Skip to main content

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #132: Pan's Labyrinth

Some directors try to excel in all genres while others feel very much at home in a particular genre, which is fine especially if that director is Guillermo del Toro. The Mexican writer and director has made action movies, moody dramas, and horror films, yet all of these films could be classified in a way as works of fantasy. His masterpiece, so far, is Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) in which a young girl’s imagination and embrace of the fantastic triumphs over the rigidity of fascism. It is a dark and bloody tale for sure, but also one filled with beautiful images and a commanding performance from its young lead.

The movie was released in the fall of 2006 when I was studying at the University of Sherbrooke and unfortunately this was another case when the movie was only available dubbed in French. I always prefer watching movies in their original language, otherwise I feel like I have only paid for half the performances, and I could have perfectly understood the original Spanish track having spent several years in South America. However having seen Blade II a few years prior I was already on my way to becoming a del Toro fan and there was no way I was going to miss his newest film, especially since it was deservedly being touted for awards season.   

Pan’s Labyrinth ended up winning Oscars for art direction, cinematography, and makeup, and long-time del Toro collaborator Doug Jones wears many layers of that makeup. Jones plays two characters in the film, the child-eating Pale Man who wears his eyes on his hands, and the Faun, a giant horned creature who acts as a guide for ten-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero). Ofelia’s pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) is married to cruel Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez) who is hunting down rebels in 1941 Spain under the regime of Francisco Franco. This Vidal is quite the monster, a firm believer in fascism, in the use of torture on prisoners, and in executing farmers by cracking their skulls with a bottle.

Ofelia, her mother, and her evil stepfather are living in a large farmhouse in the woods, and inside these woods there is an ancient labyrinth. An insect that turns into a fairy leads Ofelia to the centre of the labyrinth where she meets the Faun who bows to her telling her she is in fact a princess of the underworld and must complete three tasks in order to return to her father the king. These are very dangerous tasks, and in addition to facing the Pale Man she must also crawl through the inside of a tree to retrieve a key from a giant frog.

The film hints Ofelia might be crazy or just be imagining all this. When the adults see her covered in filth they just see a misbehaving girl, and when Ofelia tells her mother about magic, Carmen angrily tells her there is no such thing as magic. What does exist in this world is a lot of cruelty, and the monsters in this world are not covered in horns, but wear a uniform. Vidal claims all of his violent actions are for the good of the country and claims to care for Carmen, but when she falls ill he is more worried about losing his male heir than his wife. As for Ofelia, he sees her as nothing more than a nuisance. If Ofelia is in fact imagining this fantasy world, then perhaps she is better off living there than in the real world.

The movie is so filled with symbolism I had enough material to write an essay about it for a Cultural Studies class in university. The number three, an important number in many fairy tales, is repeatedly used throughout the story. Ofelia must complete three tasks, there are three keys she must use in one of the tasks, three fairies guide her in her journey, and there three captains at the farmhouse including Vidal. The colour scheme is also significant, with the soldiers all dressed in dull grey, while the fantasy world is filled with bright colours.


I love it when a movie helps me with work, but watching Pan’s Labyrinth definitely does not feel like work. It also does not feel like any children’s movie, with its uncensored violence and mature themes. This is no Disney movie, but by now it should be considered a classic of the genre. Also, Doug Jones deserves some sort of award for being one of the greatest physical performers of our times.  

   
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #147: Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) has many of the master director’s signature elements: spies, lies, a handsome leading man, a domineering mother, and of course a MacGuffin. As it is set after World War II the villains are logically former Nazis, but the plot is so tense in many scenes that it remains an effective thriller to this day. It also bears a huge influence on John Woo’s Mission Impossible 2 , which retains plot elements and similar dialogue, but of course has more explosions than all of Hitchcock’s films put together. Notorious is so well-made it can be studies in film classes, which is exactly what I did while taking a course on Hollywood Cinema 1930-1960 during the summer of 2009 at the University of British Columbia. As this is Hitchcock we are talking about here, there are subtler things to analyze than explosions in Notorious , no offense to the skills of Mr. John Woo. Famously there is a kissing scene between stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that seemingly las...
Post a Comment
Read more

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #91: Return of the Jedi

If you want someone to give you death stares, tell a die-hard Star Wars fan the original trilogy is not perfect. I am however going to take a risk and write that if there is one major flaw with Return of the Jedi (1983) is a lack of imagination when it comes to the central plot. After the good guys blow up the Death Star in the first movie, the bad guys are almost done building a brand new one, which of course needs to be destroyed again in more or less the same way. Richard Marquand may be directing this time, but it was still George Lucas writing. Plot hole aside, as a kid you can’t help but have fun as the good guys join forces with a tribe of living teddy bears to get the job done. Like many people in their early 30s, I was introduced to the first Star Wars trilogy by my parents who had recorded the movies, commercials included, when they were showing one night on TV. Upon first viewing, a few things stick out in the mind of a young boy watching Return of the Jedi such as:...
Post a Comment
Read more

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #85: Blue Velvet

Exactly how do you describe a David Lynch movie? He is one of the few directors whose style is so distinctive that his last name has become an adjective. According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of Lynchian is: “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch.” To see a prime example of that adjective film lovers need look no further than Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), which does indeed begin in the mundane before slowly sinking in macabre violence. My first introduction to the world of David Lynch was through his ground breaking, but unfortunately interrupted, early 1990s TV series Twin Peaks . This was one of the first television shows to grab viewers with a series-long mystery: who killed Laura Palmer? A mix of soap opera, police procedural, and the supernatural, it is a unique show that showed the darkness hidden in suburbia and remains influential to this day. Featuring Kyle MacLachlan as an FBI investigator with a l...
Post a Comment
Read more