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dir: Guillermo Del Toro
You horny old goat, you
So many film reviewers and other shmendricks called this film one of their favourites, if not their favourite film for 2006, that I started wondering if it was possible for me to enjoy it under the weight of so much expectation. The truth is, the film is even better than I expected.

It’s cliché time as people fall all over themselves to come up with superlatives to describe how good this flick is, but the one that I’ll happily use is that Del Toro’s career up until now has been solely in preparation for making Pan’s Labyrinth.

The thing is, directors have got to eat, too. And Mexican director Del Toro is a big guy. So some of the stuff he’s made which has been less than tolerable (Blade II, Mimic, Hellboy), kept him fed, built his profile and gave him the skills to pay the bills so that he could one day pursue a project like this.

It would be a falsehood to assert that, though. The first film of his that got noticed, Cronos, was pretty good right from the start, and The Devil’s Backbone, also set around the time of the Spanish Civil War in the 1940s, also showed promise. In fact, it was pretty damn good. And as much as I was nonplussed by Hellboy, it was one of his pet / dream projects.

In tone and setting, Labyrinth is closest to Devil’s Backbone, though it is not really a sequel or connected that strongly. Some of the advertising for this film may have given people the impression that it is some kind of Tim Burtonesque gothic fantasy. Let’s just say that the trailer and the marketing are fairly deceptive.

You could walk in expecting a breathtaking fantasy adventure where a little girl is prophesied to become the queen of a far away land, involving magic wardrobes, Ice Queens and talking lions. Or she has a lightning bolt shaped scar on her forehead which means she is the only one who can save the world from Sauron / Voldemort / John Howard and their wicked plans for world domination in between shopping and looking fabulous.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a very grim, very R rated story, more grim than Brothers Grimm, and in no way is it appropriate for people under, let’s say, 45. There is a fantasy story here, but it is interwoven with a very dark and ultra-violent drama about a girl and her mother trying to survive Fascist rule in Franco’s Spain.

Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is a little girl whose father has died. She and her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) have to move to the country where her new daddy lives and reigns. And, as step-fathers go, he is the worst of the worst.

The Captain (Sergi Lopez) is a brutal and sadistic leader in Franco’s army. It is his job to track down and eliminate the rebels living in the mountains around his country headquarters.

Ofelia’s mother is pregnant with the Captain’s son, but we can’t surmise that the union is a happy one. The pregnancy seems to be killing her, and Ofelia cannot, for some strange reason, bring herself to like the cold, callous Captain.

Meanwhile, the Captain tortures and brutalises the local population and the people around him in the hope that he can one day match the awesome and terrible figure of his father, who was also a great and heroic general than presumably tortured women and children as well. His father died a hero’s death, at a time marked by the stopping of a watch that the Captain carries around and checks compulsively. He waits for the moment where he can make his father proud.

There is virtually no escape for Ofelia from the sad circumstances around her. Except for the fact that, right from the film’s start, she sees hints suggesting another fantastical realm co-existing alongside our own, where she is a princess of legend who could one day reclaim her underworld throne if she can complete certain tasks and remain true to herself.

Next to the Captain’s residence is an array of old stoneworks, and a labyrinth where Ofelia receives instructions as to what she can do to alleviate her mother’s pain, and how she can open a portal to the underworld to return to her real home. She is a plucky little lady, but the world around her is so filled with darkness that we are never quite sure whether the light or the dark will triumph.

One of the servants in the house, Mercedes (Maribel Verdu), offers some comfort to the little girl, since her mother is constantly incapacitated or unconscious, but she has her hands full dealing with all the other complexities going on around her. She’s handy with a knife, as well, which could be useful down the track.

What will surprise audiences the most is that it’s not really an adventure / fantasy film. The darkness, the evil in the film is not of the supernatural kind. The Captain, as played by Sergi Lopez, is a figure of such complete evil that no supernatural creature or demon could come close. I feel sorry for the actor, in a way. If he has a partner, he or she must watch this film and feel somewhat ambivalent about hanging out with the guy afterwards.

This isn’t the cartoon villainy of your average fantasy story, nor is he an anti-hero in his diabolicalness. He is a figure of extreme, earthly horror, as one of the unique individuals that rise to the top during times of great torment, such as the Inquisition, or, its latter day version, the Spanish Civil War. There are an abundance of scenes outlining his cruelty and brutality, and his casual disdain for human life, to the point where it almost seems too much.

The time spent in the ‘real’ world as opposed to the fantastical far exceeds the latter, which emphasises the direness of Ofelia’s circumstances. But we have some hope that the little girl will succeed in her mission to not only survive, but to safeguard the future of her baby brother as well.

The film is exquisitely shot, using the amber tones Del Toro usually likes to use, and incorporates the superb use of set design and well integrated CGI to achieve his fairly unique vision of the real and fantastical worlds. It helps that he collaborates with his long time cinematographer pal Guillermo Navarro to achieve this vision. When the fantasy scenes occur, they are of such urgency and beauty that the deeper resonances of the film can really come to the fore. But the dramatic scenes are no less powerful, no less important.

It’s possible to interpret the film in at least two ways, and I’ll leave it to the viewer to find those out for themselves, it’s only fair. What is most true for me is that Del Toro has made a film that incorporates the vividness of dreams with the ability of nightmares to scar, in a way where they both support instead of detract from each other. And it works. It’s not a dry discourse on the landscape of the subconscious; it is the primal world of the child’s mind brought to the fore through a very adult filter. And if we respond, at all, it is because Del Toro’s and Ofelia’s story resonates with us not only on the rational level.

This is not a film for the faint of heart or bladder, and the violence veers into the horrific quite often. Going in with a heart that’s too open could be damaging to one’s health. The ending, which is harrowing in and of itself, especially after everything the characters and the audience has been through, is perfect, and I can’t think of too many other directors that would have had the courage to finish what they started in such a consistent way.

It’s a good film. A heartbreaking but damn good film.

8 times the scene with the self-surgery and whisky flowing through the bandage shouldn’t have made the audiences chuckle anxiously but did out of 10

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“The world is a cruel place.” Mercedes, Pan’s Labyrinth.