Film Review: Pan's Labyrinth

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Tuesday January 23, 2007 14:52

by bobara

A somewhat belated review of Guillermo Del Toro's latest film, still showing.

Pan’s Labyrinth

The victory of fascism, and the crushing of revolutionary ideals is the setting in which Guillermo del Toro places Pan’s Labyrinth, a dark and beautiful meditation on life and death, fear, innocence and corruption . The Franco-era Spain in which the story resides is also home to Del Toro’s earlier The Devil’s Backbone, and the two films are closely linked thematically, although Pan’s Labyrinth deals with the war with much more directness and consequent brutality. Like any good fairy-tale, violence is frequent and death a constant force, the fantasy world mimicking the real. Del Toro uses the fairy world as a space to play out and develop his theme of innocence and purity against the corruption of fascism. The tasks that Ofelia must complete all deal with this struggle, she must reaffirm life against death, whether by destroying a toad that poisons a fig-tree or facing down the Pale Man, a grotesque child-eating monster. Her victory entails immortality, but it is only attained by a reconciliation with the fear of death.
By chance or fate, Ofelia opens up the world of the fairies, returning a carved stone to the statue from which it has fallen. A insect-fairy roused by her action emerges, and eventually leads her through the labyrinth to learn of her destiny. The movement through the labyrinth figures as an engagement with another world, and the discovery of her secret destiny. Del Toro here draws on the rich history of the labyrinth as a space for a personal experience of the mystical, and as the home of spirits. The centre of the labyrinth is a gateway to the fairy kingdom as well as the site for the revelation of Ofelia’s true nature, combining these functions. By completing three tasks, Ofelia (aka Princess Moanna) can return to the mystical kingdom that is her birthright. At first this might seem like a simple parable of escapism, as an unhappy child flees her new home and cruel stepfather for a world of fantasy and dreams, but from the start we see that Del Toro’s fairy realm is just as dangerous and terrifying as the human. On the other hand, the fairy world does create a space where Ofelia can face and triumph over her fears.
The film places us in a position of striking intimacy with the main characters, a trinity of strongly sympathetic women. Del Toro is well aware of the relationships he builds up between the audience and these women and successively wrings the bonds between audience and characters by inflicting pain and suffering upon them. The film moves from intimacy to agony with speed and determination, as all three women face the threat of death in their own ways, rebel, mother and fairy-child. Del Toro’s ability is to take the suspension of disbelief and personal involvement of the audience for granted, made all the more impressive in that he does it through a guilelessly unreal world. Watching the film is a personal experience as well as an aesthetic one, since by our involvement with the film and sympathy for its heroic forces places us in a position of vulnerability to the destructive aspects, most persistently embodied by the steadfast and merciless Captain Vidal. This is a character striving towards absolute mastery of the world and the people around him, establishing his domination with emotional manipulation, deft strategy and an unremitting brutality. In opposition to this, against the Captain who fastidiously cleans and winds his watch and insists that his son will bear his name, is the mysterious and immortal world of the fairies, cutting across, and interweaving with the human world. But as mentioned before, the fairy world is a place where the problems of the human are played out in a different form, rather than merely escaped. With this in mind, the figure of the child-eating Pale Man achieves new relevance as a fantastic depiction of fascism and destruction of youthful innocence. The character is partly inspired by the Goya painting Saturn Devouring His Son, and should thus be placed next to the Captain’s own familial intentions, desiring a son to bear his name, and that of his father, continuing his line. This desire subjugates the child to the continuation of a patriarchal lineage, a condition identified by Ofelia’s wish to escape with the boy to the fairy kingdom. Perhaps the Pale Man and the reference to the Goya painting serve to express the brutality of Vidal’s wishes for his child by exploring them in the fantastic, as this allows Ofelia to recognise and confront the fears that are beyond her power.

The film does not move towards any larger political analysis of the Spanish Civil War, and refrains from any real investigation of the motivations for rebellion or totalitarianism. Captain Vidal makes a brief explanation of his reasons for fighting, saying that he fights because some people have the unfortunate belief that everyone is born equal. He is prepared to kill every single last one of the militia to correct this mistake. The forest-bound militia’s politics are no more explicit; the clearest sign we get is that of Mercedes’ brother wearing a communist badge. Del Toro sees fascism as, “ first and foremost a form of perversion of innocence, and thus of childhood.”(1) , and so precludes a political analysis, choosing to let the story play out through the imagination of a child and medium of the fairy tale. As such, the struggle is not between reality and fantasy, but between innocence/purity and evil. Due to the emphasis placed on innocence, the film occasionally has a quasi-religious tone to it, particularly the ending sequence. However, it is refreshingly anti-clerical, as befitting the Church’s role at the time. The hypocrisy and collusion of the Catholic Church is made explicit, as the priest sits with Captain Vidal at his house for dinner, and excuses death with vacuous pieties. Fantasy in this film a medium that condenses the complexities of reality into a simple opposition and struggle. That is not to say that the magical world is merely an explication and resolution of the film’s real world, but that the film as a whole is fantasy, and therefore deals with the Civil War in this way. It is the personal story of a child experiencing a violent world, told as fairy tale.

(1) www.festival-cannes.fr/films/fiche_film.php?langue=6002&id_film=4359827#news

A trailer with ridiculous action-movie style voice-over can be seen at http://youtube.com/watch?v=1BtrYsWN1T0