It’s a child’s fantasy that’s not for children. The gorgeously inventive, deeply moving “Pan’s Labyrinth” visualizes a young girl’s dark imagination with a fairy tale that subtracts the “happily ever after” as set in a doomed post-Spanish Civil War landscape.
Director-writer Guillermo del Toro (“Blade II,” “Hellboy”) uses magical realism, so often found in other Spanish-language literature and film, as metaphor to relate the evil of militants in general and the fascism of 1940’s-era Spain in particular. The ten-year-old Ofelia (played with a mature intelligence by Ivana Baquero) accompanies her weak pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadne Gil) to a countryside outpost to join Carmen’s new husband there.
For once in a fairy tale it is a wicked stepfather — and not the always demonized female counterpart — who is the monster driving the action. He is the sadistic Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). Ofelia’s new guardian can go from merely cold and selfish to murderously violent on a whim. And he does so with brutal satisfaction, especially in his single-minded efforts to destroy the guerilla leftists in his territory that are still resisting Franco’s recently installed fascist regime.
As the health of Ofelia’s mother declines and their futures begins to look ever more bleak and out of her control, the defiant little moppet retreats into reverie where she is a princess of the underworld on a quest to make her way back to her kingdom and her beloved late father. A praying mantis bug appears to her as a pixie who leads her to Pan (Doug Jones) — the mythic god of forests — and his enchanted labyrinth porthole in the woods. Pan assigns her to frightening feats of bravery which dovetail with her equally difficult real life challenge.
Ofelia is aided in her earthly efforts to survive by the caring housekeeper Mercedes ( Maribel Verdu of “Y Tu Mama Tambien”), a mole for the resistance movement whose own life is also in jeopardy.
The powerful opposing performances of Ms. Verdu as the representation of light and emotion and by Mr. Lopez as darkness ground a story that might have gotten lost in its boldly artistic fantasy elements. Filmmaker Toro takes those elements to the next level – along with his cinematography and production design teams — to seamlessly merge the special effect imagery of his amazing looking creatures with a meaningful history-based piece.
Though very graphic in its brutality, it’s a “Labyrinth” worth exploring.
