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Pan’s Labyrinth Reviewed By Rich Drees
In the days following the close of the Spanish Civil War, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) travel to the countryside military base commanded by her new husband Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). Vidal has only two concerns in his life- ridding the hills of the remaining anti-fascist rebels and the health of his child that Carmen is carrying. With her mother ill and her new step-father uninterested in her, Ofelia is left to her own devices, reading fairy tales and exploring the area around her new home. While investigating an old stone labyrinth which she is told has been there for longer than any one can remember, she encounters a a mythical faun, Pan (Doug Jones). Pan explains to her that she has the soul of a princess who dies long ago and if she wishes to be reunited with her real mother and father she will need to complete three tasks.
Intrigued, Ofelia embarks on her tasks, sliding back and forth between the real world and the magical world of the Labyrinth and the trials Pan has assigned her. As Ofelia grows more confident through her adventures, the audience grows more to accept the reality of her situation. But then, going into the film’s third act, del Toro throws this young protagonist, and by extension his audience, a curve ball in the suggestion that perhaps Ofelia experiences may be just figments of her own imagination. But if that is the case, why would she want escape from ugly and brutal reality to another one as equally fraught with danger?
Although an evil step-parent is an old fairy tale staple, Captain Vidal is more than a cardboard villain of the piece. He’s a man driven in his duty by his own failed relationship with his father, desperate to make his country a better place for his son. It’s this desire for rationality and order, reflected in Vidal’s obsession with the gears of a pocket watch, that conflict with the imagination and magic of the world Ofelia has begun to explore. And it’s this clash that provides just one avenue of exploration in the labyrinthine film that del Toro has crafted. |
Although advertised as a fantasy movie, director Guillermo del
Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is much more than that. It is a dark
adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland (Del Toro
puts his young protagonist for a time in a dress that recalls John
Tenniel’s classic illustrations for Carroll’s book.) by way of Terry
Gilliam’s Brazil (1985). 
As horrifying as it is spellbinding, Pan’s Labyrinth is,
despite its fairy tale trappings, a film firmly for grown ups. Del
Toro’s roots in horror films are well on display here, appropriate
as the film feels more in touch with the fear-laced original tales
collected by the likes of the Brothers Grimm than the watered-down
versions told today. But del Toro is not just a horror director of
the “loud-bump-and-quick-edit-for-a-scare” school. He excels at
creating specific moods and worlds and allowing believable
characters to walk through them.