Review: Critics: [ FILM OF THE WEEK ]: A feast for

the eyes: A darkly atmospheric fairy story set

against grim reality in Franco's Spain, Pan's
Labyrinth continues a tide of fine movies made
by Mexican directors: Pan's Labyrinth (112 mins,
15) Directed by Guillermo del Toro; starring Sergi
Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones

French, Philip . The Observer ; London (UK) [London (UK)]26 Nov 2006: 14.

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ABSTRACT (ABSTRACT)
[Vidal] has married the widow of a tailor (the man who made his uniforms), and she's come, heavily pregnant, to
this Spartan military outpost at what appears to be an old mill with her 11-year- old daughter Ofelia (the appealing
Ivana Baquero). Vidal's putting his wife in danger because he believes that his son (he's convinced it will be a boy)
should be born near his father. 'I want my son to grow up in a new, cleansed Spain,' he says. Ofelia hates Vidal, but
as an avid reader of fairy stories she is fascinated by the mysterious atmosphere in the forest surrounding her new
home. From the start del Toro creates a sense of wonder that contrasts with the rigid, unimaginative world
inhabited by the Captain.
This nightmarish world, which Ofelia can enter merely by drawing the shape of a door with magic chalk, is a moral
universe, a place of intellectual and emotional learning. The true horrors are taking place in the everyday life of
[Franco]'s Spain where the vicious Vidal (in some ways not unlike a monster from a Grimm fairy tale) delights in
torturing his prisoners, kills people without compunction, humiliates all those around him and keeps the peasants
at starvation level so they can't assist the guerrillas. However, to discover kindly people and examples of good
conduct Ofelia does not have to escape from the world around her. As in The Devil's Backbone there is a servant
woman and a doctor who put themselves in danger both by standing up to the Captain and covertly helping the
guerrillas. The symbolic key Ofelia has to obtain is matched by the actual key to the military storeroom that the
servant (the striking Maribel Verdu, star of [Alfonso Cuaron]'s Y tu mama tambien ) gets for her guerrilla lover.

FULL TEXT
MEXICAN film-makers are currently in the ascendant, working together and abroad. The year opened with Tommy
Lee Jones's modern western, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada , scripted by Guillermo Arriaga. Alfonso
Cuaron's British dystopian thriller Children of Men is still running. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel (scripted by
Arriaga) will be released in January. And Guillermo del Toro's remarkable Pan's Labyrinth ( El laberinto del fauno ),
which Cuaron has produced, appears this week. It's del Toro's sixth film, and his best to date, and like the others
it's a horror movie though much less of a genre picture than his Hollywood output.
His previous Spanish film, The Devil's Backbone (2001), was set towards the end of the Civil War at a remote
orphanage, and the events - which include the terrible brutality of Franco's troops and a ghost that issues warnings
of forthcoming catastrophe - are seen through the eyes of a sensitive young boy. We inevitably think of an earlier
Spanish movie, Victor Erice's masterly Spirit of the Beehive , which takes place in the immediate aftermath of the

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Civil War. Pan's Labyrinth is set six years or so later, in 1944, very precisely in June when news of the Allied
invasion of Normandy arrives in an authoritarian state where a party of left-wing guerrillas, the last remnants of the
Republican army, are hiding out in the mountains.
They are, perhaps fortunately, unaware that Franco will remain dictator for a further 30 years. Hunting them down
is a detachment of soldiers led by Captain Vidal, brilliantly played by the handsome, menacing Sergi Lopez, best
known in this country for playing the psychopathic killer in Dominik Moll's Harry, He's Here To Help and the evil
head porter of a London hotel in Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things . Vidal is a ruthless sadist, an archetypal
fascist bully trying to live up to the expectations of his father, a military hero killed in North Africa. This would be
an exciting thriller in itself, but there is another story of a quite different kind.
Vidal has married the widow of a tailor (the man who made his uniforms), and she's come, heavily pregnant, to this
Spartan military outpost at what appears to be an old mill with her 11-year- old daughter Ofelia (the appealing
Ivana Baquero). Vidal's putting his wife in danger because he believes that his son (he's convinced it will be a boy)
should be born near his father. 'I want my son to grow up in a new, cleansed Spain,' he says. Ofelia hates Vidal, but
as an avid reader of fairy stories she is fascinated by the mysterious atmosphere in the forest surrounding her new
home. From the start del Toro creates a sense of wonder that contrasts with the rigid, unimaginative world
inhabited by the Captain.
Shortly after arriving there, Ofelia is approached by a fluttering insect rather like a large cricket, which turns into a
fairy and leads her to an underground world. In this labyrinth she meets a giant faun (played by the American mime
artist Doug Jones), a commanding figure, frightening in appearance but essentially kindly, the opposite in fact of
the Captain. We learn she's a princess from a subterranean kingdom, and in characteristic fairytale fashion she's
given three tasks to perform before the full moon.
Ofelia's alternative life is composed of the gothic materials of the horror movie and is beautifully realised by the
designers who draw, as del Toro has said, on Goya's black paintings and the British children's book illustrator
Arthur Rackham (one of the favourite artists of the young Charles Addams). There's a giant toad from which Ofelia
must obtain a crucial key, and a bizarre creature whose eyes are in the palms of its hands.
But this nightmarish world, which Ofelia can enter merely by drawing the shape of a door with magic chalk, is a
moral universe, a place of intellectual and emotional learning. The true horrors are taking place in the everyday life
of Franco's Spain where the vicious Vidal (in some ways not unlike a monster from a Grimm fairy tale) delights in
torturing his prisoners, kills people without compunction, humiliates all those around him and keeps the peasants
at starvation level so they can't assist the guerrillas. However, to discover kindly people and examples of good
conduct Ofelia does not have to escape from the world around her. As in The Devil's Backbone there is a servant
woman and a doctor who put themselves in danger both by standing up to the Captain and covertly helping the
guerrillas. The symbolic key Ofelia has to obtain is matched by the actual key to the military storeroom that the
servant (the striking Maribel Verdu, star of Cuaron's Y tu mama tambien ) gets for her guerrilla lover.
In this magical and immensely moving film del Toro presents both the narrative strands as equally real, equally
plausible. There's no attempt to rationalise Ofelia's parallel universe by suggesting it's a dream or a fantasy . In
fact the two sides of the film come together to constitute an allegory about the soul and the national identity of
Spain, and in a wider sense about the struggle between good and evil, between the humane and the inhumane, the
civilised and the barbaric. Ultimately in a dramatic sense that struggle comes to turn on the boy who becomes
Vidal's son and Ofelia's brother and whose fate and future unite the fairy story and so-called everyday reality.
THE VISION THING
Mark Kermode interviews the director Guillermo del Toro about his fabulous imagination and his influences at:
-->--> observer.co.uk/review
Illustration
Caption: article-PhilipFrench.1

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DETAILS

Company / organization: Name: Toro Co Inc; Ticker: TTC; NAICS: 333112, 335121; DUNS: 00-647-7400

Publication title: The Observer; London (UK)

Pages: 14

Number of pages: 0

Publication year: 2006

Publication date: Nov 26, 2006

Section: Observer Review Arts Pages

Publisher: Guardian News &Media Limited

Place of publication: London (UK)

Country of publication: United Kingdom, London (UK)

Publication subject: General Interest Periodicals--Great Britain

ISSN: 00297712

Source type: Newspapers

Language of publication: English

Document type: NEWSPAPER

ProQuest document ID: 250507519

Document URL: https://exeter.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/revie

w-critics-film-week-feast-eyes-darkly/docview/250507519/se-2?accountid=36348

Copyright: Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited Nov 26, 2006

Last updated: 2010-06-12

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