PAN’S LABYRINTH Guillermo del Toro

EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO / PAN’S LABYRINTH (2006)

Direction and screenplay: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Doug Jones, Ariadna Gil, Álex Angulo, Manolo Solo

Oscar Movies

Recommended

Ivana Baquero, Pan’s Labyrinth

"If you expect to get laid after this screening," Guillermo del Toro told the midnight (actually, closer to 1 a.m.) audience at the AFI FEST Los Angeles 2007 premiere of Pan’s Labyrinth, "it ain’t gonna happen."

Indeed, del Toro’s "adult fairytale" is hardly the sort of fable that would induce either sexual or romantic yearnings. The story of a young girl who attempts to escape the brutal repression of General Francisco Franco’s Spain by creating her own dark fantasy world, Pan’s Labyrinth is movie magic at its most visceral. [Note: Spoilers ahead.]

Set in 1944 Spain, where isolated groups of rebels were still fighting Franco’s totalitarian right-wing government, Pan’s Labyrinth starts with a prologue about a princess from an underground kingdom "where there are neither lies nor pain." Though lost to the world above, the soul of said princess will one day return to her rightful throne.

Above ground, the pregnant Carmen (Ariadna Gil) and her 11-year-old daughter Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) arrive at a military outpost led by Carmen’s new husband, Capt. Vidal (Sergi López), whose sole aims in life are to sire a male child and to perish in the battlefield — "the only decent way to die." In addition to being a rather poor husband and stepfather, the emotionally challenged military man turns out to be a murderous psychopath who’ll mercilessly destroy whoever dares to disobey his orders.

In the meantime, a fairy takes Ofelia to a maze leading to an underground stairwell. There, she meets a deep-voiced — though quite fey — faun (Doug Jones, dubbed into Spanish), who tells her that she is the underground kingdom’s long-lost princess.

Ofelia, however, can’t simply put a tiara on her head and ascend the throne. In order for her to return to the kingdom and attain immortality, the faun must "make sure her essence has remained intact." Therefore, the girl must follow his instructions so she can pass three difficult tests before the next full moon: getting a key out of the entrails of a giant toad; stealing a dagger from the blind Pale Man (also Doug Jones); and using said dagger to spill the blood of an innocent.

Needless to say, del Toro’s fantasy world has nothing to do with Walt Disney’s whitewashed version of old European fairy tales. Del Toro, after all, is the director of fare such as Chronos, Hellboy, and The Devil’s Backbone. Thus, it shouldn’t come as a shock that in Pan’s Labyrinth devilish-looking fairies die gruesome deaths, while the faun comes across as a figure that inspires as much fear as awe.

Setting aside all the heavy symbolism — with shades of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland — that could be interpreted in myriad ways, del Toro said at the AFI FEST screening that Pan’s Labyrinth is a fable "about choice and disobedience, when we stop being what everybody else wants you to be." The film is supposed to remind us that "we should not obey. That imagination should not comply."

Del Toro’s message reminded me of Luis Buñuel’s anti-conformism dark comedy The Exterminating Angel (1962), in which the bourgeoisie and the pious become prisoners of their own socio-religious dogma. (Perhaps as a nod to Buñuel, del Toro doesn’t hesitate to put down the Catholic Church. At one point, a priest remarks that "God already saved [the rebels'] souls; what happens to their bodies matters not to him.") In Pan’s Labyrinth, Capt. Vidal is an esteemed member of the establishment who also happens to be a prisoner of his own delusions of righteousness; one who resents those who dare to exercise freedom of thought.

One of Capt. Vidal’s non-conformist victims is a doctor (Álex Angulo) caring for the increasingly frail Carmen. The captain is outraged when he finds out that the doctor has performed a mercy killing on a captured guerilla member, whom he wanted revived for one more torture session.

"You could have obeyed me!"

"But captain, to obey — just like that — for obedience’s sake … without questioning … That’s something only people like you do."