Hello all… we are at the climax, the cusp of Guillermo del
Toro week and what better film to end on then a tailored fairy tale. So get comfy in your seats, grab a beverage
and imagine. This is Pan’s Labyrinth.
Spoilers can be magical…
Guillermo del Toro’s creation describes a fascist Spain of
the year 1944. The story is once again
told through the eyes of a young child.
Ofelia (Ivan Baquero ofRomasanta: The Werewolf Hunt, The Anarchist’s Wife, The
New Daughter and The Red Virgin) and her pregnant mother Carmen (Arianda
Gil of The Age of Beauty, Nuts for Love and Soldiers of Salmina) must
journey to the North and Carmen is wed to Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez of An Affair of Love,
With a Friend Like Harry and Dirty Pretty Things), a ruthless dictator
that delights himself with torturing rebels.
And you thought your step-dad was kooky. Ofelia, her head in the cloud realms of
dreams and myth does not want to take this monster of a man as her new father,
her part-time nanny Mercedes (Maribel Verdu ofCanguros, Y Tu Mama Tambien,
The Blind Sunflowers and The Red Virgin) tells Ofelia of a magical
garden that she may explore to her heart’s content. Ofelia roams the garden only to discover a
massive maze, a labyrinth if you will and encounters Pan (del Toro regular Doug Jones of
Hellboy, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, The
Wager and Fallout: Nuka Break), a faun guarding the labyrinth. He
identifies Ofelia as the long last Princess Moanna and tells her of three
sacred tasks she must perform before the next full moon to reign for all
eternity in the Underworld. With these
tasks complete she will escape the holy hell that is her life.
Now while this sounds like your typical Disney movie tripe,
let us be clear on our director. With a man
that combines macabre, humor, fantasy and harsh reality for his films, so we
are in for a bumpy ride. Ofelia is
operating on her limited logic and emotional plight. With her country struggling to rebuild and
the post-war angst, to her mother suffering from a complicated pregnancy and
her tyrant of a stepfather, it is not difficult to see why she would want to
escape this madness in this realm, but what of the other? I was asked recently if this is a family
film and I have to be honest, I really do not know. The film is terrifying in parts of the sheer
brutality of humans tormenting one another; to the emotional rollercoaster of
the world but any many ways for me I had the same response to the Devil’s
Backbone too. If anything it shows the
audience that not all tales of history and fantasy are mad dash excitement and
good triumphs over evil every time. It gives
perspective but at the same time it may fall under more enjoyment for the
horror fans. This film offers a dark
gothic tale of cruelty in either realm of dream or consciousness so it is
really up to the parents to show this one to the kiddies. The visuals alone will blow you out of your
seat. Del Toro’s patented panoramic
cinematography and melodious pacing of storytelling is what truly makes this
mystifying and ominous tale the very life it needed. Be warned Parental Units, this film has a
whole lot of bleak.
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