>>PREVIEW
PAN’S LABYRINTH
STARRING Ivana Baquero and Sergi Lopez
DIRECTED BY Guillermo del Toro
Opens Friday, January 19
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"I was curious about exploring fantasy, but from a darker point of view than the Disneyfied aspect it normally takes," says director Guillermo del Toro of his new film, which, despite the presence of a 12-year-old heroine, several mystical creatures and some very grubby fairies, no one could mistake for family viewing. This fairy tale is both grim and Grimm.
"When you go back to the earliest forms of fairy tale collections, they are pretty nasty stories," adds del Toro. "They’re stories about orphans, children being eaten, cannibalism, mutilation – they are pretty extreme. And even if you go to works of children’s literature that are not fairy tales – be it Charles Dickens, with orphans and children being beaten or killed, or Oscar Wilde or Hans Christian Andersen, with their sort of twisted fairy tales that border on S&M – it’s a rarified form of literature that usually gets homogenized for the audience. I wanted to go back and make it in its purest form."
The Mexican director’s first Spanish-language film since successful Hollywood outings with Blade II and Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth is a peculiar and highly singular creation. As gorgeous as they are, its fantastic elements work in tandem with a particularly brutal portrait of war. During the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) accompanies her pregnant mother to the house of her new stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). The woods nearby contain not only an increasingly desperate set of leftist rebels but a magical labyrinth. There she meets a creature named Pan (Doug Jones), who recognizes her as a princess of the underworld who must complete three tasks in order to receive her divine birthright. They first meet in the labyrinth’s pit, the image that was the starting point for del Toro, who typically totes around notebooks full of his drawings.
"I liked the image of the girl in the pit talking to the faun and I liked the idea that at the centre of a labyrinth, you have a pit," says del Toro. "You have this descent into a womblike world. The labyrinth is a journey towards the inside of her head, so to speak. But what is great about the fairy tales is that they contain incarnations of very, very archetypical figures for mankind. They belong to all of us. That’s why the film can work on a political level, on a magical level and on a deeper, strange, almost symbolic level. I call it Jungian because it’s about trying to unlock things that are deeper in you."
The image of Pan was drawn from a similarly deep source. "When I was a kid I used to have a lucid nightmare in which a faun came from behind my grandma’s armoire," says del Toro. "Pan was very much like that guy. But the legs were influenced by a fairy tale illustrator called Arthur Rackham, who created these gnarly, twisted, very psychosexual trees. I thought this guy has grown so old that his legs are made of wood. I liked the visual aspect of having him covered in moss and being so ancient-looking. And the fairies are like dirty monkeys. They’re not clean, glowing Tinkerbells – they’re nasty little creatures."
Del Toro says the film is "fuelled by a very pagan mythology," pointing to the dominance of pre-Christian imagery especially in regard to the setting of the forest, considered in many religious traditions as "the other world, the world that is not controlled by humans." Much of the film’s "pagan cosmology" was influenced by pioneering, early 20th century British fantasy writers such as Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood.
Yet, del Toro’s vision remains rooted in another period that has long fascinated him. After the 2001 ghost story The Devil’s Backbone, this is the second story del Toro has set during the Spanish Civil War, though the events here follow the official end of the war.
"According to most people’s memories, the war in Spain ended in 1939," he says. "But the reality is that it kept going as repression. They just stopped calling the people an army – they called them bandits, thieves, rebels, anything but an army. The resistance in Spain went on for another 20 years more or less, then mutated into radical groups. I think it’s important to show Spain in ’44, right at the apex of World War II."
Though the rifle-toting rebels don’t look much like the winged fairies, del Toro does draw a connection between the two sets of characters. "I do a visual thing that is very subtle in the movie," he says, "which is there’s a lot of pollen floating in the air when the magical moments occur. It only appears when the creatures appear or when the guerrillas appear – I make them both creatures of the forest."
They’re also united in opposition with Ofelia against Captain Vidal, who, despite epitomizing fascism’s capacity for cruelty, arrogance and vanity, remains an extremely human sort of villain. "And very polite, too," says del Toro. "Here’s a guy who when his wife leaves the room will get up. He’s very well-groomed, very handsome. He’s intelligent. He just happens to be a sociopath. I think the real danger in fascism is not that it’s evil and nasty and cruel – it’s that it’s all of that wrapped in a very attractive surface. I’m not talking about only Nazi uniforms. I’m talking about how it’s an essentially masculine structure and it’s very attractive for anyone who is mildly weak. You get a sense of belonging, you get a sense of strength. This is what makes it more dangerous."
Whether worldly or supernatural, the threats faced by Ofelia are always treated seriously. That’s one reason why Pan’s Labyrinth carries such force, rescuing the fairy tale from the likes of Disney and returning it to a more primeval and more potent form.
"I believe that at their best, fairy tales are one of the most efficient forms of parable," says del Toro. "Having been brought up Catholic, and I’ve since lapsed, parable was always efficient in teaching a serious issue – not in a straight, political Costa Gavras/Oliver Stone kind of way, but in an oblique way. Parable allows you to incarnate concepts, turn them into creatures or forms of behaviour that are purer and more actualized than if you were doing a factual exposition. You can also have a more immediate emotional impact because you’re not asking the audience to do a thinking exercise – you’re asking them to go through an emotional journey. And I think that’s more efficient." |
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