Pan's Labyrinth [2006]: Review

Film-review of Guillermo del Toro's searing subconscious-adventure 'dominion' portrait of a young girl's challenges intertwined with personal/political 'heaviness' and a dream-world of creatures/ink.

A review of the searing/imaginative psyche-normalization fantasy film/story Pan's Labyrinth (2006). Happy Thanksgiving-November, all 

DISCLAIMER: This work of review offers no commercial/explicit ties to the referenced film and is cast as purely a 'personal' exploration of social art (for 'open' commentary/feedback/critiques).

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In this searing and image-rich and noir-film of both modern and classic blend, the protagonist heroine, a young woman named Ofelia, is whisked-away from her politically hot family home life of civil war 'things' and into a dark underworld 'labyrinth' in which she must accept the guidance of a faerie-faun and insect creature to complete tasks to obtain rich immortality feelings and along the way negotiate her overground Earthling 'troubles' of the heart.

The story combines nice elements of the depths of the human heart negotiating accessible everyday home-life feelings surrounded by potential politics complications that may complement the real family figures emotions of sternness or even intolerabilities. The protagonist Ofelia is friends with her housekeeper Vidal and somewhat distant from her stern military stepfather Vidal. Ofelia finds herself magically chosen as she may be the incarnation of the Princess Moanna for whom the Labyrinth was built in the first place. We get the notion that her labryinth-adventure guides may be secretly hoping in Ofelia, seeing her as Moanna on a quest to acquire a great magical throne in an otherwise eerie place of creatures and tests, for hospitality.

The challenges of the labyrinth scenes are quite nicely dreamscape rich and offer the insights into the human psyche that explore both youthfulness and the 'cost' of growing up, and it's not anything like Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, despite obvious parallels in (overall) ideas about mazes and dream-worlds and a protagonist exploring Realism through surreal challenges and creature-contacts (ha). This 2006 film, very well-composed and mounted and directed and shot, is more about the sensitivity of the psyche and contours of privacy and socialization that invoke star optimism...or doom feelings.

Will Mercedes, the great friend of Ofelia, the protagonist who maybe is the Princess Moanna reincarnated, he able to assist the young girl in completing the challenge and evading the stern 'interferences' of the heart and maze stubbornly placed by Ofelia's military-stepfather (Vidal)? Will the faun-faerie guide and creatures see Ofelia once-more become Princess Moana for whom the Labyrinth was erected in the first-place by the god of the underworld? I won't tell you these details (spoilers!), but I can assure you this is one of those psyche-portraits of storytelling (and film-making!) that invoke that ghost-magic 'feeling' of why sensitivity is sometimes (maybe even often!) blended with the adventures of the subconscious! Very entertaining, and dazzling on Blu-ray disc (ha). Thanks for reading (and hope you catch this one),

"Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about" (Ralph Waldo Emerson). 

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)