A Spanish fantasy for all

Rating: 9/10 (10 February 2007)

I've not seen any of Guillermo del Toro's earlier films, but this one places him, along with Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuaron, as a Spanish-American film-maker with broad appeal. This film (unlike "Babel") sticks within one very specific cultural milieu, Franco's Spain in 1944 seen through the eyes of Ofelia, an 11 year old girl whose widowed mother has been desperate enough to marry a particularly zealous and nasty fascist army officer. Not surprisingly she escapes into her own world of fantasy, in which she is a princess of the underworld trying to find her way home.
The film is stacked full of good performances. Ivana Banquero, is stunning as Ofelia, and Sergi Lopez is completely convincing as her ruthless and single-minded stepfather, Captain Vidal. Maribel Verdu as Mercedes the housekeeper also puts in a strong performance, as does Alex Angulo as the doctor and Doug Jones as Pan and the Pale Man (aided by some terrific costume design).
It is interesting that while the fascists are portrayed as the bad guys del Toro makes an attempt to explain what drives them. In one dinner scene the local notables are entertained by Vidal to a sumptuous feast (while everyone around is on strict rations). After the third or so round of drinks he announces that all men are not equal, "we won the war and therefore deserve the best." His listeners (except for the doctor) enthusiastically agree. Vidal, desperate for a son, is also motivated by tradition; his father was an army general who died in battle, for Vidal "the only way to die". But he is also a sadist  his interrogations go long past mere military brutality. Perhaps the message is you don't have to be a sadist to be a good fascist, but it helps.
The resistance are of course portrayed as the good guys, but their tactics are as brutal as those of the military, shooting the wounded where they fall, for example. They also find it hard to accept that the war is over, and they are merely the subject of a mopping-up operation headed up by a real bastard very happy in his work.
Most of the action takes place in a gloomy and surprisingly wet forest so well evoked we can almost smell the mud. The fantasy sequences owe something to Lewis Carroll as well as Mervyn Peake - "Alice in Wonderland" meets "Gormenghast" (Pan has a little in common with the White Rabbit). Visually, this is a terrific film.
The good guys did win out in the end, but it took another 30 years, and happened peacefully. The speed at which Spain has left its fascist past behind tells us something, I think.