Pan’s LabyrinthRating: * * 1/2MPAA Rating: RType: fantasy Length: 112 minutesDirector: Guillermo del Toro Starring: Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu Starts: Fri. Jan. 19Playing: Crossroads, Galaxy, Grande
From Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro comes what is easily the strangest movie this year. Taking place in 1944 Spain, after the victory of dictator Francisco Franco, the audience follows the journey of Ofelia, a young girl who finds herself the step-daughter of a violent and mentally disturbed military officer — whom everyone refers to as “The Captain.” Against this backdrop of war, the film centers the rest of its focus on Ofelia’s love of fairy tales, and how these seemingly fictional stories begin to take shape in reality, with fairies, fauns, giant toads and others who are not too far behind.
Based on this description alone, even I would be inclined to call this a fantasy movie, as even the story itself draws from many of the fairy tales of our childhood — a young girl under the thumb of a wicked family member, fantastic creatures coming to her aid and so forth. But instead of going to this movie with a genre in mind, I ask you to go in with no expectations. For starters, much like History of Violence before it, Pan’s Labyrinth’s scenes of violence, though infrequent, are disturbing and creative. This isn’t really a problem with the movie itself. I whole-heartedly appreciate attempts to remove the desensitizing qualities of repetitive violence. It makes the shock that much more powerful in our eight-explosions-for-ticket-price film world. What concerns me about the violence is that the film’s apparent whim quickly disappears, and the jarring shift of what could easily be as innocent, at first, as Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, may push away unknowing viewers.
The real problem with the movie is that it tries to give you a lot of messages about the nature of fairy tales, about war, men, women and children. There’s odd pieces of symbolism in the mentions of roses that grant eternal life and the underworld, and ultimately it’s not all that clear how this affects most of the characters. Is Ofelia’s fantasy a reality, or is it a little girl trying to escape war? And if so, where’s the recognition from Ofelia about the growing guerrilla war zone around her, as Ofelia spends most of her time in her fantasy “world”? In short, I think people looking deep enough will find something to talk about, what I doubt is their ability to come to any final conclusion or message. Guillermo del Toro has constructed a complex world here, but at the end of the movie I asked, “What of it?” Movies, especially Arthouse films like this, try to say something about life. The problem is, Labyrinth says too much, to the point that any one meaning you take out will be contradicted by another.
Bearing that in mind, as a drama, the film finds ways to get under your skin, and even though the story is like a modern Grimm’s fairy tale, its clichŽ qualities are clearly part of the intended, fairy tale atmosphere. Many of the scenes are shocking and painful, and I could detect more than a few squeamish members in the audience on both sides of the gender divide. Also the make-up and costumes, especially for the Faun character, are quite stellar, and clearly there was some work put into the film’s visual aspect. The soundtrack isn’t really worthy of note, it heightens tension at times, but wasn’t compelling. And, though I don’t speak Spanish and didn’t recognize many of the film’s actors, performances were solid all around.
Tragic and bizarre to a tee, Pan’s Labyrinth is an oddity in film, not one I feel any desire to revisit, but it proves that art films are still making an honest effort to figure out what their genre really means. If you feel movies have gotten formulaic, Pan’s Labyrinth may break that feeling, and those in need of a dark, even Alice in Wonderland-like story will find something to enjoy here. For most viewers, however, it will probably serve as little more than an interesting distraction.