2008 Woodie Awards
'Pan's Labyrinth' dark, imaginative
Shea Scott
Issue date: 2/13/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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A young girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) travels with her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to live with her new stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi López). Vidal commands the troops that occupy a rural town in which they oversee the rationing of foodstuffs to the village, and are in charge of seeking out and eliminating a rebel group left over from the war.
Ofelia loves her fairy tale storybooks and uses them as an escape until one day she finds herself in her own fairy tale. Guided by a faun named Pan, she must overcome many obstacles in order to realize her throne as the princess of her imaginative realm.
Ofelia's world is inhabited by some grotesquely eerie characters that include a giant toad, fairies and the most chilling creation, Pan himself. He is a pale, deformed, zombie-like figure that has no eyes on his face, but rather on the palms of his talon-fingered hands.
Pan (Doug Jones) is nothing like the pleasantly whimsical Mr. Tumnus, the faun from "The Chronicles of Narnia." His frightening features are indicative of something from a nightmare rather than a fairy tale, so much so that it's hard to tell whether he is good or evil.
The settings for Ofelia's adventures are equally disturbing. On her quest to reclaim her throne, she has to crawl through bug-infested grime and walk through Pan's labyrinth, which contains elements more indicative of a haunted graveyard than a children's bedtime story.
Director Guillermo del Toro has created a vivid and chilling world that is both fanciful and frightening at the same time. The true genius of the film lies in its juxtaposition of Ofelia's fairy tale world and that of her real existence in the midst of a bloody civil war between the Fascists and the rebels.
Ofelia is caught between the two worlds, with deadly consequences. There are many movies in which a child escapes a harsh reality by going to a different world, but this film paints a unique picture that is in some ways just as dangerous as Ofelia's real life.
It is extremely effective to place a child, the epitome of innocence, into this dark world of grit and grime as it reflects her actual life.
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