Film/DVD Review: "Pan's Labyrinth"

AT THE CINEMA
With Ron Boyer

***** Pan's Labyrinth (2006). If you're curious, but haven't seen it yet, now is the time to enjoy one of the truly outstanding films of the last year, recently released on DVD. Directed by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (No, not Benicio del Toro, the actor-the other one!), Pan's Labyrinth was my favorite film last year. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Pan's Labyrinth lost out to the equally brilliant and socially-relevant drama The Lives of Others, arguably the two most important films of 2006.

Pan's Labyrinth seamlessly weaves two storylines together-the first a moving historical drama set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and the second a mythic fairytale journey of a young girl. Set in 1944 during the cruel reign of Franco, the first story involves a young girl and her pregnant mother, a widow, who move to a remote outpost to join the mother's villainous new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez, Dirty Pretty Things), a brutal officer whose mission is to hunt down members of the resistance and crush them under his iron fascist boot. The second story begins shortly after the shy, introverted girl Ofelia (newcomer Ivana Baquero) arrives at the outpost. She is called to adventure one day when she chases a strange-looking fairy into the opening of an ancient labyrinth leading into the depths of the underworld. There she encounters the horned mythical figure Pan, the faun of the title (Doug Jones), in his timeless lair.

Thus begins the second storyline as Pan reveals Ofelia's true identity: She is really a Princess lost to her parents and their mythical realm through a curse. Pan mentors the girl in her quest to recover her true destiny, offering her three successive magical trials of increasing peril as her means to escape the curse. Upon her success or failure ride both the fate of the girl herself and the fate of their mythic world. Will she fail and be banished to the mortal human world forever? Or will she recover her true immortal destiny and find her way home to the realm of magic where her royal parents await her with open arms? Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz or Frodo in Lord of the Rings, Ofelia embarks on a perilous and lonely journey of self-discovery through a land of dark enchantment in search of her true home, her true self (identity) and her true destiny. As the story unfolds, Ofelia's mythic struggle against underworld monsters merges seamlessly with her battle against the evil of the real world, personified by her wicked stepfather, Vidal. In the end, the realities of the two worlds-the subjective fantasy world of the Princess and objective so-called "real" world of the girl Ofelia-are fused together in the stunning climax to the film.

This fantasy unfolds as a marvelous archetypal fairytale that, if not for the extreme violence and adult themes of the dramatic storyline of the war, would have made a fantastic children's film. In this tale, the pre-teen heroine Ofelia takes a classic hero journey into an otherworldly realm peopled with magical creatures on a quest to recover her immortal destiny; unless she succeeds, the Princess is cursed to live in the real and mortal world of humans, a world filled with suffering and death. For anyone familiar with Jungian psychology or the archetypal imagery of the hero quest described by Joseph Campbell, this film is a textbook case of mythic structure in storytelling. Like other great classic hero journeys (e.g., Peter Jackson's Lord of the Ring's trilogy or The Wizard of Oz) Pan's Labyrinth is filled from beginning to end with archetypal motifs and symbols found abundantly in mythology and fairytales the world over. From the beginning of Ofelia's "call to adventure" (Campbell's "involuntary departure") to enter an "other world" into which she is initiated by the fairy guide (in the form of the underworld labyrinth into which she descends like the Trojan hero Aeneas, the classic nekyia journey of the ancient Greek heroes) where she is opposed by dangerous powers (e.g., a blind cannibalistic monster) and aided by "magical helpers" (e.g., the fairies and Pan himself) to the equally archetypal ending, the film faithfully employs the symbolism and thematic motifs common to myth and fairytale everywhere. Here, in the Oz-like other world if the labyrinth, the heroine Ofelia confronts the classic series of ordeals typical of fairytales and hero quests (Campbell's "road of trials") and in the end achieves the hero's apotheosis through self-sacrifice, death and symbolic rebirth. Finally, she participates in what Jung called the mystical hieros gamos or royal wedding, an image borrowed from ancient alchemy that lies at the unconscious heart of Hollywood's obsession with and depiction of the "happy ending".

During the past few years, del Toro has risen quickly to the top of my A-list of favorite new filmmakers. I enjoyed watching his early effort in Devil's Backbone (shades of Bunuel) and my appreciation grew by leaps and bounds with his wonderfully entertaining big-budget Hollywood blockbuster based on the comic book franchise Hellboy-one of the best comic book film adaptations ever made. With Pan's Labyrinth he has established himself at another level entirely as one of the greatest filmmakers of our time. Together with directors Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel)-del Toro's close colleagues and friends-he completes a powerful troika of great emerging Hispanic filmmakers.

Del Toro is a director to watch, and Pan's Labyrinth is a perfect film: a visually stunning cinematic masterpiece with a haunting score matched perfectly by a timeless tale of tragedy and rebirth. The result is a beautiful fairytale for thinking adults. For this reviewer, it doesn't get much better than that.

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The above review was recently published online at LoveInToronto.com and other publications.