Perhaps too successful at what it's trying to do

Rating: 5/10 (7 October 2010)

Pan's Labyrinth is too successful at what it tries to be. With this film Del Toro reimagines the Spanish Civil War as a fairy tale for adults, but he does it so well that it's hard for an adult audience to fully appreciate it.
The story, like most good fairy tales, focuses on both good and evil. The good is Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl caught up in the messy days after the end of the Spanish Civil War. He father is dead and her mother (Ariadna Gil) has remarried to an officer in Franco's army. Now pregnant with the Captain's child, she and Ofelia travel to his military post, where he is leading the effort against a local guerrilla band in the surrounding hills. The evil of the story is the Captain (Sergi Lopez), representing the regimented, strict and unemotional nature of the fascist regime.
Upon arriving at her new "home", Ofelia is lead by a fairy into an ancient maze. There she encounters a faun, a gigantic, mostly wooden goat man who tells Ofelia that she is a princess of a magical kingdom who must perform three tasks to shed her mortal existence and rejoin the spirit realm. Those tasks, which include killing a giant toad and retrieving an item from a monster's lair, are interwoven with the struggle between the Captain and the rebels. Yet, that struggle is as much myth as Ofelia's encounter with a murderous creature who puts his eyeballs in his palms.
The real world events of the film aren't based in any sort of social or personal realism. They could just as easily have been a "Once upon a time" story about a cruel overlord and the courageous villagers who eventually destroy him. Like most fairy tales, evil is built up to be this overpowering forcebut then it is defeated, not because of clever planning or even acts of nobility or bravery. Evil is defeated through fairly base trickery and just because good is supposed to defeat evil.
And like most fairy tales, the strongest and most compelling character is the bad guy. Ofelia is a lovely child who cares for her mother and her unborn brother, but there's not much depth or complexity to her. When she succeeds or fails, it's not because of some aspect of her character. It's just because it fits the story. But like the evil witch in Snow White, it is the Captain who is the most compelling figure of the story. He's a sadist who delights in tormenting prisoners, yet he's also a brave warrior on the battlefield. He does love Ofelia's mother, yet would gladly sacrifice her to save his unborn son to carry on his name. He deals out death casually, yet is haunted by his father's end and contemplates suicide. The Captain is supposed to be the real monster of the tale, yet at the end he's the most fully realized, most truly human character in the story.
Del Toro is to be lauded for how well he recreates the classic fairy tale sensibility. Those stories we tell to children are shot through with cruelty and horror and suffering. They're also only weakly tethered to the world of logic and cause and effect, things happen in fairy tales that defy explanation and we accept them without question. But while that works with Ofelia's mystical journey, you may find yourself wanting more or feeling there's something missing in the struggle with the Captain. There is a whole sense of unreality to both story lines and moments when the "real" world doesn't make sense as real. Which is, I'm sure, what Del Toro was trying to dobut the "real" world is never real enough to provide enough contrast with Ofelia's fantasy world.
The end of Pan's Labyrinth also aspires to be as dark and heartbreaking as many fairy tales. But after embracing unreality so thoroughly, the sharp turn back to normality is too much. You're asked to accept or consider something so out of touch with everything that comes before, that the emotions appealed to can't respond quickly enough. By the time you realize just how sad you should be, the movie's over.
Pan's Labyrinth is visually stunning and true to the essence of all good fairy tales, but the mix of fantasy and reality may be too muddy for both kids and grown ups.