A grimly glorious fairytale with a dual personality

Rating: 9/10 (25 November 2006)

Intoxicating, impressive and imaginative, Guillermo Del Toro's wartime fantasy has few detractors and rightly so. But the two halves of his story do not fit together as satisfyingly as one might hope. Like a collaboration between Ken Loach and Clive Barker, it's a cinematic non sequitur in which the sober and frequently vicious reality of Spain's fascist past is placed beside, but not reflected in, the dark looking-glass of the titular otherworld.
Bridging the divide, young Ivana Baquero is disarmingly natural as Ofelia, treading carefully around her stepfather Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez; the most despicable screen villain of the year) while throwing herself fearlessly into the tasks assigned to her by the bolshy and vaguely untrustworthy faun Pan.
By definition, fantasy requires no explanation. But Del Toro takes tangible elements from one world into the other (such as the healing mandrake root) while hinting that Pan and his fellow mythic beasts exist only in Ofelia's mind. Title cards saying "Meanwhile..." would not look out of place between scenes detailing the grim conflict between Vidal's fascists and the forest-dwelling rebels and Ofelia's plunges into the otherworld.
Incohesiveness aside, Pan's Labyrinth marks Del Toro as a true visionary who bends to neither convention nor compromise. Those prepared for nastiness are in for an audacious and visually glorious Gothic treat.