Exquisitely realized

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2007)

Pan's Labyrinth manages to be a number of things, beyond visually stunning and stunningly imaginative. It could be a bookend to "For Whom The Bell Tolls," showing the day-to-day pressure and horrors of the army Pablo and Pilar were fighting, the army mirroring the sadistic brutality, with a peculiar lyrical beauty, of the Third Riech. Serqi Lopez is brilliant as the army's tormented and almost mechanically sadistic leader, as though he is acting from compulsions beyond himself. I thought his performance one of academy award level, like taking The Good The Bad and The Ugly's tormented evil leader who keeps listening to the melody in his pocket watch and turning him into a real character, played by a brilliant actor. This is a movie, in and of itself.
Then comes the young girl who is thrust into this men's world - truly a world where the vulnerable have no place or chance - and she is filled with fear for herself and her pregnant mother, the new wife of the violent army leader. This movie is dark. It is about the underworld, those parts of life and as well as the self that we wish to remain hidden, the places we are pulled down and into. Most movies portray that part of life thru awful and flat movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the like, focusing only on the terror. This movie is lushly full - a true masterpiece of realism, told as a fantasy.
This young girl lives in a world of fairy tale books and suddenly, a magical portal to another world opens - an ancient and equally violent world, yet in it she has power, bravery, importance and the opportunity to become a princess. She does not question its validity or rules or her role. Instead, she puts on the mantle of hero and takes up a frightening quest, given to her by an ancient and eerie faun, whose intentions are unclear. Is he good? Is he evil? Is he beyond either? He will give her three tasks, and if she fulfills them, she will become a princess in a place of ancient magic - all this is beyond our understanding, of course.
In many fairy tales, a quest of "you must fulfill these tasks or" is given and the hero, along the way, encounters the most horrible of events, and seems emotionally very removed from them, as though he is sleepwalking toward his destiny as he encounters and slays monsters and men. The brutality that goes with the quest is dulled. Think of Arthur and the deaths of his knights, as an example. Or, brutality is embodied by Orcs and the like, so the realism of the brutality is diluted into parody. Del Torres's brilliance is how he circumvents this by having the present be so horrifying, thus constantly pulling the princess/hero back into the world in which she has no power.
Lush, layered, rich and imaginative, while real, brutal, dark and terrifying - this is an extraordinary movie, to be experienced in a theater.