López), known by his soldiers as Captain Vidal, only wishes to live with his wife, whom he neither loves nor respects, because she is carrying his only son. The Captain, a sadist and masochist, attempts to quell a guerrilla insurrection while controlling his family with an iron fist.
Running parallel to the story of politically-motivated violence and domestic tyranny is a rich fairy tale in which Ofelia is a princess, finally returned to Earth in bodily form after an absence of many years.
Upon wondering into a dank labyrinth, Ofelia is greeted by a faun named Pan who informs her of her regal status and issues three challenges that she must complete in order to return to her celestial palace.
While it is unclear whether this alternate reality actually exists or if it merely represents Ofelia’s desire to escape from the oppressive world around her, the ambiguity is intended.
This is where the movie separates itself from other works of cinema and literature that have already employed this concept of parallel worlds. Where C.S. Lewis’s novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe separated the two worlds with a closet door and Alfonso Cuarón’s 1995 film A Little Princess depicted a fantasy land existing only in the stories told by young girls, the dual realities in Pan’s Labyrinth are highly interactive: the characters in one world can affect the plight of those in the other, such as when the faun gives Ofelia an ancient remedy to improve the health of her mother.
The cinematography of Pan’s Labyrinth is nothing short of masterful; dazzling, scanning shots blur the line between fantasy and reality.
In one scene, Ofelia escapes a crypt-dwelling creature by using her magical chalk to cut an opening in what seems to be a stone ceiling. But as the camera pans out, the heroine can be seen entering her own bedroom a hole in the floorboards. Such scenes are pulled off with ease due to the fine editing of Bernat Vilaplana.
Though the film’s beautiful visuals are clearly the pull here, Pan’s Labyrinth benefits from several brilliant acting performances. Sergi López performs the cruel brutality that one would expect from a masochistic soldier; in one scene he expresses vile pleasure as he sews up his own severed cheek with a needle and thread.
Maribel Verdú and Álex Angulo are both convincing as traitorous servants to the Captain, the former as an emotionally fragile handmaid and the latter as a stoic doctor. The story’s ending leaves the audience uncomfortably unsure about the fate of Ofelia, the fairy tale and the real life drama each presenting seemingly irreconcilable conclusions. It seems as though the tale had to have been a figment of the girl’s imagination. But, as Del Toro would have us see, it’s not always easy to separate truth from reality.
