04/23/10 - El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)

El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) (2006, 119 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/

I'd had this film for a while but never checked it out but since I've been on a horror binge I decided now was as good a time as any. I didn't really know what to expect from this film except that it was weird.

The film stars a young Ivana Baquero as Ofelia who happens to be a princess of a strange fantasy land. Her ailing and pregnant mother Carmen Vidal (Ariadna Gil) travels to the house of her husband (but not Ofelia's father), Captain Vidal (Sergi López). There, Ofelia befriends the house servant Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) while also learning of her royal blood from the Fauno (Doug Jones). The film tells two stories at once: Ofelia completing tasks to become princess and Captain Vidal trying to thwart rebel uprisings.

Obviously the greatest part of this film is the twisted images that director Guillermo del Toro can bring forth with such ease. The mystical realm that Ofelia visits is dark, weird, and grotesque and this is all thanks to del Toro's vivid imagination. It's very akin to Tim Burton's take on certain things but I think it's much much darker and less cartoony. Here, people die brutally and Captain Vidal even gets his face slit open. It's definitely not the standard fare for a children's tale. I liked this a lot though. Del Toro was probably glad that no one in America would finance this film so that he was given freedom to do what he wanted with his now foreign film. I think it all worked out for the best.

Baquero does a pretty good job as Ofelia. She doesn't suffer from the same things that usually plague kid actors so that's great. She has a good supporting cast around her with López being the highlight in my opinion. I really liked his take as Captain Vidal. One thing that I didn't like though was that I never realized how the rebels were such a problem. I mean, the movie obviously wants us to say "Captain Vidal = fascist dictator = bad" while "Mercedes = rebel = good" but this was never fully explained. Maybe this is more a culture thing where everything fascist is bad in Spain but I didn't feel like it translated well. Sure, Captain Vidal isn't the friendliest of human beings but I don't know why I should be rooting for these rebels so much. As this was a focal point of the movie, it did bother me to some extent.

As I mentioned above, the one part of the whole film bothered me. However, the other part of the film is Ofelia and her completion of the three tasks to become princess. Also as I mentioned above, this is where del Toro's mind really shines. Overall though, the great thing the film does is that it creates a great balance between these two stories. I never felt overwhelmed with the princess storyline nor overwhelmed by the Captain Vidal part so I thought this was excellent storytelling.

As one final comment, I'm going to say that I didn't like how the film sometimes cut between scenes. It used trees to create the "line" of the cut and I didn't like this as it was sometimes disorienting. I guess it's somewhat similar to the cuts in Star Wars only more abrupt. Anyway, I didn't like how this was done.

Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. Pan's Labyrinth is easily one of the darkest children's stories I've ever seen. It works out really well for the most part but still has its flaws. I'm glad I checked it out.