Artists Trail film: Pan’s Labyrinth (20th Anniversary)
El Laberinto del Fauno, Guillermo del Toro, 2006, Colour, Spanish with English subtitles, 118′ mins, Certificate: 15
Trapped in the cruel reality of her new, brutal stepfather’s country house, in Francoist Spain, just after the end of the civil war and about a year before the end of World War II, 10-year-old Ofelia escapes into her imagination.
Where, in the center of a mythical labyrinth she meets a faun, who asks her to complete three gruesome tasks in order to reclaim her true self, save her mother and see her real father again.
Where she not only survives but thrives. Even if it’s for a brief moment in history – a sparkling drop in the ocean of time. Before reality catches up with her. Colliding with her unrepentant smile. One last time.
Guillermo del Toro’s definitive masterpiece is devastatingly beautiful and profoundly timely as ever, elevating the act of (cinematic) storytelling into a true art form. Its feast-for-the-eyes, visual artistry achingly seductive, while its complex, haunted narrative slowly but surely inhabits the soul. Forever.
A tale within a tale, about a girl who loves tales, about the tales we love to create to make sense of the world around us, and about how the uglier the latter becomes, the more we instinctively turn to the former. To escape, to survive, to resist, to thrive.
A multidisciplinary creative process, filmmaking brings together an array of artists and craftsmen: writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, actors, designers, make up artists, just to name a few.
Making this, minimally dependent on CGI, “made by humans for humans” (as del Toro likes to say denouncing AI), visual and narrative multigenre triumph, at its 20th anniversary, the ideal film for our annual Sydenham Artists Trail.
So after exploring the Trail during the first weekend (12-13 September) and before venturing into the second (19-20 September), follow Ofelia into the dangerous wonders and wonderful dangers of her Labyrinth.
Reviews:
“With this film, del Toro seems to have created his manifesto, a tour de force of cautionary zeal, humanism and magic. At this writing, “Pan’s Labyrinth” is the best-reviewed film of 2006 listed on the movie review Web site Metacritic.com, and for a reason: It’s just that great.” Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
“Dark, dreamlike and dangerous, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a fairytale every bit as scary and moving as they were always meant to be. In both the real world – civil war-riven Spain – and the fantasy underworld she discovers, our heroine Ofelia must battle against the most twisted, nightmarish evils to survive. Transcendent, passionate, full of beauty and endlessly affecting, this is without question the movie of the year.” Jonathan Trout, BBC Movies
“… del Toro truly reconciles the real and fantastic around the shared importance of stories. It’s a fitting theme with which to approach a war where so many were completely annihilated in ideological purges, and it explains why Vidal’s true comeuppance isn’t death, but the promise that he’ll be willfully forgotten by all who knew him. This pledge, even more so than the film’s coda, is the true fairy-tale ending.” Jake Cole, Slant Magazine
“… the whole movie [is] a graceful, complex but seamless, seemingly inexorable movement that weaves in and out of fantasy and reality so that each becomes an extension of the other. Whole worlds open before our eyes and then fold back upon themselves; dimensions of time and space are creased into shape as if the movie was an elaborate origami creation.” Jim Emerson, RogerEbert.com