A fantasy that breaks your heart?

Rating: 9/10 (7 November 2008)

Fairy tales have their roots in very old, very deep human fears. Guillermo Del Toro mercilessly teases out those fears in his ambitious, glorious and harrowing adult fairy tale Pan's Labyrinth. It is rich, both in metaphorical terms and in literal ones. Del Toro's imagery is so vivid and concrete that it's likely to change the color of your sleep. The movie's meanings emerge from its visuals instead of being driven by them. Del Toro has mastered the delicate, difficult feat of using pure sensation to make us think. Pan's Labyrinth is a film of breathtaking emotional, thematic and visual depth. It brilliantly melds the disparate realms of fairy tale and brutal 20th century history into a most affecting film. While Pan's Labyrinth has many fairy tale elements, don't think for one moment that it is a movie for kids. It's a magical, frightening and heartbreaking movie for adults who want to take the journey deep into the reality that outgrows fantasy. Writer/director Guillermo Del Toro fills the movie with themes of growing up, facing the ugliness around you, making decisions about what you stand for and will to do for right and justice. Also, he brilliantly mixes the two stories, showing the audience how these very adult themes and situations are playing out on a child's level. Ofelia the affectionate protagonist is a fatherless Spanish girl whose mother marries a captain in General Isimo Francisco Franco's army, around 1944. When Ofelia and her pregnant mothers' car stops on the journey to the mountain camp where Capt. Vidal is leading a campaign against rebels, the girl slips away. She follows an odd insect on the way to the outpost. Ofelia discovers an ancient pagan idol, awakening what seems to be a fairy. At the outpost itself the fairy leads the girl to a maze that stands behind the main building. This labyrinth, we're told, predates Christianity. And deep in its heart lives a satyr who tells Ofelia that she's the lost princess of the fairy realm, and gives her three tasks to accomplish before she can return home. The insect/fairy from the forest returns to Ofelia while her mother is sleeping. The girl follows the tiny creature to an ancient labyrinth. She descends a spiral of stone steps and meets the Faun. From hence forward, Ofelia lives in two worlds. Both of them contain monsters. Unlike many conventional Hollywood filmmakers, Del Toro doesn't underestimate an audience's ability to witness the reality of war and the avenue it provides to the most brutal of men. This is the start of something both magical and deadly serious. The coldness of Ofelia's stepfather is revealed the instant she greets him at the camp. His cruelty deepens as the story moves forward. Ofelia doesn't see the worst of the captain's wickedness, but she knows he and the camp are symptoms of a world gone mad. Being a little girl, though, she has few options. Little Ofelia is called upon to do brave things and make tough choices. Del Toro's genius in casting can be reflected with the actor Sergi Lopez, who brought an evil charm and frightening reality to Captain Vidal, while Del Toros' writing has given his character enough flesh to be recognized as a human being. Vidal isn't being the prototype villain here just to fill the story like most current Hollywood movies. He isn't being evil for the sake of being evil. He is idealistic about his cause and a true believer in his action. Which he thinks is right regardless of the contradictory view of the audience. He is a foster child of a fascist system, a heartless monster whose blind obedience to an inhumane ideology which, allows him to indulge many of his worst impulses to the maximum. Ivana Baquero delivers a stunning performance as young girl facing horrible realities of a cruel environment but with full of optimism that she is meant for a different better life. According to her it's not wishful thinking. While watching Baquero's age defying performance, it's almost unbelievable the capacity of a child her age to generate such power and realism into a character that basically carries a whole movie. Ophelia is as much of a believer like her evil counterpart. Her beliefs are deeply rooted into fairies and she follows the satyr sans his creepy outlook. The fact that she makes mistakes, as everyone does, makes her all the more appealing. But unlike Vidal, she isn't a conformist even as a child. She isn't blindly obedient to the satyr and at the end doing exact opposite of what she is told, shows the path for her salvation. This dear child earns movie watchers' love and admiration. Ivana Baquero endows Ofelia with the vulnerability, intelligence and spunk the character needs. She's wonderfully effective and the camera embraces her. Comparing to Del Toro's previous work, Pan's Labyrinth can be viewed as a sequel to "The Devils Backbone", which happened to be his best outing on previous efforts. His storyline returns to Spanish civil war. The action takes place in a cruelly regimented and socially isolated world. In The Devil's Backbone Del Toro wove his ghost story very tightly into the Spanish civil war setting where in Pan's Labyrinth the fairy tale echoes and reflects the happenings going on during the same period with experiences related to Captain Vidal. The stories aren't separate and in fact they're totally complementary. Pan's Labyrinth is another rare movie experience that works equally well on intellectual and emotional levels. It is a movie that will challenge the view in some ways and will reinforce your own beliefs in other ways. This film drives the viewer to rethink his/her own perspective of a happy ending. At the end it can't be said, Pan's Labyrinth is without hope of goodwill for the humans involved in the story. But with the skill of Del Toro, it is shown that their journey to at least a partial victory is possible but not without sacrifice.