015Pan’s Labyrinth

posted by [TALLéNT] on March 25th, 2007

Although Jacob has already posted a blog about this text, I felt somewhat compelled to express my views about it as well. So I apologise when I repeat some things…

Out of any film I have ever seen in my life, Pan’s Labyrinth has got to be simply the freakiest piece of work ever. Yet, at the same time, I simply couldn’t resist watching it from go to woe. It tells a tale of a young Spanish girl by the name of Ofelia whose mother is married to a powerful Spanish general  by the name of Vidal. The young girl and her mother visit the general at a Spanish fort from where they are opposing a pack of guerilla fighters. It is here where the fairy tale-obsessive Ofelia follows an obscure looking praying mantice to a very old labyrinth. Inside she finds a faun who claims she is the long lost daughter of the King of the Underworld. She feels very special now as a result of her love of fiction literature and agrees to endevour on the three tasks she is assigned by said faun to prove that she has not become too ‘mortalised’ by her time above. All three tasks involve magic, mystery, danger and horror, and are all laced with a Gothic edge in the sense of its enticing surrealistic charm.

 Throughout the plot, there is an abundance of supernature. There are fairies, fauns, a giant toad and, perhaps the most unbelievable of all, a monster who kills and eats children when it is awoken and puts its eyes in the palms of its hands. The monstrosity doesn’t end merely with the monsters themselves though. The violence and desperation of the humans is a monstrosity in itself, resulting in death, gore and truly horrific scenes.

The idea of good being overcome by evil is well portrayed by Ofelia’s death when she is murdered by Vidal (the Spanish general). This event is within the labyrinth, in which there is an everlasting mystery; we never see a clear shot or aerial shot of the labyrinth (and therefore can never really understand its complexity or extent), it shifts and changes its walls and never maintains a consistent form and, of course, it’s withholding of the worlds last gateway to the Underworld.

The macabre of the film is on and off really. It is enforced though by the domination of the plot by night scenes and scenes of poor weather and storms. Also, there is no apparent presence of a god or faith (other than that of the Underworld). Although it is all quite scary, the viewer is forced to keep watching by the fantasticality of it all, especially in the scene of the saggy skinned, eyes in palms, mongulated strided monster’s lair and the scene beneath the roots of an old tree in which a seedy old toad dwells and feeds on naught but cockroaches and other atrocious things. So, personally, I would definately encourage you to go see it for yourself and feel its grip on your attention and emotions.

 Just a bit extra; personally, unlike Jacob, I am glad we spent less time in that pale skinned monster’s domain, because it freaked the vomit out of me out of me (appoligies to the people sitting in front of me). Also, the Spanish title was “El Labyrinto del Fauno” which means “Labyrinth of the Faun”. Now, the English title refers to the Greek God Pan, but del Toro has informed that the faun in the film is not Pan. Why?….

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