Pan's Labyrinth
By the look of things Guillermo Del Toro takes his fantasy quite seriously. For a movie about fairy tales Pan’s Labyrinth is bloody intense with its twin worlds (one fantasy, one real) full of violence, danger and deception. Together with his compatriot Alfonso Cuaron he is well known for spinning genre yearns with creative visuals and even turned down both the Harry Potter and Narnia franchises due to lack of creative control.
Pans Labyrinth opens with young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her pregnant mother Carmen (Adriana Gil) being transported via motorcade to the Spanish countryside, a gorgeous forest peppered with medieval sculptures and ruins. Why the motorcade? Because she is the new wife of Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), the ruthless military pawn charged with exterminating the remaining communist resistance in a now fascist 1940’s Spain. And just to make sure nobody confuses Captain Vidal with a stern but well meaning stepfather to Ofelia, early on we get to watch him beat a captive to death with a wine bottle during an interrogation. Gory scenes like this are abundant too, making the fantasy world Ofelia is lead to by an insect-like fairy a truly appealing escape. And this is no Disney fantasy world either; it is the product of unrevised fairy tails and mythology, populated by enormous toads, anthropophagic gorgons and screaming mandrake roots. And like most fairy tales it is a world where disobedience is punishable by death, so when Ofelia is offered three tasks in order to reclaim her birthright as a princess she trusts the ancient Faun at the heart of the labyrinth wholeheartedly. Meanwhile in the real world her mother’s health is deteriorating and the Captains servant Mercedes (played by Y tu mama tambien babe Maribel Verdu) is sneaking behind his back to give aid to the communist freedom fighters hidden in the forest, giving you plenty of warning that things are going to go terribly wrong in the films final arc.
Still the main star and mystery of this movie are the inventive visuals and how he got a top notch effects studio to assemble them at discount rates. Perhaps Guillermo Del Toro charmed them by talking shop (he ran an effects studio back in Mexico) or they really dug the challenge that his ideas posed. Regardless shades of high budget hell boy prosthetics and makeup create creatures both impossible and perfectly logical, and coupled with excellent performances it’s hard to not get wrapped up in this gorgeously tragic tale.
