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Pan's Labyrinth - Guillermo del Toro (2006)

Movie Review

By Andreea SormPublished 11 months ago 4 min read
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It's about obsessions, the balance between good and evil, the huge dimension of any story, reality, and imagination, about their relationships and hierarchy. It's a fairy tale with fairies and monsters built from dreams and daydreams, opposed to extreme but concrete events, in an ambiguous escapist commitment. Visceral, terrifying frames, the indispensable blue-green/amber (Torro brand) alternations, grandeur, surrealism, historical allegory, mythical and religious level, horrors of war; compose an extensive metaphor in which nothing is more present than the expressive.

It took del Toro six years to synthesize a material he had always collected, as his legendary notebook, where he always wrote down fragments of everyday life, lightning ideas, passing symbols, scene structures, aphorisms, or compositions full of enchantment; it could no longer receive any other line of those that had accumulated there, and maturity and artistic calling refused any further delay in the process. He loved the project so much that he refused any funding from Hollywood studios (all with budgets far beyond what he had obtained) only out of fear that a producer could intervene in the directorial act for economic reasons. And yet, before embarking on its realization, he also made a dress rehearsal in The Devil's Backbone (2001), the author's most personal film, where a few themes are rolled out as a preamble to "Pan's Labyrinth."

About the wonders and horrors, Guillermo del Toro speaks with restrained hope and confidence, in a dizzying endeavor whose overloaded finality of tragic passion remains open to many interpretations. The main character is Ofelia. Yes, Shakespeare's Ofelia is not a stranger to her, as her downfall coincides with the violent death of her father, and the acts in her path have permanent similarities (isolation in an inner routine, delirious alienation, premature death).

We are in fascist-Francoist (falangist) Spain, in a forested area where Captain Vidal, sadistic and martial, leads a group of soldiers tasked with eliminating resistance fighters (sympathized by the entire population).

Ofelia's mother carries the child, and this is obviously the only interest Vidal has in the two. The captain suffers from a cult of descent, transmitted ... hereditary (along with firmness, rigor, and the absence of humanitarianism). In his portrayal, the fundamental trait: accuracy, is accentuated by his care for the clock, and the death mechanisms in which he has established his command, all already classic and worn-out symbols at del Toro...In the final scene, the killer bullet he receives in his face is nothing compared to the other blow that disintegrates him: "Your child will not even know your name ..." the promise/curse "spat" by Mercedes.

Ofelia, an 11-year-old girl, is captive in a cynical, brutal, atrocious, and frightening reality that she cannot escape and from which she tries to escape into the realm of fantasy...The real monsters of the war (civil Spain) are weighed against the world of illusion, no less populated by nightmares and dominated by the dark areas of fantasy, in a drama of choices and their significance. Because, in the end, the harsh lesson that Ofelia learns is one of submission (to success and failure), trust in oneself and instincts; a selective acceptance of authority's impositions...in short, the story of acquiring self-awareness, the most powerful weapon against dictatorship...

Working in strong contrasts, with an interesting dialogue of plan/counter-plan of images that are repeated from different angles (with a predisposition for long sequences), "Pan's Labyrinth" takes hold of your imagination, through the darkness of situations generated by the means that only cinema has at its disposal, and which are not often put to such good use. The atmosphere, in the style of Tim Burton or Peter Jackson, enhanced by computer-generated effects and animatronic makeup, provides suitable support for such a script... and in my opinion, this is one of the most deserved Oscars ever awarded (cinematography: Guillermo Navarro).

The themes of the labyrinth, which is constructed in the path of the explorer as he advances, and of the book, whose blank pages are written before the reader's eyes (hello Borges!), are masterfully exploited (testing the mind of any reader of this author, where they have already taken shape).

Similarly, the choice to leave the oppressive reality in favor of dreaming, a reaction almost natural for a child when he does not understand what is happening around him, takes on a different meaning... Ofelia understands and consciously controls their harmony. The faun of her imagination is equivocal when it comes to being classified as benevolent or malevolent. It is a hidden challenge to the viewer here... An empathetic, teasing, and insinuating one...

Guillermo del Toro is the Mexican wizard who holds the secret recipe for a miraculous elixir of which we only know the ingredient list: magic, poetry, nightmare, fantasy, and visuals. Both the proportions and the technique of preparation of the potion remain unknown, but its effects are guaranteed, and if you want to experience it for yourself, Go and see Pan's Labyrinth... 118 minutes of exuberance that cancel the boundaries between lucid fable and enigmatic supernatural...

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About the Creator

Andreea Sorm

Revolutionary spirit. AI contributor. Badass Engineer. Struggling millennial. Post-modern feminist.

YouTube - Chiarra AI

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