Pan's Labyrinth
119 minutes, MPAA Rating: R5 stars
I heard a lot about this movie from my childless friends. "Best I've seen this year," they'd say. "You've got to see it." I would nod and mumble something about how I don't get to theaters much these days, but I'd put the movie at the top of my list, right under "See live theater again sometime before death."
Still, when a critical mass of these people who do not fully value their freedom tell me something is great, I do file it away for my Netflix queue—and then spend the next six months trying to keep my expectations down. So by the time Pan's Labyrinth arrived, I was setting myself up for a Queue Blocker. Writer-director Guillermo del Toro is known for imaginative horror/adventure films: Hellboy, Mimic, Cronos. Were my wife and I really in the mood for that kind of thing late on a weekday night? (I do think Hellboy is underrated, but that might only be my inordinate fondness for Ron Perlman talking.)
I'm happy to report that in the end, we trusted our friends. Because this masterful combination of historical drama and fantasy/mythology is the best movie I ... uh, didn't actually see last year.
Set in 1944 during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, it follows Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a 10-year-old girl whose father has died during the war and whose fragile mother has just remarried. Ofelia's new stepfather is Captain Vidal (Sergi López), a sadistic Fascist officer who is stamping out the last throes of rural Republican resistance.
Ofelia distracts herself from her life's unpleasant realities by reading fairy tales, and soon enough she is in one of her own: In an ancient labyrinth near Vidal's headquarters, she encounters an enigmatic, vaguely creepy faun (Doug Jones), who tells her that she's the reincarnation of a princess from another world—and that she can return to her lost world (thereby escaping the terrible one she's in) by completing three magical tasks.
The film's fantasy sequences are atmospheric, sometimes deeply unsettling, and stunningly beautiful. As with so many of the best fantasy movies, there's an underlying darkness that somehow keeps everything firmly grounded. Baquero herself also provides a great deal of focus; she's one of those wonderful child actors who never try too hard.
The true brilliance, though, comes from the storytelling itself. Del Toro interweaves Ofelia's mythological missions with the "real-life" story seamlessly, so the movie works whether you take Ofelia's fantasies as presented, or as simply her vividly imaginative coping mechanism—right down to the satisfying and somewhat unexpected ending. It's refreshing to find a writer-director who's willing to leave so much of the interpretation to the audience.
So add my voice to the crowd, even as a distant echo: You've got to see Pan's Labyrinth.
