Never Escapes From The Fact It's Two Entirely Separate Stories

Rating: 8/10 (22 April 2014)

PAN'S LABYRINTH was just about the most critically acclaimed release of 2006 . While it was better than most of the films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar - can anyone remember THE QUEEN or BABEL ? - it suffered badly from the hype and acclaim that surrounded it . Watching it not long after its release I did get a feeling of slight disappointment of " Is that it ? " . Sometimes it's best to let the passage of time elapse before you give your honest opinion on a movie Eight years after its release now seems like a long enough time to see if it's as good as it was made out
There's no doubt PL is a strangely beautiful and haunting film . There is a major problem and that is that it never really escapes from the feel that it's two separate stories connected in a rather tenuous way . Ofelia lives in Franco's falangist , fascist Spain of 1944 and is made to live with her stepfather , the brutal sadistic Captain Vidal who holds the surrounding area in an iron fist . Ofelia , a child about to enter adolescence soon stumbles upon a strange underground kingdom populated by faries and demons and soon finds this magical kingdom can be every bit as cruel and oppressive as the war ridden and chaotic world of 1944
Time to be a little bit controversial and state despite the idiosyncratic visual magic that Del Toro brings to his films by the far the best aspect is the real life horrors inflicted upon the human population of a fascist country and the fantasy elements seem to be included as a sort of gimmick , almost as if Del Toro thought a period drama would have no market outside of Spain . Every time the action cut to the underground fantasy a voice inside my head - no doubt the director - kept saying " Please give me an Oscar for costume design , make up and visual effects por favor " . When you've got an evil piece of work like Captain Vidal murdering people who needs made up monsters ?
If we're talking about Oscar nominations let's talk about Sergi Lopez as Vidal , or rather let's talk about one of the biggest Oscar snubs in history that's up there with Bruno Ganz in DER UNTERGANG . Seems if someone plays a murderous right winger this seems to alienate the award voters almost as if they're seen condoning mass murder . I'm of the view that a film is only as good as its villain and they don't much better than Vidal , a man who is more than happy to return to the family table after executing a couple of suspected rebels as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened . This reflects the Latin attitude of fascism . South American countries were notorious for this in the 1970s and 80s but even as recently as the 1970s Spain had a rather poor human rights record under Franco . Indeed I once worked with a Spanish waitress called Maria who told me her grandparents were murdered by Franco's regime . I never found out if it was because they were leftists or because they were descended from people who killed Jesus but it was a very poignant reminder that fascism in Europe didn't end with the defeats of Germany and Italy in 1945
As it stands PAN'S LABYRINTH is a strange but captivating movie . It's not quite a fairy tale and it's not quite a historical drama . It's contains wonderful performances and yet it's probably not the masterwork some people claim it to be . It never manages to overcome the inherent problem of being two stories trying and failing to gel together which means it's a good film but not a brilliant one