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Trailer for "Pan's Labyrinth"

Set in the early years of fascist Spain, Guillermo del Toro’s pungent, indelible masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth draws deeply on images and themes from classic fairy tales. Its central figure is a young girl who rebels against authoritarianism by retreating into a world of imagination and choice, populated by supernatural creatures who guide and test her.

None of which is to say that this is a children’s film, or even that it is appropriate viewing for young children. An early scene in which a fascist officer beats a farmer suspected of aiding the rural maquis rebels is brutal enough to tax the sensibilities of many adults.

But the scene that would have given me nightmares when I was of an impressionable age comes when the girl, Ofelia (played by the capable 11-year-old actress Ivana Banquero), is sent by her supernatural taskmaster to retrieve an item from a room wherein sleeps a tall, gaunt monster. I won’t describe the Pale Man (as he is referred to in the credits) in any detail other than to say that the sequence draws on that most disturbing of paintings, Goya’s Saturn Devouring One of His Sons, an image that once seen is impossible to forget. (If you don’t know it, consider this: Last July, readers of The Nation were outraged at a political ad in which artist Richard Serra took Goya’s image and substituted George Bush’s face for that of the child-eating god. Try to imagine an image of Bush that Nation readers would consider excessive and you’ll begin to get the idea.)

This is one moment in a film that del Toro has been planning for years, since the release of his 2001 movie The Devil’s Backbone (set during the Spanish Civil War.) In the intervening years, the filmmaker filled sketchbooks with images that he wanted to use for his film, even as he achieved international success with his Hollywood-backed hits Hellboy and Blade II. With the aid of his countryman and friend Alfonso Cuaron (director of the current Children of Men) as a co-producer, del Toro was able to mount a wholly independent production to ensure that he would be able to make the film exactly as he wanted.

The result, for better and for worse (mostly for better), is a rigorously sustained film that succeeds on several levels, as a parable of the power of imagination and a political allegory dissecting the nature of fascism. Think of it as the best film Terry Gilliam never made (though it has some odd parallels with Gilliam’s berserk Tideland, making its DVD release in February).

Pan’s Labyrinth is set in rural Spain circa 1944, as Franco’s forces are settling in to remake the country as they see fit. The cruel Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez, of With a Friend Like Harry) is setting up his home and a new military headquarters in this area that he considers the Spanish heartland, despite the presence of resistance fighters in the nearby mountains. He has sent for his new wife, the widowed Carmen (Ariadna Gil) and her daughter Ofelia to join him.

Vidal has little interest in either his wife or stepdaughter: Obsessed with the mythology he has created surrounding his own dead father, he anticipates the birth of the child Carmen is carrying, a child he knows will be a son. How he knows this is uncertain, but Vidal is determined to bend the world to his will, no matter how many local collaborators he has to torture and kill.

Unnoticed by her stepfather, Ofelia discovers a subterranean world here, headed by an ancient faun (Doug Jones). He tells her that she is a princess who was lost to the world of the light years ago, and gives her a series of tasks that will bring her back to her kingdom. These involve missions and monsters that both reflect and inform the real world whose threats she doesn’t yet comprehend.

Pan’s Labyrinth unfolds as a mosaic of tensions: real versus imaginary, paternal versus maternal, blind obedience versus freedom of the imagination, duty versus choice, and inevitably life versus death. It is del Toro’s artistry that he maintains all of his counterweights, seldom allowing his visual design to overwhelm the needs of the story (a common problem in fantastical cinema). It’s even more to his credit that he has written a story powerful enough to live up to his astonishing imagery.

If Pan’s Labyrinth has a fault (other than a slow start), it’s that del Toro has so carefully designed every aspect of his film that it occasionally lends itself to overinterpretation. Is our heroine’s name meant to evoke Hamlet’s innocent driven to madness, or is it a feminine version of Orpheus, that seeker in the underworld? If the ambiguously motivated faun is Pan, does that imply a sexual subtext? (Not really: The original Spanish title is El laberinto del fauno; del Toro changed it to “Pan” for the English title simply because he thought it sounded better.)

A film to delight and terrify, to engage both the mind and heart, Pan’s Labyinth is one of the year’s best.