Extraordinary adult faerie tale

Rating: 8/10 (21 February 2007)

This film is really excellent... perhaps not absolutely everything I hope for in a film, or in a fantasy/faerie film, it's totally unique and certainly never dull. Part of me thinks that the violence in the film was too excessive, though it was not exploitative because it ties into the general themes of the film. But that part of me thinks that a truly great faerie tale can be scary but should be something that children could have access to.
The performances are uniformly top notch. Ivana Baquero gives us one of the more emotionally real child performances we've seen in a long time, especially in the fantasy field. Sergi Lopez is strong as her fascist (and sadistic) step-father, Capitan Vidal. Maribel Verdu probably has the most to do in the film and she manages to do her acting in such a way that you can believe that she could possibly be overlooked initially, while what she shows you beneath the character's surface shows unsuspected strength. Doug Jones also puts in an impressive performance as Pan, conveying the menace and majesty of the faun.
A few words on the theme of the film -- I think in a lot of ways it is about obedience. It's more complex than what appears at first. The contrast is there certainly between the captain, who is totally obsessed with discipline and order, and the child Ofelia who is very free spirited. When the doctor walks away after killing the prisoner, the captain asks him why he did not obey his order. The doctor says that he can't simply obey for the sake of obeying -- "only people like you can do that." If you think about the 3 challenges that Ofelia has to pass, in the first one she obeys the instructions of the faun and despite all of the horror of her situation, she easily escapes. In the second trial she is unable to obey the rules, incurring Pan's wrath because she ate of the food and she did not escape through the door. But in the final trial she is presented with a situation where to obey the rules or to obey Pan would be wrong, and she makes her own decision in favor of sparing an innocent life even at great costs to her own. This can be seen as a metaphor or analogy to encourage people not to obey dictators when they issue immoral rules, much as her stepfather the Captain would do. Her ascendance to the magical realm can be seen as a hopeful metaphor for what the human race itself can aspire to, if we begin to value the lives of innocents more than any other prize.
I think the film doesn't really fail to do anything it attempts to do, but I wish that the film-makers had been able to fashion a convincing faerie tale like this in a way that would have, as I said above, been more accessible to younger viewers. For example I think Gilliam's "Time Bandits" or Burton's "Big Fish" presented some very adult ideas but did so in a way so that not only would the films themselves be suitable for somewhat younger audiences but those dark/adult themes would also be opened up for the young audience. Faerie tales can be used for many purposes, but rarely in the classic literature do we see them used simply for entertainment. Usually they are also cautionary tales with some symbolic resonance. Faerie tales were also a form of mythology, in the sense that they were used to explain the unexplainable. For example the English term "stroke" as in "she suffered a stroke" comes from the older term for "faerie struck" or struck down by fey influences beyond human understanding. What I think the film-makers in this case are doing, is presenting a kind of "instructional" faerie tale whose purpose is to "explain" the reasons for evil in this world, for the continued existence of fascism and the continued oppression of innocent people. I only wish that it could have been done in such a way that it would actually reach children and communicate these ideas to children because sadly by the time we reach adulthood it's already too late for many of us to escape the cycle of violence that the film presents.