There is really no escape into fantasy here, just distraction

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2007)

(There are really no spoilers below; I mention only what reviewers have already commented on.)
Pan's Labyrinth" combines del Toro's two fascinations: fantasy a la "Hell Boy" and fascism a la 'The Devil's Backbone." He combines these two in such a way that they do not at all seem to be opposites. There is no chance for the ten year old girl, Ofelia, to escape into a fantasy world of fairies and magic to avoid the harshness of life with her stepfather, a fascist Captain, and her suffering, pregnant mother, not when the world of fantasy she finds in an ancient labyrinth near where she is staying is just as dark and fearsome for her. Thus we are only momentarily distracted from the horrors of the fascist world by the horrors of the fantasy world she finds. (
Even Pan, the faun who makes Mr. Tumnus of "Narnia" fame look (as one reviewer said), like Woody Allen, is a scary figure, enormous, with horns that would unbalance any other decent antlered creature in a second and eyes that desperately need re-aligning by plastic surgery. And 'seeing' seems to be one of the themes here, for there is also the monster Ofelia encounters who is able to see only with the eyeballs in his hands--a new take on the ogre, as the paintings around him suggest. Yet what is the meaning to this theme of seeing?
It's not that Ofelia needs to see or understand anything in particular. She is instinctively able to tell that her stepfather is a monster and that the housekeeper, Mercedes, is someone she can trust. Half the time, the viewer wonders if the things that Pan tells her to do are really just things that her instincts tell her to do, given full shape and voice. (Except for the business of the mandrake root. No child could come up with that idea. It's worth the price of admission to this film to see the mandrake sequences that leave you wondering what kind of odd, chthonic belief system it came out of.)
What the 'seeing' image seems to relate to is our vision: of what fascism is really like. If all you know of it has been gained by studies of the Holocaust and images of Hitler shouting at massive crowds at Nurenberg, it is enlightening to see personal fascism, the kind where someone believes so strongly in a master race or simply a definite class system that he is willing to kill anyone he doesn't like, shows no pity, never sees his own flaws or mistakes, and is so brutal that he actually is scarier than the ogre with the eyeballs in his hands. Even scenes where he's shaving with an old, straight razor keep you on edge; you keep wondering if he'll slash out at someone, even though he's alone in such scenes, and I kept hoping his hand would slip and make him draw his own blood.
Against such a back drop, Ofelia's tasks (hat she must accomplish before going back to a kingdom in the earth where she really is a princess) are just part of a cruel landscape. She is a plucky little heroine, like Alice, if one could imagine Alice returning from the rabbit hole frequently, only to meet monsters instead of a pretty British meadow and her nanny.
I don't know if I can recommend this movie. At least twice, I had my eyes screwed tight and fingers in my ears and was doing a mental 'la la la' in attempts to not hear what was going on on the screen. The rest of the time I was clutching John's hand and he was clutching back. If you don't mind scenes of torture, or if you can simply refer to this as a horror film and forget the fantasy label, you might be able to see it and enjoy it the way you might 'enjoy' "Saw" or some other such horrific, bloody entertainment.