MOVIE REVIEW

Denying the demons

Mexican auteur's latest movie is an affecting political fable told as a grim fairy tale

KONG RITHDEE

El Laberinto del Fauno, (Pan's Labyrinth), Starring Ivana Baquero, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Ariadna Gil, Directed by Guillermo Del Toro, Opens April 10, in Spanish with Thai and English subtitles at Paragon Cineplex, Lido, SF Emporium, Esplanade Ratchadaphisek

Spain has fallen sick. Clutched in Franco's autocratic tyranny, the country in 1944 has become a cripple lurching into the dark labyrinth from which it would take Spaniards three decades to struggle free. Likewise Carmen (Ariadna Gil) has fallen ill due to her ripe pregnancy. And the moment she allows herself into the compound of Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), the sadistic commander of a forest outpost, she's consigned to a wheelchair despite the fact that she can walk; the Captain prefers to treat her as a helpless cripple, albeit one who's bearing his child. "Giving birth is a complicated matter," someone later says. And that applies to both Carmen and Franco's Spain.

There will be births and rebirths, real and metaphorical, in Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, an affecting political fable told as a grim fairy tale. There will also be plenty of deaths, some in the most horrid fashion typical of a country in turmoil (no, I don't mean here). And yet there will also be an ancient faun and his subterranean labyrinth, a sallow monster in an imaginary cavern, a squadron of dragonfly-fairies, a magical key and a magical book that guides a girl to a slimy jumbo toad in the moribund fig tree.

Del Toro's brilliance comes from his treatment of these two parallel realms - the political conflicts above ground and the fanciful adventures of a child - with equal respect and verve. Like all fairy tales, Pan's Labyrinth suggests an escape from brutal reality into the kingdom of fantasy, but the movie's deeply aware of the inconvenient truth that such a fantasy only exists after a great sacrifice, and that copious blood must be spilled before we can enter it. Spain has learnt this lesson, and so will Ofelia, the girl who will both brave the crazy Captain and the manipulative Faun in this film.

Wide-eyed Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is the daughter of Carmen, the pregnant woman. They arrive at the remote compound of Captain Vidal, Ofelia's stepfather, at the foot of the mountain from whose forested peak a band of Republican fighters launch their sporadic attacks. "He's not my father. My father is a tailor," Ofelia insists to the chief housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdu), who warns the girl not to wander into the ruins of the stone labyrinth near her new house.

It turns out that Ofelia will have a few surrogate fathers to replace her biological one. Hated by Vidal, himself nurturing a pain over the death of his own dad, Ofelia is an avid reader of fairy tales, and perhaps that's what leads her down the stone steps of the underground castle where she meets the faun (Doug Jones). Delighted by her appearance, the faun tells Ofelia that she's actually not a human, but the reincarnation of a lost princess, and he requires her to accomplish three dangerous tasks before the approaching full moon night so that she'll forever return to her rightful place in the kingdom.

Those tasks take the girl into bug-infested burrow under the mythical tree and the Gothic corridors inhabited by Pale Man, the film's iconic zombie whose eyes are seriously misplaced on his palms. All of this happens while Captain Vidal kills and tortures the resistance fighters and expects the birth of his child. These two plotlines share contextual similarities, ping-ponging ideas through specific dialogue and symbolic objects, and they both hinge on the same nexus about lost innocence and the moral as well as the physical horrors of real and imagined demons.

Known for his satisfyingly icky monster flicks, Del Toro never shies away from viscous liquid and schlock visuals as testified by his early movies like Cronos and Mimic. But this Mexican auteur also has a way of projecting the melancholia felt by a lonely child into his brand of cartoonish horror show, as seen in the thrilling The Devil's Backbone and perhaps in Hellboy. Ofelia's trek into the dark forest may resemble the adventures of lost boys and girls like Hansel and Gretel, or Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. But at least those kids had helpers, whereas this Spanish girl is utterly alone - perhaps even the Faun is duping her - and though they too confront evils of various manifestations, none is as yucky and as Dali-inspired as what we're seeing here.

A lot of people die in horror movies, but death in Del Toro's films, especially in Pan's Labyrinth, by the director's own account his most beloved project, has a resonant quality that enriches the texture of the folkloric narrative, especially since the film is structured as a political metaphor that hints at the death, and rebirth, of a country. Del Toro could even be accused of not making all this less obvious, but the film is such fun to watch that we only look back at its design and construction much later.

Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro won an Oscar for his lensing here, and he's painted a foreboding tone that characterises both Captain Vidal's barracks and Ofelia's eerie adventures. David Marti and Montse Ribe, who were awarded Oscars for makeup, give us an eye-catching Faun, with his ram's horns and the occultic touch of an antediluvian court jester, more a creature of Mexican surrealists than the classical version of European fauns. But that's perhaps besides the point: In the fantastic labyrinth of this Faun, the whole poignant story rests on the shoulders of a little girl in green.

Bangkok Post

Last Updated : Sunday April 08, 2007