Pan’s Labyrinth: a Review

Guillermo del Toro’s mélange of genres, imagery, and ideologies in Pan’s Labyrinth could be set no better than in Spain, a country whose own mix of genres, imagery, and ideologies has few other peers. Against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, this “fairy tale for adults” is immersive and unexpectedly captivating. The imagery of Spain (not to mention the rest of the world) at war with itself is set against a fable world of fauns, insects-turned-fairies, and other nether-creatures which, under the direction of perhaps any other writer/director, would become a beautiful world to contrast the ugliness of the “real” world.

But del Toro’s fable world is as dark (literally and figuratively) and disturbing as the world little Ofelia flees—the violence of Europe’s ideological upheavals reflected in the sinister and grotesque characters Ofelia finds in the fable world. Even “Pan” (el Fauno) of the title, who is supposed to be on the side of the would-be princess, Ofelia, creates a staggering amount of doubt whether his intentions are benevolent or not. Del Toro, rather than showing the trite “two sides of the same coin” instead chooses to show the same side of two different coins, or perhaps more accurately: the same two sides of the same single coin.

And as you may be used to my fixation on conclusions by now, del Toro takes the artistic and therefore honorable route (or is that the other way around? Or does it matter?) Rather than the ending everyone expects—that is, the girl escapes the horrors of the “real” world into a chimeric world in which she is the prophesied and long-awaited ruler—del Toro instead brings the two story lines together, stumbling and mortal, into an ending where failure is success and suicide is sacrifice—and the contrapositive of both is also true.

The ending also combines the imageries and ideologies of communism with its antithesis, Catholicism. The Trinity—found in every excursion Ofelia must endure through the fable world—manifests itself in the royal court, where Ofelia’s always present/always absent (f/F)ather occupies the slightly elevated central chair, while her birth mother occupies the chair on the left. In every trinity in the movie, the character always turns left, as if the overt and graphic violence of the right-wing fascist militarism throughout the movie isn’t enough to cause one to lean left. However, in all fairness, when the communist “army” overpowers the fascist cavalry—and is there a hidden Calvary reference in there?—from the left hand side of the screen, one still feels uncomfortable to see the communist “heroes” engaging in the same murderous violence we see from the Fascists throughout the film. Again, the same two sides of the same single coin.

But wherever this half-drunken analysis has led to, the overall impression of the movie I’d like to end with is that this is a tour de force that ruthlessly undermines Hollywood’s new paradigmatic regurgitation. The best movie I’ve seen in quite a long time.

Add it to your netflix.