Pan's Labyrinth
When young Ofelia arrives at her new stepfather's latest
command, the concern on her face says all we need to know. What started
as a pleasant drive through a forested Spanish mountainside has ended
with the reality that her mother has married a bastard of the highest
order, and Ofelia's life has gotten a lot more miserable because of it.
She isn't bitter or angry about
it—her mother has only done what she thinks is best for both
of them—but she knows the situation is bleak. Complicating
matters are her mother's late-term pregnancy and weak constitution. The
only reason they've been summoned to the doorstep of Franco's war
against the communist rebels is so The Captain, as Ofelia calls her
stepfather, can be present at the birth of his son.
Behind the cottage Captain Vidal is using as
his headquarters lies an ancient labyrinth built hundreds of years ago
and abandoned to decay. Dark times call for dark fantasies, and while
Ofelia could choose to escape to a magical land of green fields, fairy
godmothers and prince charmings, she's a more intuitive girl than that
and the labyrinth has a more reflective path for her to follow.
In the labyrinth, Ofelia encounters a cagey
faun who entrusts her with three tasks to complete and prove that she
is the reincarnated princess of a long-lost world of immortals. The
tasks are dangerous and require generous amounts of courage and
judiciousness. Each one also nudges her closer to the real
life-and-death events taking place around her. With her mother's
condition worsening and her sadistic stepfather plotting to expose the
communist sympathizers in his midst and quash the rebel uprising,
Ofelia's fairy-tale quest in truth has mysterious and immediate
consequences.
Del Toro's film is a feast for the eyes:
vibrant, ghostlike, horrifying at times, and never boring. Where was
all this allegory and mystical imagery in Hellboy,
his vastly disappointing previous picture about the son of Satan,
raised from birth by a devout Catholic, who fights the supernatural
forces of evil for a secret branch of the FBI? It was a story ripe for
the symbolic picking, and he completely fumbled it.
Whatever it was that sparked this B-movie
director to shed all the prepackaged notions of dreck like Mimic
and Blade II, let's hope it's permanent. Pan's
Labyrinth is a rich and effervescent piece of filmmaking,
and Hellboy II: The Golden Army needs all the
help it can get.