Pan’s Labyrinth, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, is a visually stunning take on the parallel between fairytales and the real world. A child of war torn Spain, Ivana Baquero stars as Ofelia, a little girl who has traveled with her sick and pregnant mother to live with Captain Vidal, head of the Spanish fascists, her new stepfather. As she watches her mother abused and sacrificed for the birth of Vidal’s son, Ofelia lives simultaneously in a world of magic that’s equally terrifying as her very real experience with war.

One night, she is visited by a fairy, who leads her through a dark labyrinth in a mill of Vidal’s camp. Here, she meets Pan, a faun who tells Ofelia she is really a princess, and that her real father, the king of the underworld, will meet her after she accomplishes three tasks.

With his first appearance, I wasn’t sure how this character would ‘pan’ out; effective personification in film is so extremely difficult to achieve, and Pan seemed an awkward, indistinct personality at first. The movie had already proven itself to be so stunningly, solemnly beautiful that I was afraid the bizarre cross between tree and man would spoil the magic I’d already felt from the film’s human characters. But, actor Doug Jones embodied sheer brilliance as Pan, intensely captivating even beneath layers of prosthetic rubber. Pan is only one of the film’s costumed characters; Jones doubled as Pale Man, whose encounter with Ofelia is frightening, bewildering, and packed with allegorical significance. In its entirety, Pan’s Labyrinth is truly a maze of meaning, and no matter which path to understanding you take, you’re bound to find brilliance at its end.

The violence in this film is detailed, brilliantly crafted, persuasively executed, and absolutely brutal to watch. I very rarely play the part of the overly sensitive movie viewer, who gasps and grimaces over every bit of graphic action on screen, yet the venom filled war violence in Pan’s Labyrinth shook sobs from me at intervals. I was curious as to whether Sergi López would be able to convincingly hold the role of the horrifyingly ruthless Captain Vidal; I was afraid that his clean shaven face and short stature would convey fragility even beneath the slicked back Hitler hair. But López must have been outstanding because, by the movie’s end, he simply terrified me.

Pan’s Labyrinth is everything a fairytale should be: magical, menacing, meaningful. Clear, concise dialogue, tremendous acting, an amazing soundtrack, and subtle visual parallels between Ofelia’s mythical and actual worlds kept me guessing, “Is it real?” even after the credits finished rolling.

Liz Licorish
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