Pan’s Labyrinth : ‘A fairy tale for adults’

Pan’s Labyrinth is a fantasy classic aimed not at children but adults. It is a tale about the loss of innocence to a cruel world. Spoken in Spanish, the film was written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Blade II, The Devil’s Backbone) and it is far and away his best film, if not the best film to have come out in 2006.

Originally, Pan’s Labyrinth had a very limited release after a successful run on the film festival circuit. It only screened in New York and Los Angles in December 2006 but it received so much acclaim that in February 2007 the film was released nation wide for everyone to enjoy.

Taking place in Spain in 1944, we follow Ofelia, a young girl who moves out to the countryside with her mother to live with her new stepfather, and a vicious and brutal tyrant who hunts a band of rebels in the hills above his farm.

Most who see a preview of Pan’s Labyrinth think it’s just another of the once popular Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter fare, but Pan’s Labyrinth is a more mature, much darker and frightening R rated dramatic fantasy. There are images a creature with sagging skin and red eyes set in its palms that kills children, a fantastical variant of the monster that is the stepfather, wonderfully and coldly played by Sergi Lopez from Dirty, Pretty Things.

The creativity might seem rehashed in some places, like using chalk to draw doors in the walls to surreal places; or blank paged books that draw themselves for a single person. What is so great about Pan’s Labyrinth is the good old-fashioned representation of harsh things drawn with a careful hand. In this case, the death of the child within us is shown as we find that we must depart from out fairy tales to face the real world, though the real world might be so terrible that we find ourselves diving back into fantasy to escape.