Balls and Walnuts
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Labyrinthine errors
I came to Pan’s Labyrinth ready to be entranced. Or, at the very least, entertained. Writer/director Guillermo del Toro is a favorite of mine, has been ever since his creepy 1993 vampire flick, Cronos. Cronos took vampirism to new places. Forget repressed and awakened sexuality; Cronos was all about obsession and addiction.
Del Toro followed Cronos with a string of successes, most notably Hellboy, but also Blade II and the less commercial ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone. The man consistently delivers cinematic eye candy, material so interesting, disturbing, and beautiful that you could ignore the story and still come away satisfied. Pan’s Labyrinth is no exception, and in fact, you might do well to do just that. This film falls down on story.
The time is 1944, the setting, the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Franco’s Nationalists have control of the country, but they find themselves fighting Communist guerrillas. Our protagonist is an 11- or 12-year-old girl, Ofelia, the sensitive daughter of a tailor’s widow. The widow has remarried the cartoonishly evil Captain Vidal, commandant of a Nationalist base charged with rooting out the local Communists.
When we first began watching Pan’s Labyrinth, I wondered why it had an R rating. Lots of sex and nudity, I hoped, but alas. (The more astute among you will recognize this as the true reason for my negative review.) PL gets its R thanks to Captain Vidal’s unremitting sadism. One of the earliest images we have of the man: his men have captured a farmer and his son. The son gives Captain Vidal a truly microscopic amount of lip, pissing off Vidal. No one gives him lip in front of his men. So he strikes the son with a beer bottle, driving the guy’s nasal bones up into his brain, and then he shoots the father in the head.
Ofelia is sheltered from some, but not all, of Vidal’s cruelty. It’s clear to everyone, Ofelia included, that Vidal considers Ofelia’s mom to be little more than a womb, and Ofelia someone irrelevant who must be tolerated at least until his son is born. She overhears him telling the doctor, “If you must choose between them, my son must live.”
Nice guy.
So it comes as no surprise when Ofelia escapes into her fantasies — or, if you prefer, finds refuge in the Fawn’s magical world. A framing tale leads the viewer to believe that Ofelia is the daughter of the King of the Underworld, a child who has wandered to the surface world and forgotten her true nature. To recover her inheritance and her world, she must fulfill three tasks to the Fawn’s satisfaction.
The magical critters are the highlight of Pan’s Labyrinth (well, that and Vidal’s comeuppance, but I don’t want to give everything away). Praying mantis faeries, the Fawn (picture above), a mandrake root reminiscent of the Eraserhead baby, a giant frog named Jabba (if he’s not, he should be), and a faceless, child-eating monster populate Ofelia’s secret world.
Unfortunately, this is one of those stories where the plot moves forward thanks to the main characters’ dumbassery: Ofelia; her friend and surrogate mom, the Communist sympathizer Mercedes; the Communist guerrillas themselves; and Captain Vidal — all pull some outrageously dumb moves, each of which pushes our story along. Gaaaaa.
And it was so unnecessary, you know? Each time this happened, my internal editor rewrote the screenplay to eliminate the dumbass move. I’m telling you, it was a piece of cake. And don’t imagine this is one of those instances where a writer will balk, but everyone else will go with the flow: my wife and son lost patience with the movie, too.
What’s it all about? The world is a cruel place, the magical world as well as the real world; but Pan’s Labyrinth seems split over the question of whether magic even exists. While I usually appreciate such ambiguity, the ending (which I won’t reveal, sorry) demanded something more concrete.
I’m partial to another Labyrinth — Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. If you’ve never seen it, see it. David Bowie kicks ass as the Goblin King, Jennifer Connelly is such a sweeeet li’l heroine, and the movie’s theme has, for me anyway, a great deal more immediacy. To the heroine’s frequent refrain, That’s not fair! the Goblin King finally replies, “Whoever told you life would be fair?” And yet through courage and cleverness she prevails, even when the game is rigged against her.
I like that message.
D.
Mmmmmmm. David Bowie’s Goblin King. I wanna write a book based just around the scene where they dance together.
Loved The Devil’s Backbone, but haven’t seen any other movies by del Toro. PL looked interesting but the magical stuff looked kinda creepy, too. I have a low tolerance for creep in movies lately, so I’ve been shuffling lower on my Netflix queue.
Carrie: so many memorable scenes. I really need to rent that one for my son.
jmc, check out Hellboy. The love story in it is top notch, IMO.
Sorry you didn’t like it Doug. PL rates at the top of my list of movies I’ve seen in the past few years. To each his own, eh?
I’m usually a pushover for Guillermo del Toro. I love listening to him talk about his childhood (radio interviews on National Public Radio), and I can watch Hellboy over and over again. For me, this one was too disappointing.
Really? I didn’t get that at all… I thought it was a great film.
Doug, the fact that you love Labyrinth is one more indicator that you really aren’t a “typical” man/male. We were recently discussing this one at our house and with friends, and it was pretty much the consensus that the chicks loved Labyrinth, while the guys loved Legend.
Legend? Legend? Eeew. That’s like all Tom Cruisey and stuff. Unmemorable woman, too much makeup on Curry, dippy soft focus all around. Not one of my favorite movies.