Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, much like the maze in which we find ourselves during the feature, is an enigma of a work. For a general American audience, the film would undoubtedly be a sure-fire hit that is, if there ceased to exist an apprehension by lay audiences to view films with subtitles. For a critical viewer, the production is irrefutably well-made as it exhibits a vast amount of creativity and aesthetic rigor during the proceedings yet the problem lay in the fact that the work unfortunately falters at the one moment in which it shouldn’t, the true shame being it does so in an attempt to breech another, in this case arbitrary, chasm of thought. As such, Pan’s labyrinth winds up finishing on a note that is “merely competent” instead of “excellent.”
At the behest of Capitán Vidal (Sergi López), a preteen girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), with a penchant for fairytales arrives in a small village in the throes of Franco’s fascist Spain in 1944 with her late-term mother, Carmen Vidal (Ariadna Gil). The Capitán has requested that his son be born in his presence in lieu of the fact that he has been assigned to the ominous post in order to eliminate Republican rebels. One night, Ofelia is visited by a fairy who guides her to a faun (Doug Jones). The ethereal creature informs her that she is the daughter of the King of the Underworld yet, to assure him of her immortal status, she must complete three tasks before the course of the next full moon.
In introductory creative writing courses, students are instructed to “Show, Don’t Tell,” meaning one of the keys to great art is to avoid didacticism by way of representation. It is with this that Del Toro’s work slips at the exact moment in which the whole is dependent. When Jon Voight’s character of Joe Buck informs us that the crimes he is enacting are being committed for the sake of “family,” director John Schlesinger steps onto a soapbox. Granted, many would state that, even without the line, the audience would be able to ascertain the essence of what is occurring yet, in so doing, the point is made that the character’s proclamation is unnecessary. Such is the case with Pan’s Labyrinth. During the finale, Del Toro–in an attempt at offering the idea that perhaps an unreliable narrator by way of a split personality or outright delusion has been leading the way (ergo, what has been disclosed has never existed!)–deprives the work of its brute impact for it makes the resounding whole otherwise arbitrary and subtly vicious from a philosophic perspective, which is a true shame for what he had accomplished up to said point is nothing short of astounding.
To posit the agenda of aligning two narrative strands in order to imply similarity is old hat in the arts. However, the challenge comes when the foci of the aesthetic simile are so far removed from one another so as to make the duet all but mentally and/or thematically incompatible. As such, Del Toro parallels a tyrannical fascist commander and his masochism with a dark and brooding fantasy world fraught with equally threatening creatures. The mere thought of combining a fairy tale with ethnocentrism might be offensive to some for it implies that, due to the demographic of the former being primarily children, the director is thereby stating that fascism is simplistic and–considering fairy tales carry the stigma of childhood inconsequence with them–isn’t to be taken seriously. Fortunately, akin to the adage that one “takes the teacher and not the course,” subject matter in the arts, though it might convey meaning in an of itself–after the intervention of creativity and aesthetic formulation–can become something entirely contrary to its separate, raw elements taken either as a whole or individually.
Succinctly, as Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle notes, Picasso’s indictment upon Franco’s reign in his masterpiece Guernica bares a striking resemblance, both visually and thematically, to Pan’s Labyrinth. Aside from the denunciation of the political tract, much like the Spanish painting, one of Del Toro’s dual narratives is cast in black, white, and grays as, in the nether realm of the surreal, eyes are out of place as monsters permeate the proceedings in Franco’s Spain.
And it is with this moment of divine inspiration that Del Toro prevails thematically in his alignment of the two worlds. As the monster that is the Capitán reigns supreme on the surface of the village, literal monsters, in a striking Lynchian vein, reside directly below, the most frightening of which arrives in the form of Pale Man, also played by Doug Jones in yet another instance of Del Toro’s genius for, like Stanley Kubrick’s masterful triple casting of Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, we come to understand that the virtuous might not be that far removed from the malevolent. Deferring to Goya’s famed portrayal of Saturn, the director’s caricature of a child-eating beast as he tears the heads from two fairies with his bare teeth makes one’s blood run cold. Yet as inspired as this correlation might be, the commentary that the two attitudes are not dissimilar alongside the filmmaker positing that one does not exist, thereby via the alignment implying that neither did (monster(s) or historical fact), carries very serious, reprehensive, and disgruntling weight with it.
Thematic consistency aside, Del Toro’s allusion to Goya becomes the tip of the aesthetic iceberg for he references a bastion of literary and cinematic predecessors. As much an exploration upon the nature of fascism, Pan’s Labyrinth is an examination of the loss of innocence on the behalf of the character of Ofelia. Suitably, the little girl appears at one point during the feature in a dress not unlike Alice’s trademark outfit in Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece as Del Toro’s star descends down a modern-day rabbit hole as she stridently attempts to make sense of what is occurring around her. Of course, it doesn’t aide matters that she finds herself in a Kubrickian hedge maze being chased by her drunken father. As the Carrollian motif of time also becomes an overriding concern for both Ofelia and the Capitán, our race against the clock is exacerbated by strange characters of Christian and Greek lore as we are met by highly creative renditions of Orpheus, Eden’s forbidden fruit, Tantalus, and the fabled faun (yet–despite the title which, more accurately, is “The Labyrinth of the Faun”–is never Pan for Del Toro feared that the sexual connotation that the mythological character would offset and counter the vestal image of its female counterpart). To make matters worse, there is also a matter of keys which further complicate the fluidity of both parties’ affairs as double agents run amuck in both realms while the motif of the obstruction or a lack of vision cumbersomely obfuscates our voyage. In the end, it should come as no surprise that a nod to Victor Fleming’s Wizard of Oz is committed. Surprisingly, yet fittingly, the director even pauses to insert an homage to Tim Burton’s Bangsian fantasy, Beetle Juice.
Not since The Devil’s Backbone has Guillermo Del Toro given his audience such an unnerving vision as he issues a truly nightmarish image of the nature of fascism. Visually, he succeeds. However, from a philosophic perspective, he not only contradicts the logistic essences of his parallel storylines, in so doing he sadly borders upon making the insulting declaration that the condemnation of such is without justification. Knowing that the time of a work’s release carries as much weight as its contents, the feature can thus either be viewed as Del Toro’s exposé and subsequent denunciation of fascism amid the second term of the Bush administration or, sadly, a subtle yet flippant dismissal of the critics of the President’s international actions. We can only hope that the film’s political ambiguities are the consequence of the director overextending himself in hopes of achieving greatness and that such is merely an honest mistake, especially during this day and time.
– Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
