Pan's Labyrinth

Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) explores one of her imaginary worlds in Pan's Labyrinth. Like many other parts of this film, this particular scene recalls almost directly Alice in Wonderland, but the film is most definitely a much more adult version of that and other fairy-tales.

This film had been gathering some of the press of recent years for a foreign language release, and it was marketed as a sort of dark fairytale with the expected fantasy elements. As it turned out, the film is much more than that - truly violent at times, truly inspired at others, it is amongst the best I have seen for a long while. The main character is the young girl Ofelia whose mother has married an evil Captain in Franco's army (Sergei Lopez from Harry, He's Here to Help) and so has moved to his camp to have the child she is heavily pregnant with. It emerges on their trip to the country that already Ofelia has an over-active imagination: she encounters what she is adamant is a fairy in the woods. Introduced to the scary captain, she naturally retreats further into this imaginary world, led forward by a faun (clearly not of the Narnia variety) and the labyrinth that happens to be on the camp grounds. Added to this there is a local resistance group that both has a few moles in Lopez's camp and designs on desposing him. The magic sections and all of the imaginary creatures that Ofelia encounters are well-realised in what I'm sure is cutting edge animation, and the film remains completely believable throughout thanks to some excellent performances from most of the supporting characters. Lopez is given little to do but scowl and look menacing, but he makes the most of it and adds a certain poignancy to his inevitable demise. The only weak link is the mother, who is played too hysterically in the brief screen-time she is allowed. Her departure is the only point at which the film begins to feel slightly manipulative when attempting to create sympathy for a character we've barely met; thankfully the focus stays on the young Ofelia throughout.

The direction too is excellent at most times, with a very inventive sort of floating effect used in some of the cuts which suits the style of the story very well. As well, del Toro doesn't shy away from the particularly gory scenes in the latter half of the film: even the dreamscapes are rendered with a surprising degree of gore when the hand/eye monster bites the heads off the little girl's fairies for example. There's a lot of filmic and literary influences going on as well: some of the scenes recall directly a more twisted Alice in Wonderland, and the final chase scene through the maze is reminiscent of that in The Shining. None of which takes away from the brilliance of this film though; they are merely touchstones for a story about a child retreating into a fantasy to escape the real-world horror (Life is Beautiful, anyone?). And there is much horror throughout this film when the extraordinary callous captain just executes people at will and eventually resorts to some gruesome torture methods in his insane quest to impose his outlook of Franco Spain. The blood and noise of these sections is tempered by the fantasy scenes which seem an extension of nature - all of the tasks that Ofelia is set by the faun take place underground (one in a tree), the faun himself is very tree-like and so on. Some complex ideas are being thrown about here too, not just those raised directly by the plot.

In the end this film deserves all of the commendations that it has received, mainly for being a very unsparing portrait of a violent time and the perhaps unexpected consequences for the young people. And it seems too a very dark updating of a fairy-tale story, complete with an extraordinary bite of cynicism and callous violence - all still mesmerising.

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