The Horror of the Fairy Tale
By J. Carlos Perez

"Pan's Labyrinth manages to evoke a mythical world while still keeping a foot firmly planted in the reality that makes fairy tales so very necessary. Pan's Labyrinth is a dark, violent and magical film."

El Laberinto is a dark, violent and magical film.  Set in 1944, the film takes us to the Spanish countryside in a time when Generalissimo Franco’s men were still fighting and killing the Republican rebels throughout the country.   We first meet the heroine of the film, Ofelia, as she and her mother travel to the home of her stepfather, the fascist Capitan Vidal.  Sergi López’s performance as Capitan Vidal is so powerful that when he erupts in violence it can be hard to watch.  But don’t look away, for it’s by witnessing the captain’s brutality that we understand young Ofelia’s willingness to enter the labyrinth and to perform the three frightening tasks required of her by the Faun.

The film relies in large part on the interaction between Ofelia and the Faun, and del Toro was fortunate to find such a poised, mature young actress like Ivana Baquero.  Baquero holds her own in several remarkable scenes which she shares with the incomparable Doug Jones.  Just as he brought to life the elegant Abe Sapien in del Toro’s Hellboy, Jones lends to the Faun an air of mystery that is at once beautiful and frightening, endearing and alarming. The Faun has more lines than any other character in the film, and Jones’ unusual, even otherworldly accent (apparently he learned to speak his Spanish lines phonetically) perfectly captures his mythic presence.   When Jones appears again in the film, inhabiting the skin of the terrifying Child-Eating Monster (Monstruo comeniños) it’s a moment that lifts the film out of the realm of fairy tale and into that rare cinematic experience that blends horror with art.

Clearly so much work and so much time went into the visual effects of El Laberinto that one might expect the story to suffer as a consequence (as it did in the last three Star Wars films, for example).  Yet even here, del Toro seems to have done his homework.  All the stuff of timeless fairy tales is present, from a giant frog, to fairies, to tests of will, and the inevitable confrontation between the magical world and “reality.”  In El Laberinto, there are many parallels and symbolic echoes to find between the fantastic, frightening places Ofelia visits, and the frightening place of a country still suffering from a violent Civil War.  When you see the film, think about the keys, the pile of children’s shoes, and the helpless insects under the tree.  True story tellers like del Toro know that lasting fairy tales always borrow from reality to create many of the elements of their myths.

Films like El Laberinto are seldom made.  There’s a confidence here that leaves no room for Hollywood fluffiness, or for a gentle ending to the story.  Del Toro is bold enough to leave the audience still wondering about some of the back story for the characters, and doesn’t tie up all the threads in a neat, uncomplicated package. Rather, this remarkable film asks the audience to remember that while death is inevitable, there are also endless possibilities given to us by the power of imagination.  El Laberinto del Fauno  is film as art, and it may well be Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece.