Movie Review of Pan’s Labyrinth

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To read other reviews, you would think that Pan’s Labyrinth is the best movie since Citizen Kane. It has even received a 96% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was this high rating that made me want to see it on the big screen.

And I am very disappointed in the film. It was not a magical tour through a fantasy world of a girl’s mind, as it is most often described. It is a tour through the cruelty and viscera of a twisted Director’s mind. The part about a fantasy world seemed to have been thrown in to provide a separation in the non-stop violence depicted on screen. It was like watching a Dentist pulling teeth for two hours and occasionally you would say “Oh cute! Look at the faerie!”

The movie is about Ofelia, a ‘tween girl travelling with her very pregnant mother to go to live with her mother’s new husband, the very cruel and sadistic Captain Vidal. Ofelia, a huge fan of faerie tales, explores a nearby labyrinth and meets a giant talking billy goat who convinces her to embark on three quests so she can become the new faerie princess of the underworld. What follows is a lot of violence perpetrated by Captain Vidal, and much like the end of Resevoir Dogs and The Departed, everyone ends up dying. And as Ofelia laid dying, she imagined that she became the faerie princess of the underworld.

As some examples of the brutal violence, the director Guillermo del Toro had the fascist Franco soldiers under command of Captain Vidal shooting all of the wounded insurgents in the head. Two bullets each. There is an explicit torture scene, again courtesy of Captain Vidal, using a hammer to mangle a stuttering spaniard’s hand. Vidal also vividly beat a farmer’s face in with a wine bottle. And even when the evil Captain received his come-uppance in the form having his cheek split mouth to ear with a knife, the audience was treated to a prolonged shot of Vidal trying to sew his own cheek shut again with a fishhook needle.

The fantasy portions of the film were dark and creepy, and really only employed three major scenes. One scene is the labyrinth where Ofelia meets the faun. Another scene Ofelia must crawl through mud to forcefeed a giant bullfrog some pellets to cause it to puke up a key, and the third involves Ofelia and three faeries (two of which get their heads eaten off) who must enter a chamber to get a knife away from a monster.

So was the theme of this movie really about the horrors of war and its effect on a child? I really don’t think so. I think this movie was intended to shock and to “steal innocence.” The shock was in the form of the brutality of the violence. Ofelia’s sacrifice at the end was intended to represent a blood sacrifice for the sins of fascism, but even that came off poorly, and seemed more of a waste than a heroic deed. And perverting the childhood image of faeries for those that still treasure the idea of magical faeries is like telling a roomfull of 7-year-olds that there is no Santa. It is a tactless exercise in cruelty.