[REVIEW] Pan's Labyrinth
Feb. 26th, 2007 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldGuillermo del Toro's Oscar-winning movie Pan's Labyrinth is both a perfect tragedy and an exemplar of the primeval fairy tale, freed from the somewhat sterile if polite presentations of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Del Toro said in at least one interview that Pan's Labyrinth is concerned with choice, with the ability and desire of people to determine their own fates. I didn't find it difficult to identify with Ivana Baquero's Ofelia. Yes, she was an eleven-year-old trapped in a partisan-populated valley in Pyrenean Spain just a few years after the Republic's defeat and the victory of the bad guys 1, living in an isolated mill house with an ill mother suffering from a dangerous pregnancy and an overly twitchy fascist stepfather; no, this particular circumstance doesn't reflect anything in my personal biography. The way that Ofelia responds to her circumstances, by seeking recourse in dreamy hopes and fantastical imaginings, is something that can be empathized with, that I saw quite a few people empathize with in the theatre last night. I have to agree with Baquero that Pan's Labyrinth is indeed full of "pain and sadness and scariness and happiness". I'd just caution potential viewers not to watch the film alone--company, and debriefing, helps immensely.
1. I came into the film sympathizing with the Republicans. How could I not? The Spanish Republic was the constitutional government of Spain challenged from within by a military run by religious fanatics and admirees of fascism and unitarism 2. From the film's perspective, the problem is that, by 1944, the Republican choice had been well and truly closed off, that while some armed resistance to Franco's regime continued for years after the end of the civil war--Republicans managed a brief occupation of the Pyrenean valley of Val d'Aran, for example--the fascists had most definitely won.
2. Note, as an aside, that things haven't changed that much since the 1940s. Even now, just last year, the head of the Spanish army threatened some sort of intervention in relation to Catalonia's new autonomy project. This may explained why the post-Franco Spanish military has been consistently underfunded.
1. I came into the film sympathizing with the Republicans. How could I not? The Spanish Republic was the constitutional government of Spain challenged from within by a military run by religious fanatics and admirees of fascism and unitarism 2. From the film's perspective, the problem is that, by 1944, the Republican choice had been well and truly closed off, that while some armed resistance to Franco's regime continued for years after the end of the civil war--Republicans managed a brief occupation of the Pyrenean valley of Val d'Aran, for example--the fascists had most definitely won.
2. Note, as an aside, that things haven't changed that much since the 1940s. Even now, just last year, the head of the Spanish army threatened some sort of intervention in relation to Catalonia's new autonomy project. This may explained why the post-Franco Spanish military has been consistently underfunded.
