A 'Labyrinth' of Dreams
Guillermo del Toro's startling new film juxtaposes the fantastic and the realistic
By Andy Klein
This has been an amazing year for Mexican filmmakers: The best film to open last week was Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men; the best this week is Pan's Labyrinth, coproduced by Cuarón with his friend, writer/director Guillermo del Toro. Also in theaters at the moment is Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel - not, frankly, my cuppa tea but many others' beverage of choice - and thankfully not in theaters is Carlos Reygadas's superlative Battle in Heaven. (The superlative in that case, unfortunately, is "worst," as in "worst film of the year.")
Pan's Labyrinth is a startling, idiosyncratic combination of children's fantasy and brutal political realism that switches effortlessly from early Fascist-era Spain to the fairytale world of a young girl's imagination, eventually - magically - integrating the two into one.
We meet the girl in question, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), as she arrives, not very happily, at her new home in a sparsely populated rural region. Her widowed mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), has married Capitán Vidal (Sergi López), who commands the local outpost and by whom she is pregnant. Ofelia resents any attempt to cast Vidal as her father; it doesn't take us long to realize that this isn't merely the common resentment of children toward new step-parents. That natural feeling is compounded by the fact that Vidal is a right bastard - which Mom refuses to see.
Vidal tries to act paternal toward Ofelia: Unfortunately, his concept of fathering is all about propriety, discipline, and deference to authority, rather than affection. It's not all that surprising, really, that a literal, card-carrying Fascist would also be, in the broader sense of the word, a fascist.
His attitude toward Carmen is even more demeaning: When it becomes clear that she is having problems as she nears the end of her pregnancy, Vidal doesn't much care if she lives or dies, as long as she gives him a healthy male heir to carry on and glorify his name; essentially, he values her as breeding stock.
The very moment they arrive, Ofelia is distracted by a dragonfly that leads her briefly toward an apparently ancient stone labyrinth on the grounds. And later, at night, the insect will appear in her bedroom, transform into a fairy, and guide her through to the center of the labyrinth - the lair of a faun (Doug Jones). He tells her she is a long-lost princess and that she can reclaim her position with her regal parents and live forever ... if she completes three tasks before the next full moon.
This setup is, of course, very similar to The Chronicles of Narnia, but Ofelia's faun is even creepier than that story's Mr. Tumnus. He's a nightmare figure, whose goodness and reliability are not to be taken as givens. In del Toro's imagination, even a child's escapist fantasies are filled with figures of ambiguous intent.
Ofelia's nocturnal world is no more of a nightmare than her daytime world, albeit a tad more florid. With her mother increasingly ill, her only comfort is the company of Mercedes (Maribel Verdú), the housekeeper, who is secretly smuggling supplies to the anti-Fascist rebels in the hills.
If Pan's Labyrinth has some classic children's story trappings, don't be fooled into thinking it deserves anything milder than its R rating. There are a few moments of sudden, wince-inducing violence; and the tone, on the whole, is very dark.
Del Toro's directorial oeuvre divides rather neatly into two modes: his three English-language ventures (Mimic, Blade II, Hellboy) are first-rate genre affairs; while his three Spanish-language films (Cronos and The Devil's Backbone are the others) are remarkable mutations of genre convention. It's easy to find elements - like visual style - common throughout his work, but his "foreign" films, all from his own original screenplays, have an additional quality; they juxtapose the fantastic and the realistic in a way that is identifiably his own.
The connections between Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone are most apparent: Both blend the supernatural with the reality of Spanish political struggles. Cronos - his first feature and one that remains my favorite, for reasons perhaps sentimental - may not be explicitly political, but it too revolves around children and the way their perceptions are a bridge between the fantastic and real. It's no surprise that he and Cuarón are kindred spirits; in some ways, Pan's Labyrinth is del Toro's version of his friend's A Little Princess (1995).
"Faunus" is the Latin equivalent of the Greek "Pan," and under both names, the character has traditionally been associated with sexuality, often in disturbing ways. Yet, while the creature here gives off some very sinister vibes, there don't seem to be any unsettling sexual elements in the film ... even for those us, raised in the Freudian fifties, who can't help seeing repressed sexuality lurking under every narrative. There is never a hint that Vidal, no matter how rotten he is, has any carnal interest in his stepdaughter; nor that Ofelia's unhappiness and need for fantasy is related to that kind of trauma.
It may simply be that we are tied to the POV of a middle-class girl ... just shy of puberty ... in a Catholic country ... under a Fascist regime - a strong prescription for sexual ignorance. Indeed, at one point, Ofelia embraces a kind of innocent - albeit pagan - pre-biological notion of reproduction.
While Baquero's captivating performance is the center and anchor of the whole affair, it would be unfair not to mention the sterling work from the rest of the cast. At first, I resisted López's performance as being too close to a moustache-twirling nineteenth century villain, but the character ends up being more complex than that, while never less than loathsome. His movements reminded me of Ralph Fiennes's Amon Goeth in Schindler's List; and he's a very different bad guy from the sleazy black marketeer López portrayed in his other best known role, Sneaky in Dirty Pretty Things. And Verdú - who has grown more beautiful as she loses the girlish "prettiness" displayed in her early films - is so compelling that she threatens to steal the focus from her costars.
A voiceover at the film's beginning tells us a fairy tale about "a princess who dreamt of the real world," and by the end, that's one way - the happier way - to read Pan's Labyrinth. The synthesis of the story's two worlds is quite remarkable, and del Toro seems not to take a clear position on just how "real" Ofelia's fantasy realm is ... nor, by then, does it seem necessary or even important.
Published: 12/28/2006
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