Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I've been disappointed in the majority of critically acclaimed films I've seen recently, so I approached Pan's Labyrinth with some caution, particularly after reading some mixed assessments of the film from the members of my site. As it turns out, there was no reason to worry; this is one of the most extraordinary films I've seen in years, in large part because it never falls prey to the sentimentalizing, cutesy tendencies that are so easy for stories rooted in fairy tales to fall back on. The imaginary world in Pan's Labyrinth is nearly as unpleasant and brutal in its own way as the real world; in some ways, the two are merely sides of the same coin.

The film's heroine, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), is forced to deal with harsh realities from the start, as she and her mother (Ariadna Gil) journey from their former city life to the rural military encampment run by the mother's new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi López). Vidal is a stern and sadistic man, concerned far more with the son his wife is carrying than with her or Ofelia (and that concern is less a product of genuine emotion than a desire to see a male heir carry on the family line). As the local commander of Franco's military forces-- the film is set in 1944-- he wages war on a group of rebels camped out in the woods.

Ofelia finds her potential escape from this cold, unpleasant world in the fairy tales she reads, and a labyrinth adjacent to the encampment. One night she follows a fairy into the depths beneath the labyrinth, and meets a faun who tells her she is really the princess of his world, and she must complete three tasks before the next full moon in order to be reunited with her true father and resume her rightful place.

At first, this all seems like standard fantasy fare, especially since Ofelia completes the first task without much difficulty; but the fact that she has to descend into the muddy, murky depths of a seemingly dead tree to do it hints at the darkness ahead. On her second task, Ofelia ignores one of the crucial instructions the faun gives her, and her failure parallels the failures of the rebel soldiers in their attempt to ambush the Captain's forces. From this point on, the two worlds intertwine more closely, the fantasy world grows darker, and it becomes unclear whether or not the faun who initially seemed to be Ofelia's savior is any better than the uncaring, casually homicidal stepfather she's trying to escape.

To go into any more detail would be to give away too much of the plot; suffice it to say it only gets darker, and the film's refusal to become overly sentimental and clichéd is its greatest strength. The performances are uniformly magnificent-- Baquero gives what must be the best performance by a child actress I've seen in a long time-- and the look of the film is perfect: it has a dark, grimy, gritty quality, even in most of the fantasy sequences, that reflects what's happening in Ofelia's story. It's a masterpiece, possibly the best film I've seen since Howl's Moving Castle, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Final rating: 10/10