Column:
Of fantasy and fascism
Published Feb. 9, 2007
People who like to seem smart and worldly in a lies-my-teacher-told-me sort of way will tell you that "Pan's Labyrinth," which opens tonight at the Missouri Theatre, is a real fairy tale.
The kind of fairy tale that existed before Disney or some equally scary corporation cleaned them up for mass consumption. As convenient as that would be, this brilliant film defies categorization. Rather than moralizing, director Guillermo del Toro uses the fairy tale component as a mirror of and foil to the real world drama. In a world of fairies and monsters, del Toro has created the most human drama in some time.
The story begins in a pronounced nod to the mannered, English fantasies of Edith Nesbit and C.S. Lewis. Eleven year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero — whose amazingly expressive face helps to bridge the language gap) moves to the country with her mother to be with a wicked stepfather. There she stumbles upon a fantastic world straight from her beloved books.
But instead of rolling plains and quaint mansions, Ofelia moves into a decrepit cottage amid the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Instead of a greedy robber baron, her stepfather is a brutal fascist captain fighting the guerillas that lurk in the forest beyond the house. In this environment Ofelia stumbles onto a faun, the Pan of Greek mythology, who gives her three tasks to prove that she is the long-lost princess of a fairy world.
Del Toro manipulates both worlds with a deft touch. Ofelia's waking life is a terrible one. The real world is filmed mercilessly, in dark hues, and his camera doesn't flinch as the captain tortures his enemies. The fairy world, meanwhile, is Tim Burton-esque in its bizarre beauty.
Del Toro's biggest coup is in the way the twin stories come together. The fairy world interacts explicitly with the real world; Ofelia uses it to travel, and comes out of her adventures exhausted and dirty. But even seeing this from our perspective as the audience, it's difficult to comprehend. Like the characters around her, we have trouble believing that magic is real even when it's presented to us as such.
Ofelia's life in the real world is almost non-existent, but just when it seems like del Toro has abandoned the Civil War scene he worked to establish, her plight in the fairy world is mirrored by that of one of the guerilla spies - her kindly nursemaid Mercedes. The two struggle through the same personal battles in vastly different landscapes.
So "Pan's Labyrinth" is not a fairy tale of Disney or otherwise. It's something much different. When all hope is lost, for both Mercedes and Ofelia, they forsake their own safety for the safety of others and emerge victorious in their own ways. What could be blunt, un-nuanced endings are triumphs of the human spirit — even when some of the characters aren't human.