The world is a scary place, with far too many people with propensity to evil, but you wouldn't know it from watching even the best fantasy films. Evil is usually personified in mythic or obviously evil characters (The Witch in The Wizard of Oz, David Bowie in Labyrinth). Thinking back on Pan's Labyrinth, the extraordinary horror fantasy from Guillermo del Toro, I realized that sometimes the problem is not telling good and evil apart, but simply that the bad come in overwhelming numbers.
It is 1944. Facist Francisco Franco has triumphed over his Communist opposition in the Spanish Civil War. Pregnant single mother Carmen (Ariana Gill) has married Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), who is fighting some of the last vestiages of the opposition in the countryside. While there, Carmen's bookish daughter Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) begins to be transported into a magical world where she is a princess. A fawn-like creature (Doug Jones) says that if Ofelia completes three tasks, she will take her rightful place as Queen of the magic kingdom. Ofelia's life will become very complicated, as Captain Vidal is becomming more and sadistic, and the fawn may not be the noble creature he appears to be.
The movie is brillant on many levels, but the most obvious is how it takes many conventions of the fantasy genre and subverts them. First, the magic land that Ofelia is trying to escape to may not be much better than the world she is leaving. Second, there is no clear delination between the good and the bad, and Ofelia does not always act heroically herself (one mistakes costs gruesome deaths of two fairy-like creatures). Beyond its genre commentary, we have some rather deep ideas about the nature of life (I am not saying this flippintly). Ofelia has grown up without a father, in a country savaged by Civil War. There is death and suffering all around her. To me, one of the worst parts about life is how often we are powerless to do anything, sometimes help others, sometimes to help ourselves. Unlike most heroic quests, there is very little that Ofelia can actully do.
There are many great scenes in this film. The second quest is truly suspenseful, and I liked how the evil Vidal was allowed to have a moment of honor (you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it). From a technical standpoint, the visual effects are stunning, Pan rivials Gollum and Yoda as one of the greatest special effects characters ever. And then there is the ending, which can be seen a number of ways. To me it seemed to promise both despair and hope, like the film itself.
Pan's Labyrinth (2006)