Movie Review: Pan's Labyrinth

Photo from Letterboxd

In Academy Award–winning dark fantasy set five years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Pan’s Labyrinth encapsulates the rich visual style and genre-defying craft of Guillermo del Toro. Eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) comes face to face with the horrors of fascism when she and her pregnant mother were transferred to the countryside, where her new stepfather (Sergi López), a sadistic captain in General Francisco Franco’s army, hunts down Republican guerrillas refusing to give up the fight. The violent environment in which Ofelia lives merges seamlessly with her fantastical interior world when she meets a faun in a decaying labyrinth and is set on a strange, mythic journey that is at once terrifying and beautiful. In his revisiting of this bloody period in Spanish history, del Toro creates a vivid depiction of the monstrosities of war infiltrating a child’s imagination and threatening the innocence of youth.

While there is no surprise on the style that the director is known for (since the debut of The Devil's Backbone), It is quite remarkable how del Toro was able to manifest a darker and more gruesome representation of reality though a non-conventional fairy tale that borders on the juxtaposition of fear, anxiety, disobedience, and greed as well as hope, courage, and resilience which the many characters revolve in.

On this note, the difference  between heroes and villains is  more than clear and it is defined  by political positions: Captain Vidal  is a sadistic and cruel Francoist officer  and the heroes are the partisans, bravely facing  a powerful, tyrannical and tireless enemy. The movie  divides the two sides between those heroes that fight, resist torture and  risk their lives on the one hand, and the fascist regime that imposes strict laws  upon the weak village population by controlling people’s movements and rationing food  and medicines, on the other.

In a glance, it could be thought that the film  narrates a comforting story while dealing with  tragic times of fear, pain and defeat. Even though  the villain kills the young girl, her resurrection in the  fairy kingdom could be seen as a triumph that complements  the partisans’ pyrrhic victory: as many spectators know, only  a few short years later they will have to go into exile and leave Spain in the fascist's hands.

This may seem to be a dead-end, but the symbolism behind the labyrinth beings clarity to the ambiguous ending of the movie. To del Toro, the labyrinth is different to that of a maze (which is unending), in a way that it becomes a transit of finding, and not losing oneself, towards an inevitable center. In this regard, Ofelia's worlds are molded into one reality at the time of her death, where she returns to the womb of her mother and is transformed as the princess of the underworld.

Overall, the film deserves a high praise for its complex narrative and use of techniques in building the story of two worlds, with its fluid use of transitions that allow viewers to see Ofelia's outside world and her own a reality.