Not the best film of 2006 by a long shot, but so close...

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 2007)

It seems ironic that the films considered by many to be the best films of the previous year are both set in an episode of history long since past, but should never be forgotten. El Laberinto Del Fauno only misses out on being the best film of 2006 because Zwartboek took so awfully long to enter production, but its virtues exceed its faults by such a long way that it will always be a benchmark in storytelling. When I say it is based to a great degree on ancient fairy tales such as those written by the Grimm Brothers, it would be all too easy to mistake El Laberinto Del Fauno for being aimed at children. And that would be selling it oh so very short. Like all of the fairy tales that have been bastardised into something puerile by Disney, El Laberinto Del Fauno is a story that every adult should learn from. Children will be frightened and saddened by it, but intelligent or hyperlexic children (or both, such as I was), will get far more out of it than the G-rated tosh that they seem to expect intelligent children to enjoy nowadays.
Set in a remote farm outpost in Spain during the Civil War, a forgotten episode in what is indisputably the darkest days of the twentieth century, El Laberinto Del Fauno concerns itself with one extremely dysfunctional family. The mother has just married a Captain of the Spanish army, an incredibly evil man who is without redeeming feature. It is amazing to see another film in the vein of RoboCop, Total Recall, or Zwartboek where the true villain of the piece is so unremittingly evil that one is unafraid to hate his guts for the film's duration. It makes the payoff at the end of the film that much more satisfying. The torments and injuries the Captain endures through the course of the film are gruesome enough, but we are allowed the luxury of believing he deserves every bit of it. As a nemesis for his stepdaughter, the Captain is one of the best-drawn middlemen of evil since Darth Vader. Yet, in spite of how he can gouge a man's eyes out without pausing for breath, he is by no means the most frightening thing in the film.
El Laberinto Del Fauno, as you would expect with a film bearing such a title, is entirely in Spanish. This obviously necessitated the use of subtitles to translate the dialogue in countries where Spanish is not the primary language, but the nuances of the language would also make dubbing a crime. Even if you do not understand the phrases being spoken, their enunciations make the intent in every sentence plainly obvious. El Laberinto Del Fauno moves and plays like a silent film, where the combinations of body language and music allow the viewer to draw their own conclusion regarding the scene. One could even treat scenes like the Captain conducting his torture sessions as being a comedy if that is their inclination. Quite frankly, I feel it is a sick one, but that is the viewer's prerogative. To be quite frank, scenes in which participants torture one another have a much better aural quality to them when the dialogue is in Spanish. As a result, El Laberinto Del Fauno is the only film I have seen to date, other than Paul Verhoeven's Dutch-language efforts, that I feel uncomfortable watching at times.
Special mention must go to the special effects team who, for one reason or another, chose to make the film using practical effects for what amounts to a majority of the screen time. CGI seems to have been limited to such tasks as painting out an actor's real legs or other such fine details that could not otherwise have been accomplished. The faun is such a marvel of practical costume design, puppetry, and digital erasure that one wonders if the whole team did not suddenly become possessed by the ghost of Jim Henson. However, unlike Ludo, Kermit, or Animal, the production team in this case has mastered the one emotion that Henson was never able to invoke in an adult audience: fear. Yes, even this grown man who continues to stand in horror as the realisation dawns that we have not learned a thing from the time this film is set in feels a shudder of genuine fear when the faun appears to lose his patience with Ofelia. Perhaps it has something to do with the complexity of the character.
If you have not already seen the film, I advise skipping this paragraph, but it is necessary to discuss the final moments in order to illustrate a point. I must also praise the writers for the maturity and power of their story. The ambiguous nature of how the ending is phrased can lead the viewer to entirely different conclusions. If they choose, they can believe the princess was rewarded for her willingness to shed her own blood in place of her half-brother's. Conversely, they may also choose to believe the reward was little more than a dying hope on the behalf of yet another victim of a senseless war. Either way, praise is due to writer/director Guillermo del Toro for refusing to take the easy way out and simply throw a clearly happy ending into the audience's lap in order to appease them. This is a bold move that Peter Jackson especially fumbled by failing to execute in a satisfactory fashion. And that is partly the point. In spite of not being based on one of the most celebrated novels in the English language, El Laberinto Del Fauno will be remembered long after The Lord Of The Rings In Name Only is forgotten.
El Laberinto Del Fauno is a ten out of ten film that everyone, but especially those with an interest in storytelling, should see at least twice.