Pan’s Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro (2006)
20 January 2007Perhaps I had just heard too much hype on this film. Or maybe it’s the fact that I have never really been too impressed with the films of del Toro. I mean I enjoyed Blade 2, but I usually think his films are more visually impressive than they are well done or even have a great story. I really wanted to like this film, but the whole film seemed too 1 dimensional, and actually fairly boring. Other than for the visuals I would not recommend this film.
Taking place in Spain earlier this century, in the middle of World War 2, when Spain was still ruled by the Fascist Franco, and the rebels were being put to death as the people suffered. A young girl who is enraptured by books and fairy tales named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) travels with her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) to have her child with her new husband Capitán Vidal (Sergi López). Along the way her mother gets sick, and Ofelia sees a rock statue, and a huge bug she thinks is a fairy. They arrive, and Vidal is obviously a cruel man, killing even innocents who stand in his path. He has one kind servant Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) who is in fact helping her brother in the resistance. Things seem bad, but at night the fairies return and lead Ofelia into the nearby Labyrinth and to the creature Pan (Doug Jones) who tells her that she is in fact a princess from the underworld who has been reborn and she must complete 3 tasks to prove that her spirit survives…
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Through the film we see the cruelty of Vidal, who in fact doesn’t care for his wife, but only wants the son to continue his family name. He will torture and kill, and murder innocents as well. Carmen is getting sicker and sicker as well, and is stuck in bed, under the care of Dr. Ferreiro (Álex Angulo) who is also helping Carmen and her brother.
Ofelia starts doing the tasks, easily completing the first involving a giant frog in a tree, then on the second task, she does what she was told not to, and eats grapes while getting a knife from a creature, and fairies are killed, and she almost does not escape, so Pan abandons her. Then Vidal finds out the plant she put under her mother’s bed, which seemingly was making her better (Pan had given it to her) and burns it, and the mom gets sicker, and in childbirth she dies.
Mercedes knows that Vidal is onto her, so she tries to escape with Ofelia, but they are caught. Ofelia is locked up. And Vidal is going to torture Mercedes, but she has a hidden knife and stabs him and cuts his face open, and she is chased, but her brother and his allies save her and kill the soldiers. Pan returns to Ofelia and tells her she must take her baby brother into the labyrinth as he last task. She puts her mother’s medicine in Vidal’s drink and runs with the baby, but is chased by him as the rebels attack, he chases her.
Pan tells her they must spill the blood of the baby to open the portal, and Ofelia refuses, then Vidal comes and takes the baby and shoots her. In her mind, she was right, and she spilled her own blood, and makes it to the underworld and the kind, and his wife is her mother, so so she is happy. Though in fact we see that Vidal is killed by Mercedes and his son will never know of him, and Ofelia has died. It was all the fantasy of a young girl trying to escape the horror of the world around her.
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Sure the creatures were cool, but the characters were very 1 dimensional, and the story and the tasks themselves were pretty simple and boring. I was so not impressed by this film.
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