A dissenting view

Rating: 6/10 (25 February 2007)

By interweaving the brutal reality of fascist Spain with a child's fantasy world, the filmmakers evidently hoped to say something deep about evil. Undoubtedly the juxtaposition of the two worlds is done with considerable guile, both in the transitions and in the visual echoes between them. The problem is that the film begins with a portrayal of evil, in its realistic scenes, that is so trite that the fantasy sequences have nothing of substance to elaborate upon, and end up being merely sentimental. Del Toro appears to equate evil with mere sadism, taking computer-enhanced violence as a shortcut to presumed moral insight. The characters who populate the tale – the despicable captain, the heroic resistance fighters, the compassionate doctor – are the flimsiest of stock figures. This weekend I saw Louis Malle's Au Revoir les Enfants, where evil is a mysterious force that indelibly marks the rites of youth. That film attains a kind of terrible moral sobriety that is not to be found here. Watching the new film's all too consciously grandiloquent ending, I wasn't sure that it amounted to much more than Spielberg meets Tim Burton.