What Happens When the Escape is a Bad as Reality

We all need to escape the bitter entrails of reality from time-to-time, which is one of the reasons we watch movies, read books, etc.  Children, with their whimsical natures, sense of adventure and need to explore, find more inventive ways to escape the sometimes harsh world in which they find themselves trapped, oft-times not of their own accord. 

Magic and the arcane are still very much a part of their worlds; life has yet to beat the adult view of the things into their souls.   But what happens if your form of escapism is on par with the real world, if it is so terrible and ugly, that it offers no real escape from the world in which you already live?  

That is just one of themes of Pan's Labyrinth (2006), which on the surface might appear to be a children's story akin to the fairy tales of old, however the many messages the movie conveys are meant for those with considerable age and understanding.      
    
The Story

Written and directed by Mexican-born Guillermo Del Toro (Minic, Blade II, Hellboy) Pan's Labyrinth is set in the Spanish countryside in 1944 where the wounds inflicted by the brutal Spanish Civil War are still freshly bleeding.  Spain is not officially a part of WWII, but Francisco Franco openly provided material support for the Axis cause, while Communism and what it represents are still very much despised; old animosities have always found fertile soil in the human heart!

Into this political and cultural backdrop lands fatherless young Ofélia (Ivana Baquero) is brought to the country outpost of her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) new husband, the fascist Captain Vidal (Sergi López), who at the moment is passionately, and heartlessly engaged in uprooting the last remnants of a guerrilla force hidden in the surrounding forest with a garrison of about 40 men.          

Young Ofélia and the Captain take an instant disliking to each other, a relationship that will help shape the movie's more violent turns.  Meanwhile, the child's mother is confined to a wheelchair and bed in order to protect the Captain's unborn son. 

In order to cope with her strange new surrounding Ofélia retreats into a world filled with large locust-like creatures that turn into fairies, one of which she follows into a ancient nearby labyrinth.  Once inside, Ofélia meets the forest spirit Fauno (Doug Jones), who gives her three tasks each involving some hideous creature including a giant greedy toad, and the horrific Pale Man (who holds his eyes in palms of his hands and devours children).  The last task involves Ofélia's unborn brother and the shedding of innocent blood.  

Meanwhile outside this world inside Ofélia's mind, a more sinister and real monster lurks, torturing and murdering anyone who stands in the way of his political ideas and duty.


But, the good Captain Vidal has a mole in his household, his head housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) and the garrison doctor (Alex Angulo), are both secretly helping the resistance, at the head of which is Mercedes' brother Pedro (Roger Casamajor).  

My Thoughts

Pan's Labyrinth is at once violent and gentle, innocent and horrific, engaging and repulsive.  Through a glass darkly does Ofélia view the conflict unfolding around her like some living nightmare only to retreat into a world where the landscape is just as dark, but therein she has purpose and her suffering meaning and an eventful happy outcome.    

But, Del Toro weaved another meaning into the blood stained frames of his movie and that is strength can be defeated by (perceived) weakness if intellect and cunning are used in good measure to overcome it.  Here, Captain Vidal is warned that there may be a traitor in household, but his mind never wanders in Mercedes direction, for how could she a mere housekeeper and a woman dare defy him, or have the wits to carry out the subversive task?   

Del Toro has always been associated with horror from Mimic to Blade 2 to Hellboy, but even Pan's Labyrinth has more than its fair share of the grotesquerie, the brutal, the highly the fantastic.  In Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro unleashed his all too fertile imagination and created a world unbounded by the usual (movie) genre boundaries; the movie is a children's fantasy, but it isn't; it is an adult parable, but not quite; it is historical drama, but not told in the usual way. 

The performances throughout this wonderful film were suburb-especially Lopez as the face of clean-shaven horror with a gun and beer bottle.   The transitions from reality to fantasy and back again were seamless and I after a while the two blended together seamlessly until I had to wonder if Ofélia's world was indeed real. 
 
Pan's Labyrinth takes place where no movie before it has (save perhaps Sin City), where magic and the absurdly real travel the same very human road, where Labyrinth (1986 - Jennifer Connelly) meets Irreversible (2002 - Monica Bellucci).  The affect is engaging and repulsive, but ultimately very entertaining and enlightening.

See Pan's Labyrinth!

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age