Guillermo del Toro's New Clothes
Pan's Labyrinth
If Pan's Labyrinth wins anything this year at the Oscars, I swear I will eat my own gun. At least that's what would happen if Guillermo del Toro were the screenwriter of my life. And then someone would come along, hack out my teeth with broken glass and shoot me again in the temple, eyes and chest, at very close range just to be sure. Because in del Toro's world, apparently you can't be dead enough. In del Toro's world, death means your mother won't recognize your body and God won't recognize your soul.
Pan's Labyrinth was written by and is the 9th film directed by Guillermo del Toro who started his career 22 years ago with the film Dona Lupe. Other credits American audiences may be familiar with include Cronos a 1993 vampire movie and Hellboy, a 2004 comic book adaptation (sequel in pre-production). With a clear affinity for horror movies, no one has ever accused him of being a subtle storyteller. And in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm, both book and movie, del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is about as dark a fairytale as has ever been told.
The story as described by NPR is:
"Del Toro sets his film in a remote mountain outpost in Spain in 1944, in the aftermath of the civil war. It stars Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, a young girl whose father is dead and whose mother is pregnant with her new husband's baby. That husband is Captain Vidal, a brutal captain in Franco's army, who ignores his new wife and stepdaughter and is interested only in his unborn child.
As Vidal ruthlessly hunts down anti-Franco guerrilla fighters, Ofelia escapes from her dreary reality into an equally dark fantasy world, full of strange and scary creatures. "
Sounds like the framework for a good film. Mother and daughter journey through a rainy forest to their new life. Daughter is chided for being too fanciful, spending too much time reading fairytales. Once they arrive, there are problems with the pregnancy. Ofelia bonds with a housekeeper close to her new father but who also holds a very scary secret. Very soon we realize that Ofelia's new father makes Hitler look like a Nantucket camp counselor. Ofelia's new "imaginary" friends are terrifying and cruel, offering no real escape from her own crumbling life. She is drawn to a mysterious labyrinth where she meets Pan the faun, who tells her she is really a princess, the princess in a book she was reading who, out of curiosity rose out of the underworld and became human, living and dying and forgetting about her happy life below. Her father, the king, would not give up on her and believed she would come back to him in another form someday.
To prove she is the princess, Ofelia must perform three tasks assigned by Pan. One of the tasks includes the monster pictured above. The murals on this beast's walls show him spearing and eating children like so many small shrimp. His eyeballs are on a plate in front of him while he sleeps. It is Ofelia's task to retrieve something from his lair without waking him. Starved for simple bread, let alone things as exotic as fruit and meat, she has been told to eat nothing from the banquet table spread before her. She has three fairies who accompany her on her mission. Somewhere an hourglass marks the time she has to get there and get out.
I'm not sure what I expected. Normally I would blame myself. I should have read the reviews. I should have listened to friends. I should have known something about the director. In this case, all I can blame is whatever weird confluence of parallel universe that switched me with my double on the other side, because I swear I DID read the reviews, listen to my friends and learn something about the director, all diligent attempts and all information from very trustworthy sources. What sources you ask?
Everyone. Everyone is so excited about this film that it has SIX Oscar nominations. The director, Guillermo del Toro, was featured on NPR, and some of my closest movie savvy friends personally recommended this movie, without caveat. My daughter in law drove 400 miles with the grandkids and she had only two requests when she got here. She wanted to visit a bookstore, since the nearest one to her home is a 60 mile drive, and she wanted to see Pan's Labyrinth with me. We went to the theater, bought our tickets from a smiling kiosk vender who never even thought to suggest that we, sweet Mother and Daughter on a girls night out, might not wish to see the most shocking, brutal and graphically violent film since A Clockwork Orange, on a full stomach. No red flags at all. And that's unfortunate.
I'm sure that I must have missed something. All the critics, my friends, the ticket taker, the Oscar voters, they can't all be wrong, can they?
Is it possible I didn't get IT? Let's see. Oppression is evil. Check. There are only two ways to respond to oppression, fight it or flee it. Check. Fighting oppression is hard and even when the good guys win, it is usually a Pyrrhic victory. Check. That about covers it.
I've seen movies about oppression before. I can honestly say I've never had to press my hands hard over my already shut eyes in a vain attempt to make the image fade. I've never had gunshots make me flinch so hard or watched people around me drop popcorn so fast. I can tell you what I didn't expect. I didn't expect a movie about a military commander so immune from human empathy that he is a caricature of evil, about a mother so selfish that she would trade her own small loneliness for the safety and security of her child, about a child who is surrounded by monsters both real and imagined and whose only hope is to commit murder and then take comfort in madness.
The fact that this film has drawn any attention at all speaks whole libraries about how far we all have strayed from good writing and good film and good judgment. This is a shocking and violent movie, not a deep one.
See the article and listen to the Fresh Air Interview here:
But beware. The only fairytale here is the one you are hearing about what a great film this is. And should you choose to listen to EVERYONE and not me, the one fairytale you will most be reminded of when you leave the theater is The Emperor's New Clothes. You figure it out.
See Ebert/Roeper review here (NYT critic Anthony Scott filling in for Ebert): http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavista/ebertandroeper/
Click on Pan's Labyrinth (At least Roeper does say that you should not bring the kids!)
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