PAN'S LABYRINTH

I’m glad I waited a few days to write about this. When I left the theater, I was impressed but not blown away like I expected to be. But I recognize good cinema when I see it, even if I’m not the biggest fan. My main problems walking out was that the movie was so much different than I was expecting. Every piece of promotional material had this being a very, very different movie - the trailers, the tagline, the poster, hell, even the TITLE (which was changed for the American release…it’s a Spanish film, and the original title, El Laberinto Del Fauno, translates to “The Labyrinth of the Faun,” and the titular faun is never given a name in the film; I guess you’re supposed to assume he’s Pan). It all made it seem like a story in which the power of belief in stories, and more specifically fairy tales, can be a very powerful thing. And that’s a story I’d love to see (I guess that’s essentially Finding Neverland, a movie I adore).

But that’s not what the movie is. And it took me a night’s rest to figure out how much I loved it because of that.

The movie is about a girl, Ofelia, who goes with her mother to live with a Captain of the Spanish army soon after Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War. Her mother married the Captain after her father died in order to better support the both of them. Ofelia doesn’t like her new home, or the Captain, and as an escape she invents (or does she?) an entire fantasy world in which she is a princess trying to get back to her kingdom.

I’m not going to tell you any more than that, but it’s very, very atypical of the fantasy genre that’s been present in America since Fellowship of the Ring, in that it’s hardly an escape. It’s also much better than any fantasy film at least since Fellowship, and it affirms Guillermo Del Toro (better know for directing Blade 2 and Hellboy) as not just a great genre guy, but a truly great storyteller with a better understanding of his craft than so, so many higher-profile directors.

The real world plays just as large a role, if not larger, and is just as compelling. And it’s that real world where most of its well-earned, R-rated violence comes from (I’ll be going back to this when it comes out December 29, and I really hope parents don’t bring their kids, expecting Narnia). The plot that takes place in the fascist regime of this small, rural fortress of sorts could make a whole movie all on its own.

But it’s the fantasy that elevates Labyrinth to capital-G Greatness. There’s so much imagination in these parts, not just visually (and oh…the visuals), but especially in how the story reflects what’s going on in the real world. It’s a fairy tale for adults, but it succeeds because it elevates the mood and atmosphere to give us all the same feelings that those simpler fairy tales gave us as kids (remember how scary those Disney movies could be sometimes?). Don’t watch the trailer, if only so you’ll be blown away by the appearance of the Pale Man; I’d seen the trailer, and that scene was still frightening.

Even the end at once defies the sort of end we expect from fairy tales. And by “fairy tales” I mean both Disney movies or the original Grimm stories. It changes all the rules of the happy ending, and made me question which one this truly is (I lean towards happy). It feels like there’s so much to the movie I haven’t totally figured out yet, and I can’t wait to see it again.