Pan's Labyrinth

 Film: Pan's Labyrinth 

Rating: *****

"To obey, just like that for the sake of obeying, without questioning, that's something only people like you can do, Captain."

    Darkness. A few agonized breaths struggling to breathe come into the soundwaves. A female voice hums a sweet lullaby. A paragraph sets the stage of Spain, 1944, in the aftermath five years after the Spanish Civil War. Drops of blood start to drip upwards of the cliff wall. We see the dirty, bloody hand of a young girl, Ophelia, taking her last breaths. A long ribbon of blood is dripping backward into her nostrils, and her pupils dilate as the narrator starts the prologue as the camera zooms into her eye.

    Guillermo Del Toro's 2006 Spanish film, Pan's Labyrinth, is my favorite film of all time. Not only for its amazing cinematography, its plot, soundtrack, and or symbolism, but also the large sense of meaning and wonder it leaves you feeling. A film for adults, it feels like something pulled out from your youth as a child full of magic, wonder, and the fairy tales you would read, and sprinkled with the aspects of the real, harsh reality that we are forced to endure as adults, and, as Del Toro states throughout many of his works of film, that we as individuals lose since childhood as adults corrupt that innocence we once had as children by those ways of the world. 

    The film tells the story of the eleven-year-old Ophelia and her mother, Carmen, as they go to live with Carmen's new husband, a hyper-fascist who is trying to snuff out the remaining survivors of the Red Army rebellion hiding in the mountains five years after the Spanish Civil war. Carmen and Ophelia's new stepfather, Captain Vidal - who is replacing the traditional "evil stepmother" role - do not like her love and wonder of books and fairy tales, wishing her to get more into the real world. However, this does not stop a fairy from guiding the young girl to a labyrinth in her backyard that night where she meets a faun - a supernatural creature who is half man, half goat - who tells her she is the reincarnation of the long lost princess from the Underground Realm, and she must complete three tasks before the moon becomes full so she can return. From here, the movie splits into two narratives that intertwine beautifully. This magical quest, and this political drama full of war and suffering. 

    I enjoyed a lot of things from this film. Even though I saw it back in 2009, I can still watch it over and over to this day - actually even being able to recite the whole thing in Spanish despite not knowing any to begin with. The first thing to bring up of importance is the plot of this movie. It spirals and loops around into a beautiful arrangement of mixups between reality and fiction, that in the end, you have to think for yourself in some ways. If that seems confusing, once you see that beautiful ending, you'll know what I mean. The symbolism that Del Toro makes a point of showing each and every time in this movie is very inspirational and is actually something that I continually look at throughout other books and movies to this day. Whether it's foreshadowing, subtle hints, biblical references, or nods to other fairy tales, it is done brilliantly, and I still to this day and finding more and more things to learn and figure out. The soundtrack of this movie is breathtaking. It is actually the first thing that comes on in the movie before anything visual does. It's centered around the main lullaby, something haunting and beautiful, something familiar that we can all relate to from our innocence and infantry in the back of our minds, yet cannot reach. Javier Navarrete did a perfect job in this role, make this one of the main reasons I cry each and every time in this movie. It gets my heart going, my emotions tumbling, and it turns me into a mess. The last point I want to make that I think a lot of people don't really dive into is something that Del Toro does artistically in this movie, and that's a point of color theme. Each and every shot of this movie has a main sort of color, with others coming around it. For example, night shots are mainly used with colors of blue and or green, with maybe little hints of black and silver. Meanwhile, day shots seem to be very dirty. Mostly shown through the eyes of nature, it's all brown and greens, with real color only really showing to be contrasting something, whether that be in the fantasy world, or the Spanish Officer's harsh blue suits. 

    In this film, Guillermo Del Toro seems to question what adults really do and wants to show how children are affected by what they see around them."Cause I believe that children have perfect personalities, and then we ruin it, with our “intelligent decisions” to educate them." --Del Toro in the Pan's Labyrinth commentary. A story about war, death, and maturity, but also about a young girl who decides to pick out her own destiny amongst the ruins of it all in her maturity. With beautiful symbolism, a soundtrack to die for, visuals to take your breath away, and a story to capture your heart, Pan's Labyrinth are still one of my favorite movies to this day. It's like a fairy tale for a grown-up. I'll end it with one quote to subdue your mind.

    "You're getting older. Soon you'll see that life isn't like your fairy tales. The world is a cruel place. And you'll learn that. Even if it hurts."