Pan's Labyrinth

Wildly imaginative, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a movie that nobody should miss.

The story takes place in one of the darkest periods in Spanish history – 1944, right after Franco’s victory. Del Toro deftly mixes a young girl’s fantasy world with the dark reality around her. A good script is a foundation to any good film; Pan’s Labyrinth is no exception. Del Toro’s screenplay is simply superb. Where does this guy come from? His only credits in Hollywood so far have been a few big studio productions. I saw the horror movie Mimic directed by him years ago and was not impressed at all. When Hellboy and Blade II came out, I scoffed at them and didn’t think they would deserve my time (maybe I should check them out). However, in his native tongue, del Toro seems to be able to let go of all his inhibitions and let his imagination run wild.

The movie appears to have two separate stories run parallel to each other. Ofelia has to follow her heavily pregnant mother to a military post so that her baby brother can be born where her stepfather is. Faced with a cruel stepfather, her mother’s poor health and sadness, and a completely new environment, she relies on her fairy tales for comfort. The two worlds del Toro creates complement each other perfectly: when there is menace in Ofelia’s fantasy, del Toro would turn to danger and evil in the real world; when the real world is too grave for us to watch, the scene would quickly switch to Ofelia’s imaginary quest. Del Toro combines so many different genres such as fantasy, drama and thriller all together, but the movie never becomes just a big stew of clever tricks and special effects. Indeed, the story is so interesting, the characters are so fascinating that I hardly thought about all the digital effects that del Toro might have used in creating all those fantastic creatures. Watching Pan’s Labyrinth is a completely different experience from watching, say, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong. Watching those movies make one marvel at the spectacular visual created by computers while the eye-opening sights in Pan’s Labyrinth do not distract one’s mind from the story and are only secondary in the whole structure of the movie. Which is not to say the movie doesn’t have an impressive visual component. To the contrary, the movie is absolutely visually stunning. Del Toro paints a dark picture shrouded in a somber hue to match the Fascist repression depicted in the movie.

Don’t be fooled by the girl in the movie poster and the word – fantasy written on it. It is not a family movie, but rather a fable for grown-ups. Sometimes kids have the luxury to hide behind their fantasies while adults have to face the ugliness in the read world. Unfortunately sooner or later the innocent has to face the real evil. In the end climax, when two parallel worlds finally clash and a most terrifying episode in Ofelia’s fantasy has eerily become a reality, the actual threat is hundred times more sinister than what Ofelia has conjured up in her fancy.

The movie is well-acted. Ivana Baquero is sweet and guileless as Ofelia. Maribel Verdu of Y tu mama tambien fame surprised me by making herself look very plain as the servant Mercedes. She shows a completely different side of her as an actress. Sergi Lopez plays the sadistic stepfather, Captain Vidal. Every time when I see him on screen, he plays a villain and he only grows eviler and eviler as he appears in more movies. Captain is another notch up on his evilness when compared to Harry in With a Friend Like Harry and the organ profiteer in Dirty Pretty Things. He is a master at playing at all these despicable characters, but for once I wish I could see him play against type in the future. Captain Vidal is a relatively weak point to me in this movie. He is pure evil without any redeeming quality. I always love to see more complicated characters, but in the whole fable mode, I could live with the one-sidedness of this character. Del Toro touches on Captain Vidal’s upbringing as one reason for his tough military way. When Captain Vidal is in battle, we can sense the pressure he is under trying to live up to his father’s bravery.

In Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro has reached a new peak in ingenious movie making. Bravo, del Toro! Bravo, Mexican cinema!