Pan's Labyrinth

365 Films

Entry #142

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro

Forgive me for jumping around in the Del Toro chronology of films, I'm not even doing a very good job approximating the order in which I originally saw them.  But if you'll permit me a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking, one could make the argument that I have segmented the films into two categories: we just completed his English language projects (with the exception of Mimic) and now we are onto his Spanish language films.  The crown jewel of which (at least to the eyes of the Academy) is his 2006 fairy-tale during war magnum opus, Pan's Labyrinth.  What I remember most vividly about the release surrounding Pan's was that it felt like this (not very well kept, mind you) secret in the film world was about to be unleashed upon the general public.  I say this as someone who was a deep admirer of Mr. Del Toro at the time even though I still held a few blind spots in the form of Cronos and The Devil's Backbone, a situation which was to be resolved immediately.  I was so taken with Blade II and Hellboy that I really didn't need any other film related evidence of Mr. Del Toro's genius and it made Pan's Labyrinth seem like the coming out party he had so richly deserved for almost fifteen years.  Again, this is what happens when you don't know anything, Mr. Del Toro was already on a countless number of  radars for his entire career and Pan's Labyrinth represented little more than just another step up for a rapidly progressing director, but what can I say, it felt good to think I was sharing his work with the world.  Set five years after the Spanish Civil War in the early years of the Francoist period, Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of a young girl named Ofelia who must navigate the unrelentingly harsh world of her new step father, Captain Vidal's military outpost while simultaneously completing a series of tasks assigned to her by the mythic Pan creature in a world that seems to exist just beneath or outside Captain Vidal's mill of misery.  Del Toro beautifully weaves some of his most ambitious creature and fantasy designs with some of his most ambitious story telling to date.  The cumulative emotional power this film possesses, powerfully rendered by its devastating final moments is impossible to deny and Del Toro's obsession with primal fears that animate the lives of children has never been more potent.  It's difficult to marvel enough at the sheer beauty of some of these images but where Del Toro proves his ultimate mastery is never letting either the beauty nor the horror dominate over the other.  Both realms of existence (the real and the fantastic) both possess the capacity for disappointment, joy, love, and terror.  If Pan's Labyrinth represents the truest expression of Mr. Del Toro's filmmaking fascinations, let's hope there's plenty more where that came from.  It's hard to imagine that only seven years later the fairy tale genre would be relegated to the depths of whatever new YA franchise crops up over night, let's hope Del Toro gets several more opportunities to restore it to its proper glory like he did with Pan's Labyrinth.