The average audience of the average film will spend a few moments discussing it before dinner plans and traffic reports interrupt; By the next day, the movie-going experience is a distant memory. Not so with Pan's Labyrinth.
Writer-director Guillermddsso del Toro's masterpiece resonates days after viewing the film. Set in 1944 civil war-torn Spain, Labyrinth is the story of Ofelia (hauntingly played by Ivana Baquero), the young stepdaughter of a fascist captain. Powerless to escape from her stepfather's cruel regime, Ofelia plunges into a fantasy world in which she becomes a princess. A faun charges her with three magical tasks she must accomplish to be rightfully restored to her throne. Ofelia's visually stunning fairy tale narrative is woven with graphic scenes from her painful reality. Though Ofelia's imagination is the safe haven she so urgently needs, at times it can be as dark and dangerous as her real world.
In one particularly frightening scene, Ofelia must battle her own will, or else face a terrible monster; when her self-control wavers, Ofelia is attacked and just barely escapes. This task is especially disarming because for the first time Ofelia's fantasy fails her and she is left completely alone. The tragedy of this sequence, and the film itself, is that even in her own fairy tale Ofelia is completely alone. But the beauty of the film lies in her determination to imagine a better world despite almost insurmountable obstacles. Pan's Labyrinth illuminates the struggle of innocence against evil, and the power that innocence can wield against even the darkest forces of the universe. It is amazing how a film so fantastical can feel so utterly and inescapably real.
