The Big Whatsit

For my next blog, I really had something else in mind. There’s a half-written article about Oliver Stone’s Nixon in my Drafts folder that was developing into a political rant before I stopped typing. Yesterday, in Woolworth I picked up Shakespeare in Love for a scandalously cheap two pounds. Watching it last night, I realised what a witty and clever film it is. Whether it deserved such success at the Oscars is another matter, and that led me to thinking about a series of pieces on the worth of Academy Award winners in general. There’s plenty more Hitchcock to uncover, and I intend another ‘Ghibli of the Week’ blog at some point, ‘week’ being a very loose term in my household.

However, having driven mine wife to work this morning, I popped into that massive Asda near the City of Manchester Stadium and, as usual, checked out their DVD racks. It’s difficult to fault supermarkets on their prices - I saw so much good stuff on offer that I could have become ‘fifty pound man’ for the day without ever scratching beyond the surface of the titles I fancied. It was to the charts that I finally made my purchase. Currently, there are some very good discs at full price, The Departed and The Prestige being two that I will definitely have to fork out for at some point. But the one I eventually lashed out my £11.84 on was Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy that combines the cruel reality of the Spanish Civil War with fairy tales.

Though anyone with even a passing interest about last year’s best films should have bought this already, or are waiting cannily for the price to drop, here’s a quick glance at the plot. Pan’s Labyrinth takes place in 1944, as the fascist regime in Spain is eradicating the last remnants of national resistance. 12-year old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is travelling with her heavily pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to a house in the country, where they are going to live with her new stepfather. It just so happens that the new man in her life is the captain of a Falangist army unit, who soon turns out to be ruthless in his pursuit of freedom fighters who are hiding in the mountains. Ofelia comes across servants who are quietly betraying him, passing goods and information to the rebels. In the meantime, she comes across Pan, a faun living in the centre of an ancient labyrinth near the house. To Ofelia’s surprise, she is informed that she is, in fact, a princess from the underground realm, and that she needs to complete three tasks in order to return home. Soon enough, her existence is spent half within the captain’s sadistic grasp, and otherwise in a fairytale world, where her adventures lead her into escalating danger, traps and frightful characters…

There’s so much that could have gone wrong with this project. Before seeing it, I had in mind a Terry Gilliam type affair, in which the moments of fantasy are frequently made irritating with off the wall characters and indulgent explorations of insanity. Refreshingly, Pan’s is nothing of the sort. In being told from the perspective of fairy tale fan, Ofelia, it is able to weave in its fantastical elements steadily and quite matter of factly. Things start promisingly as the girl meets an insect that she believes to be a fairy, and it isn’t long before she is led to Pan himself. Pan, ‘faun’ in Spanish, is a fantastically realised creation. Put James McAvoy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe out of your mind. Here, the faun is altogether otherworldly, an enormous, deep-voiced concoction of animal and humanoid. You’ve never seen its like. When Pan speaks, claiming ‘I’ve had so many names. Old names that only the wind and the trees can pronounce. I am the mountain, the forest and the earth,’ its rich tones and bizarre appearance seem absolutely credible. And Pan is only the first fairy tale creature that Ofelia’s path crosses. On her way, she’ll face a giant toad, the screeching root of a mandrake, and a hideous monster that keeps its eyes in the palms of its hands.

But the real monster is, of course, the captain, a malevolent figure who Ofelia refuses ever to address as ‘father.’ Power mad and an all-round villain, the captain kills with impunity, delights in his torture methods and, without a prick of conscience, tells the doctor to save the child should his new wife have complications when giving birth. It’s nothing new to have wicked stepfathers feature in fairy tales, yet the captain is nothing less than a brutal exercise in sadism. The film’s ‘15′ certificate is justified early, when he pistol whips a man into his nose-crushed early grave.

The majority of Pan’s Labyrinth takes place in the world of the real. As the captain aims both to destroy the rebels and uncover the traitors in his camp, Ofelia tends to her sick mother and befriends Mercedes (Marbiel Verdu), a servant who is in constant contact with the resistance. It’s little wonder Ofelia wishes to escape into a fantasy world. And so do we, as the dark fairy tale she plunges into is a superb combination of design and CGI. In his review of the movie, Clydefro applauds it for using computer graphics so imaginatively. No argument from this corner. I’ve seen more than my fair share of lazily constructed pictures that try to compensate for their substandard plots and loosely drawn characters with dazzling visuals. Here, you get the lot. Del Toro and his team have managed to create a world that almost smells like something old and earthy, so well conceived are the graphics and costumes. The latter are worn principally by Doug Jones, who plays both Pan and the ‘Pale Man’ (below). In either case, the creatures are alien and scary, punctuated by unnatural tics and strange noises.

Clydefro goes on the argue that more of the fantasy side would have been nice, as this half of the story beats the one taking place in the real world for interest. I disagree, though the scenes involving Ofelia’s fairy tale left me wanting more as soon as they ended. What the movie depicts so well is an environment in which no one would want to live. One interpretation is that Ofelia invents her fantasy as a form of escape, though this is never made clear. She certainly wouldn’t be blamed, as she witnesses real horrors exhibited by her new father. The captain, played by Sergi Lopez, is simply nastiness in a smart uniform, the creak of well polished leather accompanying his every step. His actions threaten to engulf her entire existence in pain, particularly as he makes it very apparent that she is more tolerated than welcomed at the house, and that she will certainly play second fiddle to her baby brother.

A more oblique take on the film is that Ofelia is imagining the ‘world above’ from her princess’s throne, that she is sampling life as a mortal and quickly realises it’s not one she wants to keep. The ending is ambiguous enough to suggest either perspective could be right, with further viewings refusing to provide a definitive answer. The truth is that trying to unravel what’s real and made up in Pan’s Labyrinth is a little like being at the heart of a confusing, multi-faceted maze, which is exactly the intention. More important, I think, is to enjoy it, to immerse in one of cinema’s most luxuriant fantasy yarns of recent years. It really does look good, uses its special effects with intelligence and meaning, and in Ofelia creates a young heroine who is worth rooting for until the very end.

The DVD I watched (Region 2) is amongst the better sounding experiences I’ve had with 5.1 surround sound. Pan’s Labyrinth is intended to be an extremely sensory movie, with very clever use made of noise (particularly in the fairy tale realm). The wing beats, clicks and squeaks of the tiny fairies were everywhere. Pan itself made all manner of alien sounds, including a strange, clucking laugh that reverberated around the speakers just as it did the film’s cave, and check out the menacing ring of the captain’s switchblade.

NB Before watching it for the second time, some of the film’s more horrific moments seemed to have clouded from my mind, and I was considering showing it to The Boy, who’s 7. This would have been a big mistake. Pan’s Labyrinth may market its childish fantasy elements prominently, but it fully deserves a ‘15′ rating, mainly for including several stomach-churning scenes. Put it this way, I won’t be letting anyone shove a sharp knife into my mouth for a long time…