Pan's labyrinth
Monday, December 26, 2011 8:07:36 PM
When I came to know about 'Pan's labyrinth' through the internet, the first impression it made on me was that of a typical fantasy movie, a classic in its genre, in fact that's why I made a decision to lend it enough interest to watch the film while I had the time. When I finished the movie I'm now drowned in a confusion of gibberish thoughts, tangled together so hard as to make it difficult to separate my feelings bout the film. So decided to take up Galatea (my laptop and yes I like to name my gadgets and stuff. anything else?) and resolve the chaos that's been going on about my little head since I saw the movie.
I guess there is nothing new to be said about the visual impact of the movie, which is in one word 'magnifique'. From the first to the very last, the movie with its exquisite special effects and graphics will keep amazing you. From the mythical make-up of the faun to the half-melted face of the tortured guerrilla, the film surpasses the standard of finesse in the make-up section. As for the special effects, it delivers you the exact effect you expect from a classic- flawless visuals and sound effects (the low laughs and grunts of the faun will, as they say, make 'shivers run down your spine'), and I won't deny they left me quite surprised as I didn't expect them to be as good as they were, which in my opinion clearly transcended by far the cheap fantasy flicks of Hollywood.
But it's the subject of the movie that provokes grave thoughts in me on several dimensions, which again surprises me considering its genre. May be its time I heightened my expectations from the fantasy movies. First of all, there is this historical dimension- a fantasy film set in the 1940s, within the context of the Spanish civil war. The protagonist of the film, Ofelia, a girl of 10 years travels with her pregnant mother to her step-dad, a sadistic army captain whose camp is surrounded by guerrillas living among the hills. Near the place, there is a natural labyrinth which attracts young Ofelia whose mind is immersed in fairy tales, who still haven't lost her faith in such a world of beauty. Given her tightening conditions, to evade the terrible reality that surrounds her, the only place Ofelia can take refuge in is her fairy world, her own world of imagination. She meets an old faun in the center of the labyrinth who tells her that she's a princess and to prove her royalty she has to accomplish three tasks. Gradually it becomes clear that the world she imagines is no less hard than the reality she lives in. It reflects similar tensions and uneasiness that reflect the reality that she strives to escape without much success.
The second theme that scratches our brain is the parallel representation of 'real' and 'imaginary' world. Writer and Director Guillermo Del Torro makes these two different strings go parallel to accentuate his conscious efforts to demonstrate the 'imaginary' world of the girl as an intricate if not direct or simple reflection of the real world, which sometimes battles or goes hand in hand with reality. When the baby was giving the mother a hard time the faun gave Ofelia a remedy for her mother's labor pain. Eventually the step-father finds out about it and Ofelia's mother throws away the plant into fire followed by the bloody birth of the child and her own death.
The third and most important theme is that of gender. The captain wanted a boy which will 'carry his name and his father's'. Ofelia is a girl, more than that, the child of her mother's first marriage. In the world of men, people are cruel. the world of men, is characterized by such attributes as courage, heroism, authority, and power, the dreams of little girls are smashed, stamped on. In the film the governess of the camp of the army was associated with the guerrillas and with the turn of events was caught as the traitor. The right-hand of the captain tried to warn the captain while he whistled any possibility away by saying- 'For god's sake, she's just a woman'. The woman managed to get away from the camp, seriously wounding the man, proving probably 'women are not always to be held weak.' Well at the end of the movie, the fact emerges- in the world of men, where women are used as mere mediums to ascertain the continuity of lineages, it is often not the girl but the boy who survives. As her third task, Ofelia steals the infant and takes him into the labyrinth, chased by her anesthetized step-father, bent on rescuing his only hope for eternity and killing the step-daughter, and presents him to the faun. The faun wished to take his blood, Ofelia shied away and denied to do so. Meanwhile, the father came from behind, snatched the boy away and shot Ofelia with the same cynicism with which he killed and tortured the villagers and the 'Red'.
Ofelia's death is presented as such stark reality that the typical ending of a young girl's dream with which the movie finishes remains a chronicle of the ironic fate of Ofelia. The viewer is left thinking that the dreams of the young girls as Ofelia can be fulfilled only in their death, making another myth, thus perpetuating the world of fauns and fairies. And it is this strange mythical dimension blended with the doleful reality of Ofelia that brought insolent tears to my eyes. The real blends with surreal when Ofelia's blood-drops spill into the pool of her fantasy, giving her mythical journey the long anticipated end- her rejoining with her father and mother.
The least that can be said about the movie is that it is a movie pregnant with the richest of themes, which is quite surprising considering its genre. The execution of the film based on such intricate plot must have been tough, but the director Guillermo did a job so great as to lift the genre to which it belongs to, to a whole different level.














