Another Labyrinth

We went to see Pan’s Labyrinth this weekend and I very much enjoyed it, not the least because it gave me another chance to see Maribel Verdú, the lead actress from Y tu mamá también. I guess she’s been typecast as the woman who is hiding something, and here she works as the servant of a Fascist captain while collaborating with rebel forces in Franco-era Spain. The captain’s new wife and her daughter (Ivana Baquero) join him at a remote mountain outpost in the forest, where the girl begins to encounter strange creatures with wings and horns.

There is a certain kind of modern fairy tale we’ve all seen and read a thousand times: The heroine (or hero, but usually heroine) escapes the grey adult world through some kind of aperture, such as a wardrobe, and is sent on a quest to restore a fallen kingdom, returning at the end with new strength and perspective. For the girl in Pan’s Labyrinth (who, for reasons partly but not entirely apparent, is named Ofelia) the catch is that she never really escapes. A question lingers about whether the fairies and fauns exist outside of her head, yet she follows them on brief excursions inside tree stumps or down hidden passageways, while always returning to face the demands of her mother and stepfather.  We shift back and forth between the storybook world and the real one, although neither is a place where anybody would choose to live. In one, you might run into monsters with eyeballs in their hands; in the other, killing people is more efficient and less risky than talking to them, and you always shoot twice in order to be safe. The reality of war and cruelty intrudes more and more into the story as time goes on, and it would be unbearable to watch if it were not for the mesmerizing special effects and musical score.

So, as with Miyazaki’s recent animated films, we are left contemplating the purpose of children’s stories and the darker forces behind them. I would not even think about giving away the ending, but assume (for a moment) that in all Western fairy tales, the fantasy world is a projection of a child’s longing for eternal life. The C.S. Lewis books end with Narnia literally turning into the kingdom of heaven. In other stories, you must come back at the end and deal with reality and your own mortality as best you can. Sometimes the beautiful kingdom turns out to have been a dream, and other times it is a place where you will be able to return someday. The construction of an alternate world thus becomes the storyteller’s way to build a vision of the afterlife and establish the terms on which it may be considered real.

Rabbits, and more specifically the act of hunting and killing rabbits, serve an important plot function in the movie.

Comments

[Smokey Palmer]

I like Rabbits. Very Tasty.