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At the tail-end of the Spanish Civil War, young Ofelia and her pregnant mother go to live at an isolated army camp with her new stepfather. He is the sadistic Captain Vidal, who is determined to destroy the last vestiges of the guerrilla forces in the woods around his outpost. Ofelia’s most treasured possessions are her books of fairy tales, even though she is told she is too old for them. Deeply unhappy in her new home, she escapes into a garden labyrinth, which is a gateway to a sinister, dreamlike world. There she meets the faun Pan, who tells her she is heiress to a secret world and all she has to do to claim her birthright is complete three simple tasks…
Mexican writer-director Guillermo del Toro is a filmmaker with a singular vision. He is involved in all parts of the creative process, from designing the characters to writing the script and his devotion shows itself in every lovingly crafted frame. If you’re looking for a comparable visual style, I suppose Tim Burton’s is the closest (it’s all the curlicues). But unlike Burton, del Toro doesn’t feel the need to temper the darkness with sweeter moments or warm fuzzy morals. His worlds are dark and seem to exist in perpetual shadow and this is equally true of the real world in the film as well as the fantasy one. The production design throughout is exquisite. The director demonstrates a solid grasp of period detail in the “real world” but mutes the palette to browns and greys to match the sombre and often frightening mood. But he also slips in fantastical references to things like “Alice in Wonderland” with Ofelia’s clothes. His use of shadow is key, leaving enough dark spaces for things to hide in to maintain the sense of unease
that permeates the film. The dream world is one of greater contrasts; using a broader, bolder palette of black shadows and mud and blood reds. It is equally disturbing but unsettles in a different manner. Having a film set in two parallel worlds runs the risk of being episodic as you jump from one to the other but a few crossovers of fantasy and reality help to keep it a coherent whole. The editing is sharp and brings real nail-biting tension to the many confrontations of the movie. The quest aspect drives the narrative, giving dramatic impetus and meaning the film doesn’t feel a hundred and nineteen minutes long.
Del Toro’s fantasy designs are wonderful; he uses a combination of computer-generated, physical and make-up effects to create an alternate world populated by hitherto unimaginable creatures. The computer-generated fairies are exquisitely detailed yet a little unnerving in the way they look. There is a marvellous storybook which writes itself in front of our eyes and a creepy giant animatronic toad. Pan is a combination of a great physical performance from an actor coupled with lots of prosthetic make-up. He is a creature of the earth, seemingly sprung from timber and moss, complete with creaking wood noises and an ovine face with too-smooth skin and almost boot button eyes (ever watchful). The pale man would be freakish enough without his eyeless face; the blackened claw-like fingers and recessive teeth are horrible enough, even before you take into account the fact that his body looks like it’s made of reconstituted semolina. But his lack of facial features (he has only slits for a nose) are truly disturbing, as are his removable eyes, which fit in his palms.
Del Toro’s screenplay takes its cue from the original Grimm’s fairy tales, which are some of the darkest and most disturbing cautionary tales you’re ever likely to read. And that means this is definitely NOT a film for children. The overt messages and subtext are upsetting. Bad people retain all the power, good people die and there are no guarantees of a happy ending. Ofelia’s tasks are scary and potentially life-threatening, as are her decisions in the real world. He renders the reality of life in Civil War Spain utterly terrifying by maintaining a sense of constant tension. You never know who might betray you as a sympathiser with the rebels and with unpredictable sadists like Captain Vidal running the show, whatever you say may cost you your life. The torture he metes out is brutal and illustrated fairly graphically, so you are in no doubt quite how dangerous he is. It’s just one way of showing why Ofelia’s journeys into a fantasy world are a necessity and not a game. But that’s not to say her escape is an easy one – the world of the labyrinth is inhabited by freakish and menacing monsters. Even those that profess to be on her side are far from benevolent – Pan himself is a threatening, morally ambiguous figure whose intentions are never clear. But a world where you can tell who the monsters are just by looking at them is preferable to one where they are human.
The characters are realistic and have their own beliefs and desires. The relationships between them are necessarily complex to give the story emotional resonance. The subtitled dialogue is descriptive, precise and colourful enough to hold the attention. The pacing is strong, driving the action in both storylines forward at a decent pace.
The ensemble cast is more than capable of showing emotional extremes and drawing the audience into the worlds of the movie. Ivana Baquero, gives a naturalistic and affecting performance as the young Ofelia. She is a quiet, innocent and withdrawn child with a great imagination that she takes recourse to because she is so frightened by the world around her. She’s utterly guileless so it’s easy to believe in her as a pure-hearted heroine-cum-sacrificial-lamb. She doesn’t rely on teeth and eyes acting and her emotional responses feel real.
Sergi Lopéz, who plays the brutal and sadistic Captain Vidal has created a thoroughly terrifying monster of the big screen. The reason he is so scary is because he is so plausible. He’s a sinister, cruel, cold and unpredictable man, drunk on his own power and sense of self-importance. This, married to his vicious nature, is what makes him so dangerous – no matter what extremes he may go he thinks he is in the right, which in turn fuels his God complex.
As both Pan and the Pale Man, American actor Doug Jones gives breathtaking physical performances. He can convey so many emotional changes with the slightest incline of his head, so precise is his movement. As Pan he adopts a twitchiness that feels unnatural and therefore makes the faun creepy rather than cutesy. As the Pale Man he’s more obviously scary, but that’s as much to do with the freaky make-up as his shambling performance.
The original music by Javier Navarette suits the spirit of the movie because of its accomplished use of minor key string arrangements and discordant ethereal vocals that jangle the nerves. The labyrinth takes on a personality of its own thanks to his swelling orchestral suites that accompany Ofelia’s entrance to it, in addition to operatic vocals and darker strings that serve as a warning to all who dare to enter. The lighter magics such as the self-filling book and the fairies have playful woodwind motifs and the gnarled tree at the centre of the maze takes on a much darker aspect through the use of forbidding cellos and violins. These are all contrasted by the unfeasibly jolly music Captain Vidal listens to while he shaves.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” is a little gothic masterpiece that satisfies on every level. It is dark, complex and disturbing, coupling the fear and suspicion that characterised the beginning of the Spanish republic with the dark fantasies of childhood nightmares. The writing is detailed, the direction exhaustive and loving, the acting accomplished and the production design sublime. It completely engrosses the watcher for the full two hours, drawing you into Ofelia’s story and struggles, hoping against hope that all will turn out well in the end. Forget about this being a subtitled foreign movie, just watch it as the darkest and most disturbing fairytale you’ve ever known and you will enjoy it.
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Production Year: 2000 - Horror - Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Carmen Electra, Anna Faris, Kurt Fuller, James Van Der Beek, Keenen Ivory Wayans
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