A Hauntingly Spectacular Labyrinth - One You Wouldn't Mind getting Lost In!

Rating: 9/10 (23 March 2015)

Like any great myth, Pan's Labyrinth encrypts its messages through displays of magic. The result of the intricate interplay that we witness on screen is a fairy tale for adults that is violent, sometimes shocking, yet utterly engrossing.
It's 1944 and Spain's Civil War has left the country ravaged and battling pockets of rebels. Posted to regain order in one such enclave, tyrannous Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez) travels to a remote home in North Spain with his pregnant wife and 12-year-old step- daughter, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero). Besotted with ancient tales, Ofelia disconnects from the violence around her by wandering into a derelict labyrinth to encounter creatures that once existed only in her fertile fantasies. Here she meets the garrulous faun who informs her she's the princess of a subterranean kingdom, and in characteristic fairy-tale fashion, she's given three tasks to perform before the full moon. And thus begins del Toro's unnerving fairy tale that blends fantasy and gloomy drama into one of the most magical films to come along in years.
It's a heartbreaking tale of cruelty and hopelessness, softened only by the wondrous fantasy of Ofelia's imaginary world. A bold juxtaposition of real and unreal worlds is at the heart of Guillermo del Toro's visually inventive fantasy. Del Toro presents both the narrative strands as equally real, equally plausible. There's no attempt to rationalize Ofelia's parallel universe by suggesting it's a dream or a fantasy. In fact the two sides of the film come together to constitute an allegory about the soul and the national identity of Spain in an almost surreal fashion. Ivana Baquero is in brilliant form manifesting a child's fears and uncertainties through little more than widened eyes and shortened breath. Through sheer force of personality, Sergi López turns Captain Vidal into a convincing yet allegorical metaphor for chauvinistic masculinity and in the end, offers an incomparably sinister character.
Guillermo Del Toro gives us a film which is both searing and haunting as it takes us from the bleak to the sublime. It imagines both the beauty and horror inherent to escapism and, while weaving an intricate tale, vividly draws a world more enticing but no more monstrous than our own. The spell it casts lingers long after the final reel!