Pan's Labyrinth

As you all know, I'm a history nerd of epic proportions. For the most part, I approach history from a clinical point of view, learning about various historical events in order to get a better understanding about how we as a species got to where we are. Also to accumulate facts for use in conversation to remind my friends what an adorable smarty-pants I am. There is one subject, though, that gets me all misty and emotional. That's the Spanish Civil War. When I read about the anarchists putting down the military rising in Barcalona in May of 1936, or the spontaneous collectivization of Catalonia's industry and agriculture, I feel goosebumps. When I read about Lister's Communist cadres liquidating the collectives, or Nationalist scumbag Colonel Yague massacring republicans in the bull ring at Badajoz, tears well in my eyes. Unlike most of the wars, conquests and genocides that compose history, the Spanish Civil War involved the flowering, and destruction, of a genuine alternative to statist and capitalist exploitation and oppression. The closest thing I have to a hero on earth is the common anarchist militiaman of the CNT. This is all in the interest of full disclosure: I'm a mark for the subject matter of Pan's Labyrinth, and as such, my strong emotional reaction to parts of the movie are probably colored by my love of the Spanish republic and my hatred of Franco's Nationalists.

The fauns and faeries and demons, though....I'm not feeling it.

The "real world" story of the film, about Francoist soldiers hunting down the remnants of republican guerrilla resistance after the end of the Spanish civil war, was deeply affecting for me. Bear in mind that I'm predisposed to be moved by the subject matter. It features viscerally realistic battle scenes and a sustained but not overbearing sense of place. Sergei Lopez, who plays the monsterous Captain Vidal, is a living embodiment of Fascism in all it's self-mythologizing machismo. Also, credit sound effects editor Roland Thai for smartly emphasizing the most sinister noise of the 20th century: the creak of leather jackboots and a Sam Browne belt.

Unfortunately, the fairy tale that is interspersed throughout the civil war story, in which a young girl (the Captain's stepdaughter) must complete dangerous tasks in order to prove her identity to an ancient tree-creature, doesn't have the same impact. The fantasy set pieces sit awkwardly next to the realism, and the supposedly magical elements, the faeries, the giant toads, that dude with eyes in his hands from the cover of Fangoria, are rendered and presented in an oddly matter-of-fact way. The director, Guillermo Del Toro, rushes through his introduction of the fantasy elements, mythic creatures appearing before the eyes of the girl, pages of a book writing themselves, in an oddly off-hand fashion. When Pan, the tree-legged faun, first comes onto the screen, the camera doesn't linger over this supposedly fantastic creature in wonderment. He's almost instantly taken for granted. Coupled with the blank expression on the face of lead actress Ivana Baquero, this flat presentation undercuts any attempt to infuse the film with child-like awe or majesty. When Baquero does set off to complete her missions, they are brief, one-dimensional and generally suspense free, except for some scares courtesty of the Fangoria cover boy that feel rather contrived.

The two stories co-exist uneasily together for most of the movie, until Del Toro brings them together for a climax which makes the point that righteous choices will long outlive the unjust, petty rule of tyrants. The fairy tale provides some moving symbolism for this theme, but it's undercut by the general thinness of the fantasy world Del Toro attempts to create. The movie suggests a magical fantasy realm just beyond our sight, but doesn't flesh it out beyond the merest sketches for the majority of the film. So, when viewer finally gets to see a larger swath of this underworld at the end of the movie, instead of feeling moved, I was left thinking, where the hell did all these people come from?

Score: 7.8 (in an effort to Pitchfork-up this blog, I'm imposing a 10-point rating scale which will be retroactively applied to the rest of the movies already reviewed)