Labyrinthian!

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2008)

I don't get it. I mean I understand the movie as it plays out before me, I know who everyone is and what they're doing and why, but what I don't get is the huge critical response to this movie. Some people really thought this was the best movie of last year? It's a fine movie, with great amounts of imagination and perfectly acceptable production values. It is not a bad movie by any stretch, but it is not perfect.
I've liked most of the Guillermo Del Toro movies I've seen, but they may be because most I've seen were action/adventure extravaganzas (Blade 2, Hellboy, even Mimic). The Devil's Backbone, which I didn't like much, is not and neither is Pan's Labyrinth. (A bad title since the faun's name who inhabits the labyrinth is not the Greek god Pan.) The story takes place in fascist Spain and concerns a little girl named Ofelia. Her single, pregnant mother has started a relationship with a sadistic military captain and the movie starts with mother and daughter headed towards a secluded base in the woods. Her natural curiosity leads her to find a huge stone labyrinth near the base one day and she quickly finds herself living inside a fairy tale. This one ain't of the Disney variety though The Faun inside the labyrinth claims she is in fact the princess of an underground kingdom, but to regain her crown she needs to complete a series of tasks. Pretty standard storybook setup. But these tasks she is charged with begin to reflect the real world she is otherwise surrounded with - a world of soldiers, freedom fighters, life, and death. Some of the overlaps are intriguing, like the importance of a key in both stories, but a lot of it seems quite arbitrary. There are themes of acceptance and resistance throughout. The captain, for instance, follows orders blindly, not hesitating to brutally kill someone if they're in a place they aren't supposed to be. Ofelia, on the other hand, prefers to ignore directions given to her. Sometimes it serves her well, sometimes not, as when she dares to eat some grapes off the Pale Man's table.
The design of the creatures Ofelia meets (all done by Del Toro himself) are astonishing all by themselves. You could bury yourself in the details of those creations as well as in all the great set design. The Pale Man scene is notable for truly feeling like a nightmare. The spindly, almost sightless monster is one of the most terrifying things in a movie since John Carpenter's The Thing.
The fantasy and reality portions, while sharing some themes, never quite mesh together well. I think they would have each made fascinating movies on their own - sharing screen time detracts from both. Perhaps the fault lies within me regarding this movie. From all the talk, I was expecting nothing less than brilliance. But I can get by with simple goodness.
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