By Travis Mackenzie Hoover
Pan’s Labyrinth is a thoroughly mediocre movie -- not egregiously bad, but dull and unremarkable and easy to dismiss. At least, it would be easy to dismiss, were it not for the insane across-the-board critical acclaim that it's managed to garner. It’s not enough for these people to say "go see a sweet little fantasy flick, it’s good;” they must instead find deep and redemptive significance in what is at best a fairy tale retread with fascist gunfight appendices. But the fact that the film is a repetition of the fairy tale structure is exactly what people find so profound: Roger Ebert led the charge with his predictable declaration of “A fairy tale for grown-ups!” that was mirrored by other critics, as if dressing up a bedtime story with Franco references and bloodshed were doing anything other than gilding a wilted lily. 
The film itself does little to engage the mind. We are introduced to 12-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) as she drives with an official escort into a forest compound somewhere in Spain; it’s the waning days of WWII, and her new stepfather -- the bloodthirsty fascist Vidal (Sergi López) -- has designs on her pregnant mother’s child, which he expects to be the son to carry on his name. In true fairy-tale fashion, the film sets up the Wicked Step-parent as an oppressive ogre so as to give the put-upon child a reason to fantasize -- and perhaps subconsciously call those fantasies to life. Sure enough, she’s soon visited by a fairy who leads her into an abandoned forest labyrinth to find a wacky-looking faun (Doug Jones) at the center. Turns out Ofelia’s the reincarnation of a long-lost princess from a fantasy world (whatever it’s called; I blacked out during the exposition), and that she has to perform some tasks in order to restore her position.
To give an idea of how pedantic the film is in repeating the fairy-tale milieu, I must mention one particular scene. Ofelia is sent to retrieve an item from a room occupied by the Pale Man (Jones again), a blind monster with its eyes in its hands and an enormous table of food set in front of him; the faun informs her beforehand not to eat the food for any reason. Not "Don't eat the food or the monster will eat you," because that would state the reason for not eating, and thus not trigger the chase that will ensue; just a vague reference on which any intelligent being would have surely elaborated. Further, the room is full of Goya-esque frescoes of the Pale Man eating his victims, giving a fairly vivid account of what happens when you raise his ire. To me, this suggests you not stay in his general proximity any longer than you have to. But what does our girl do? She eats some grapes, awakening the Pale Man and ensuring the deaths of a couple of helpful fairies. Had anyone put two and two together, they could have easily avoided disaster, but then there would be no scene.
Of course, the film's profundity supposedly lies not in its fairytaleness but in its being, in Ebert's words, "a fairy tale for grown-ups" -- a crossing of the childish genre with the real adult world. But this is only true if your frame of reference is extremely limited. Vidal, far from being a complex representative of adult reality, is the same monster villain familiar from a thousand bedtime stories. He's the man who makes life miserable for the surrounding peasantry, including the partisans who live in the woods and assorted rabbit hunters who impinge on his territory. Shooting and torturing are high on his list of fun pastimes, and of course he has nothing but disdain for the girl-child, so we have no choice but to loathe him absolutely. Had Vidal been kind to Ofelia and given her and her mother a safe home, the film might have actually had some complexity -- forcing our girl to choose between domestic bliss inside the family unit and the external suffering on which it is predicated. But Ofelia never really has to make a hard choice: she's thoughtfully provided a preordained path on which she can feel safe (and, ultimately, royally pampered), while all of the evil people in the "real" world are easily identified and offer her no comfort. Fascism isn't defined politically, it's rather selfishly defined as whatever gives the heroine a raw deal.
Instead of a reality and a fantasy that intertwine and comment on each other, we have two fantasies that are like ships that pass in the night. Of course the "real" fascist can't acknowledge the existence of the fantasy world (a denial exemplified by his destruction of a folk mixture designed to ease the pain of mother's pregnancy); the fascist is himself a monster designed to get his just desserts in the final reel. Any intermingling of the "real" and the "fantastic" would immediately show that both of them are drawn from the same, feeble archetypal cloth, for the fascist lacks any human qualities that might make his rise to power logical and understandable. So the fantasy/fantasy world can't ever encroach on fantasy/reality territory, because Del Toro's movie requires that the two worlds be hermetically sealed. Save for one deus ex machina bit close to the end, the faun and his fellow-travelers never actually impinge on the real world when anybody's watching, making Ofelia's position that of Big Bird proclaiming belief in the Snuffelupagus. This isn't just a lame piece of scripting, it keeps the film from having anything to say about either of its two sides; each remains intact and unchanged by the encounter.
You wouldn’t know this from the praise being bandied about, which not only overstates the case but fails to connect with anything theoretically useful. Ben Walters in Time Out claims "few directors are so adept at conveying both the uncanny in the real and the recognizable in the fantastic," which is a nice way of saying that both aspects are so broadly drawn as to be indistinguishable from each other. "Not only one of the great fantasy pictures but one of the great end-of-childhood elegies," says Stephanie Zacharek in Salon, despite the fact that Ofelia runs around serving surrogate parent figures blindly while attempting to get back to her “real” family in the magical realm. And the intellectuals at Total Film make sure that we don’t miss that it’s "steeped in the kind of myth familiar from Joseph Campbell’s landmark book," the default position of anyone attempting to justify limp fantasy. But it’s Paolo Cabrelli in Stylus who guilelessly hits the raw nerve, declaring "it does not propose the existence of magic. It confirms it." This bit of slack-jawed awe probably epitomizes the appeal of the movie. It’s for adults who no longer have faith in childhood fantasy, but are disillusioned with the business of being adult: people who are doubly cynical, and thus doubly looking for something to believe. Pan’s Labyrinth offers a bridge between the two worlds, a both-sides-now palliative that assures us that magic is still available in a "real” world gone mad. This is what is meant by “a fairy tale for grown-ups”: a film that encapsulates weariness in adult life and spices it up with nuggets from a world of make-believe that allows you to chuck your life for the magic kingdom beneath the earth. 
In reality, grown-up fairy tales look more like Blue Velvet, with its human monsters and its hero's ambivalent stance toward same; Kyle MacLachlan's Jeffrey is sucked into the sensual depravity of damaged people and is changed by the experience. The fissure between reality and fantasy is better established by Celine and Julie Go Boating, with its analysis of (and intervention in) the fictions that teach us who we are. But these films both are invested in the magical infinitude of human behavior rather than the comforting abstractions of fantasy constructs; they also have an ambiguous stance over how far one can go in representing “reality” on film. Pan’s Labyrinth offers only simplistic disengagement, which makes its elevation to near-masterpiece status a little unnerving.
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Travis Mackenzie Hoover is a freelance writer based in Toronto.
Friday, December 29, 2006
The Banality of Good and Evil: Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth
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12 comments:
Shew. I was beginning to think I was the only one who felt this way about this movie. It's imaginative to be sure, but as for fantasy fascist allegories go, it kept reminding me of a non-sexual Tin Drum -- and I wasn't that crazy about it either.
I'm with you on this one, and I'm a big fan/defender of Del Toro, whose The Devil's Backbone -- a thematic antecedent of this movie -- made my 2001 Best-Of list. The earlier movie was a ghost story rather than a fairy tale -- a better format for dealing with fascism, since ghost stories are often about sins passed down through generations, the lingering psychic effect of trauma, and of course, guilt. What was mysterious and powerful in the 2001 movie is made trite and transparent. And you're right that it would have been a much more interesting, challenging film if the heroine had been treated well by the real-world version of the villain -- if she'd had to choose, as all citizens in totalitarian countries must choose -- between doing what's right and endangering yourself and your family, versus doing what makes you comfortable -- going along to get along. Fascists aren't monsters -- they're people just like us, but who've made immoral choices and shut themselves off from conscience to protect their comfort. That's what makes them so frightening, and their ilk so durable.
Del Toro's a very good director who's made a couple of near-great movies (my picks are The Devil's Backbone and, in its own trashy genre sequel way, Blade II) but hasn't risen to his own potential yet. I wonder if he's surrounded by too many people who tell him, "You're a genius, Guillermo."
Eloquently written Travis. Like Edward, I was beginning to feel a little bit alone in the opinion of the film's mediocrity, and especially in my bafflement at the mass of critical praise. I especially like the part of your article that looks not just at the film, but at the possible reasons why there has been such a outpouring of positive reviews.
I admire the film more than the three voices that have chimed in on this one (so far) but in a highly detached way. I found that the two stories the film presents (horrific reality vs. horrific fairy tale) are both fine and occasionally terrifying (there's a scene w/ Sergi Lopez and a bottle that's like a travel-sized version of the fire extinguisher in Irreversible) but never coalescing in any way that really justified why the two narratives had been joined. There's a sort of video game logic to Ofelia's journey into the underworld, with a series of set tasks she must accomplish before advancing to the "next level" and once you pick up on this it lends these (admittedly visually wondrous and unnerving) segments a rather arbitrary feeling. Ultimately, does it matter whether she accomplishes her goals and are they really anything other than gnarly neo-gothic set-pieces inserted into a historical drama?
I'm pretty much in agreement with you on this, Travis. I also thought I was a voice alone. I don't have my review up yet, as the film is not being released here in Australia until January 18.
I find it interesting that Pan's Labrynth is produced by Pedro Almodovar, because I find common flaws. Both directors' films, were they in the English language, would almost certainly not be considered with the same high regard. Foreign language films are often assumed to be arthouse, whatever that is (and I'm not going into definition of that now). Del Toro's previous film was Hellboy, and Pan's Labrynth probably belongs in the same section of a video/DVD library.
Both directors mix genre: Almodovar comedy and drama (with an end result of downbeat daytime television soap opera that totally lacks verisimilitude). Del Toro mixes fantasy/horror with drama.
Other directors combine genres with greater fluidity (or seamlessness), Like Mendes' American Beauty, or the films of David Lynch.
I think the fantasy aspect of Pan's Labrynth works wonderfully. The fantasy characters are intriguing. But the human drama is apalling. Vidal is such a caricatured monster (a la Cinderella's evil stepmother) that one can't take the 'reality' aspect seriously. It just doesn't work on a dramatic level because there's no plausibility.
While I understand the director's intent behind the brutal violence - fascism is a much greater evil than anything from the underworld - it also alienates the audience. It precludes children, and also much of the adult audience.
Like The Devil's Backbone, the film looks great and has a lot going for it. But it just didn't come together for me.
Oh, and I do have a review of Volver up. I feel like I'm alone on this one too, as this film is being almost universally lauded.
Well, someone has to dissent here, might as well be me. I actually haven't liked a single Del Toro film until this one, which frankly blows the others out of the water. It's The Devil's Backbone that's the polished turd, straining to do double-duty as a ghost story and political allegory. The more upfront Pan's Labyrinth dispenses with the disguise and is far more chilling and wondrous. As for the logic of the fantasy sequences, they're right out of European folklore, cf. Baba Yaga for instance.
Jeff, del Toro's stated intention was to mix genres - fantasy and drama. I think it does work well as fantasy, with some caveats. But I think it comprehensively fails on the other stated intention.
If you ignore that intention and accept this a pure fantasy, then it has more credibility. I found myself making a mental adjustment during the film, reminding myself that it's just a fairy tale and to ignore the dramatic caricatures. As I say in my review (sorry, not yet posted), this interrupted the natural flow of the narrative.
I remember seeing Devil's Backbone and not being particularly impressed by it, though it looked very nice. Hellboy was fairly nondescript. I think Pan's Labrynth is more a visual success than a narrative one. I consider it a wasted opportunity - it could have been much better.
Many recent films could fit into this category. I'd include Children of Men, Babel, Marie Antoinette, Volver, A Scanner Darkly, The Prestige, The Departed, et al. Each of these had so much going for them, and were made by competent film-makers, but in my opinion didn't quite achieve the excellence they so desperately seemed to aspire for.
I'll add myself to the chorus of "I thought it was only me!!". While I thought that it was an okay movie, I've been baffled by the massive praise that it's been getting since it was released in the U.S.
To me, it looked as if Del Toro had come up with the basic template of "children's fairy tale + grim political reality" and had been so satisfied by it that hadn't bothered to go beyond that, to elaborate on it just a little bit. This shows in the paint-by-the-numbers quality of several plot points, like (as mentioned in the review) the little girl eating in the underground world "just because" (couldn't Del Toro be bothered to add just a beat with, say, the girl feeling hungry before she enters the monster's lair?), or Sergi Lopez's Big Father Figure Trauma, which Del Toro doesn't even bother disguising a bit to prevent it from appearing like what it is: a lazy way to add a bit of depth to the villain. At times it looked as if Del Toro had directed the movie from an outline, instead of an actual finished script.
(Just one quibble: although it might be technically true that the movie takes place in the final days of WWII (since it's set up in the 40s), this is irrelevant to the story, since the war the characters have been fighting is the Spanish Civil War. The partisans in the movie are the so-called "maquis", which kept fighting Franco's regime (although with dwindling forces) until the late 40s, long after the "official" ending of the war in 1939).
I'm with Jeff on this one -- Del Toro never turned my crank until this film, and I think it's exquisite and powerful.
This review is so gorgeously worded and refreshingly thoughtful. It's hard for me to understand what excuses could possibly be made for the pandering, reductive, and visually uninteresting above-ground narrative, which endlessly reminds us that we all know a fascist when we see one. At least the visuals pop in the underground story, but only to the very limited ends that Travis describes so well.
Plus, not to go around picking on children, I thought Ivana Baquero was a dismayingly blank slate; unlike Ana Torrent in Beehive or Anna Paquin in The Piano (and much more like Presley Chweneyagae in Tsotsi), Baquero doesn't seem to "get" anything happening in the character or in the movie. My beef here is actually with the director, not the wee actress. Del Toro has cast a blank slate on whom he can project his untested and unformed ideas, rather than finding a child actor who might actually ground or complicate his sense of what "childhood" is.
Well this film was really bad to me, the only stuff I liked were the fantasy creatures and the toad, the rest of the film was rubbish, Hellboy was at least passable.
Joshua
Wow! A sort of small haven for those who can´t understand the praise and respect Pan´s Labyrinth has amassed, and have not found a satisfying justification for this by its critics. I searched for this review after reading The Dark Knight´s one from Keith Uhlich (which is now blocked for comments, for obvious reasons). Although I liked the movie and admire it as one of the genre´s best and think it will be remembered for more than pretension, I liked how he developed his ideas and I even agreed with most though I think it derives mostly as a reaction to its praise which is still valid in many ways anyway.
After reading that, and considering Pan´s got even more good reviews than Batman, and worse yet, was talked about as if it were relevant, I was wondering how someone with Uhlich’s insight as appears on that review could have respected anything that Pan´s had to say.
So I searched for his review of Pan´s Labyrinth in this site, but only came across this one. I still was gladly surprised by my finding. I loved everything that was so well described in these paragraphs, so many ideas I keep stubbornly, and foolishly if you will, trying to convey to those who deify it.
It just feels just good finding people really justifying what they say validly, like you and Uhlich. Sure, you two and I are not perfect, we all might overlook things and overreact to things, but a good justification, well crafted considering it is to be read by actual people, gives the points rendered at least some value. After all, everyone can write, but should every single thing be given weight as to be massively read and considered? Maybe it is more than valid to do so, but not so pleasant.
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