Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is simply one of the best of the recent films I have seen. Actually I haven't been to too many new movies of late. On few occasions that I go, it is mostly the revivals and repertory screenings. But still I think it must be the best film released in the last year. (David Lynch is not in the same league. With him, I think, it is not even the same game.) It is a glorious and at times harrowing and ultimately bleak fairy tale that children should definitely be kept away from.

The story is set in Spain during the last years of second world war and the republicans, after having been defeated in the civil war, are still struggling against Franco and his Fascist forces in a few pockets of resistance. On one such outpost deep inside a hilly terrain, the young heroine of the film Ofelia arrives with her pregnant mother who has recently remarried. Her stepfather is a captain in the army and a brutal autocrat. The setting itself is quite grim and the everything is designed with exceedingly scrupulous attention to detail. Ofelia is also an enthusiastic reader of fairy tales and soon enough she meets a few characters right out of her books who inform her that she is the reincarnated princess of the netherworld. This soon makes her embark on quest which is again direct out of fairy tale. All this is juxtaposed next to each other with the real world with its brutality and injustice, which del Toro shows in unfliching detail right till the end when the two worlds meet in a brutal, bleak and heartbreakingly ironic end.

What sets Pan's Labyrinth apart from regular fantasy films is that del Toro is not just interested in creating the texture (he is great at it in any case) but also in the "real" historical and political questions. In one of the scenes a priest says that he doesn't care what happens to the bodies of rebels since their souls are already "saved" or when the housekeeper tells the captain that it doesn't matter what people like her really think when he asks her if she thinks he is a monster. Or when del Toro makes a joke of the sign of stigmata by having a child eating monster showing crucifixion-like wounds. These things are specially interesting because the church was one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of the Franco's regime. One can complain that all these attemps are a little crude and half-hearted and most of his energies ultimately go in creating the texture but still it works in the end. Also the character of the captain is essentially a caricature which feels like a fairy tale cliche (evil stepfather!). Again some half hearted attempts are made to give some depth and complexity (the broken clock and backstory of his father) but it is again half-hearted.

I don't want to sound like whiner because it is ultimately a beautiful and extremely rich film. I was very impressed. I was also racking my brains as to where I had seen the girl who plays the housekeeper before. Well, she was in Y Tu Mama Tambien too. I could never have known!