A Fairy Tale for Adults ONLY! (Pan's Labyrinth (2 DVDs))

Member Name: tazzywazzy

Product:	Pan's Labyrinth (2 DVDs)
Date:	05/12/06 (541 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully original story telling

Disadvantages: A lot of graphic violence

Yesterday, sitting at home, Snarf (boyfriend), Snarf's brother & I were all at a bit of a loss at what to do with our Sunday afternoon, so we decided to go to the cinema, neither Snarf or I had any idea what we wanted to see, but Snarf's brother had been banging on about a "Spanish film" for ages, we went onto tinter-net and found that this Spanish film was called Pan's Labyrinth, we found the official site and I was immediately drawn in by the site, it was really gothic and almost Tim Burton esque, I didn't bother reading the blurb because I was too excited by the way the site looked - yes, yes, I am one of those people that judges books by their covers and films by their posters! From what I could tell there were fairy tale style creatures and a labyrinth (that was from the title...I am perceptive me!), and a little girl.

Anyway we decided to go and catch the 3:00pm showing at our local cinema, I had no idea what to expect, I was expecting some sort of fairy tale, the film was rated 15, this threw me a little, and I had no idea what I was about to see, but I was in for a treat...

~Plot~

**Note - this film is in spanish and subtitled**

The film opens with the story of a Princess of the underworld who one day escaped her minders and ran up into the daylight, once she got up to our world, she was blinded by the sun and forgot who she was and where she had come from. Eventually she died from hunger, thirst and pain in our world, but her Father, the Lord of the Underworld believed that her soul would one day return to them, and he would wait for her return until he drew her last breath.

It turns out that this is a story on the book of a young girl, named Ofelia, who is travelling with her Mother, who is going through a really rough pregnancy, to meet her step-father, who is a Captain in the army. Ofelia and her mother are going to live in an old mill where her step-father is posted in Northern Spain. The year is 1944 and focuses on Franco's Spain. Ofelia's step-father is the Captain of a small troop of men that are trying to fight the guerrilla resistance that have sprung up in the mountainous regions of Spain.

During the journey to her new home, Ofelia's mother, Carmen, tells Ofelia to stop the car, as she feels ill, Ofelia jumps out of the car to help her mother out, as her mother is recovering, Ofelia, wanders a bit further up the leafy road they are travelling on and finds a stone with an eye carved into it, she looks around and sees a large stone carving to the side of the road and notices that there is a hole where the eye should have been. Ofelia puts the eye back where it should have been, and out of the mouth comes a rather large bug that looks like a stick insect, which Ofelia thinks is a fairy.

Upon arrival at the old mill, Ofelia sees the bug again, and tries to catch it, but it flies off, so she try's to chase it and finds at the bottom of the mill's land an old, gothic stone archway. She goes through the archway, and looks round the corner, there are just paths of bricks. As she is looking round the corner, Mercedes, who appears to be the head of the household tells her that it is a really old labyrinth, older than the mill, she also tells Ofelia not to go in, as she may get lost.

At first Ofelia stays in a room with her mother, who is now really ill and having a terrible time with her pregnancy, and is given drops to drink to help her sleep. The first night that they stay in the old mill, Ofelia sees the little bug thing, again, but this time in her room, and this time, she asks it if it is a fairy, and shows it a picture of a fairy from one of her books. The creature looks at the book and then morphs into a fairy, not one of your pretty pink flower fairy type things, but a rather gothic looking nymph/fairy thing. The fairy signals to Ofelia to follow it, and she does, the fairy leads her through the labyrinth, to the centre where there are some stairs leading in a cavern underground.

Ofelia follows the fairy down the stairs into the heart of the labyrinth and meets a faun (not a faun like Mr Tumnus from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe either - a lot more scary looking), who tells her that her soul is that of the Princess of the underworld, he explains, that if she wants to return to her Kingdom, she will need to complete three tasks, to prove that her soul has not become mortal. He hands her a book and three stones, he tells her to look at the book when she is on her own to find out what her tasks are. Ofelia opens the book, but all the pages are blank....

Will Ofelia complete her tasks, will she become the Princess of the underworld?

~Characters~

Ofelia - This is an extremely grown up film for such a young girl to do, and was thoroughly impressed by the standard of acting from Ivana Baquero, she has been in about 6 other films, and is only 12 years old. For such an adult film, she plays her role extremely convincingly as an innocent, terrified young girl. I think we will be seeing more of this actress in the years to come, she reminds me very much of Natalie Portman in her role in Leon.

Mercedes - The "house-keeper" plays her role brilliantly, she is a really strong character, and manages to keep a brilliant balance between her strength of heart and tenderness for Ofelia, Ofelia and Mercedes have brilliant chemistry on set. She is a tough character who has had to endure a lot of hardship and lives most of her life in the shadows, she lives by her wit and cunning. She has had quite a few roles and there are a couple which are still in post production, hopefully there will be more films with her playing roles in the near future, but for the time being, I have only ever seen her in "Y Tu Mama Tambien".

Captain Vidal - The bad guy - from the minute that we meet the character, I felt an instant dislike to him. Ofelia steps out of the car, and is unsure of how to greet her new father so extends her left hand, he grabs her fingers (quite hard by the looks of it) and hisses "Ofelia, it is the other hand". I believe that this is one of his first roles in Spanish, as it seems that a lot of his other films have been French - you may however recognise him from "Dirty Pretty Things".

There are of course other characters, but they don't feature that heavily, Carmen, Ofelia's mother spends much of the film taken ill in bed, but another character that I feel is worth mentioning is the Faun, who is played by Doug Jones, who is probably most famous for his work under prosthetics, he has got a huge CV which includes the likes of Hellboy (same film-maker, Hellboy 2 is currently in post-production), Men In Black, CSI, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Adaptation, well the list goes on and on.


~My Thoughts~

By reading my plot outline above, you would be forgiven in thinking that this is a fantasy fairy tale, but in truth, the film flickers between real life - the war between the Spanish army and the Guerrilla army, there are a lot of scenes of graphical violence, and the fairy tale scenes provide much needed relief and escapism from the horrors or the "real world". As far as I can tell, the actual time and scenario are historically correct, there was resistance in the mountainous regions of Spain during the 1940's and 1950's.

I found that a lot of the scenes were extremely violent, to the point where I had to turn away and I was cringing, I hung on the edge of my seat for a lot of the time through the cinema, and was thoroughly gripped by the whole thing, this is a really novel way of story telling, and the real life mixed with the fairy tale provided a unique film, the likes of which I have never come across before. The director/writer has described this film as a sister tale to The Devil's Backbone, which I haven't seen, but is on Snarf's film shelf, so will have to get back to you on that one.

The cinematography and direction was amazing, I was wrong at the beginning to compare it to Tim Burton, Tim Burton could never produce or write anything as dark or as beautiful as this film. The element of the fairy story is just as dark as the "real world", this is not the fairies in the woods, these are the fairy's and monsters of the underworld. There was nothing spectacular about the set, it was all just very plain and average, but the way that it was shot bought it to life, and the lighting gave it an enchanting beauty, although you knew that something about it all was not quite right.


*Attention Tazzy Fact Alert*
I was quite confused as to the title of the film, but it turns out that Pan is the name of a Greek god who watched over shepherds and their flocks, he had the legs & horns of a goat. Also, not sure how relevant this is, but Pan was in love with a beautiful nymph called Echo, pan was angered by the fact that Echo was a great singer and dancer and scorned the love of any man, so he ordered his followers to kill her, Echo was torn to pieces and spread all over the earth - when Ofelia enters into the hole in the middle of the labyrinth, she shouts out "Echo" - obviously to hear her echo, but hey you never know!

~Would I recommend this film?~

Yes, in a heartbeat! I would not wait until it came out on video, if you get the chance, go and see it, I would however debate the 15 certificate, on Ciao it has been rated an 18, which I think is a much more suitable rating. If I saw the poster or even the DVD cover (am assuming it will be the same as the poster) that I would have probably bought it for a young teen, but this would give them nightmares - not the fairy tale side of it, but the war side and a lot of the events are just plain harrowing and evil. I would not recommend letting any young child watch this, and for any young teens who are a bit sensitive, this is definitely a no go film.

I can't wait until this comes out on DVD, I am waiting for a plethora of special features! If the Electric Cinema (see my past review) shows this in the future, I will definitely pay to go and see this film again - I don't think I have ever seen a film where I would pay twice to go to the cinema!



Thanks for reading guys....Go see the film & enjoy - you are really in for a treat!

xxx

Summary: Not for the faint hearted, don't be fooled by the fairy tale element! x