{"id":167,"date":"2007-01-19T00:04:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-19T04:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=167"},"modified":"2009-09-10T22:13:12","modified_gmt":"2009-09-11T02:13:12","slug":"pans-labyrinth-2006-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\""I'm\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I’m NOT ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!”: Doug Jones as Goatboy in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pretenci\u00f3n<\/span><\/em><\/h1>\n

[xrr rating=3\/5]<\/span><\/p>\n

Pan\u2019s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno).\u00a0<\/em>Starring Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi L\u00f3pez, Maribel Verd\u00fa, Doug Jones, \u00c1lex Angulo, Manolo Solo, C\u00e9sar Vea, and Roger Casamajor. Music by Javier Navarrete. Cinematography by Guillermo Navarro. Edited by Bernat Vilaplana. Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. (Picturehouse\/Warner Sogefilms, 2006, Color, 114 minutes, in Spanish with subtitles. MPAA Rating: R.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

One consequence of Hollywood\u2019s descent into the morass of mindless formula-driven folderol was the rise of independent filmmakers. They\u2019ve stepped in to fill the void left by unimaginative producers who cynically market the same tired sequels, remakes, and thinly veiled plagiarisms of last year\u2019s blockbusters.<\/p>\n

Pan\u2019s Labyrinth,<\/em>\u00a0billed as a \u201cfairy tale for adults,\u201d has\u00a0almost<\/em>\u00a0everything I love in moviemaking: great performances; riveting action; superior production values, including scrupulously researched costumes and sets; tight, precise editing; gorgeous cinematography with rich, warm colors that embrace the eye; and a self-assured director who seamlessly melds special-effects sequences with the drama, without jarring the viewer\u2019s visual sensibilities. Universally praised by critics,\u00a0Pan\u2019s Labyrinth\u00a0<\/em>recently won three Oscars, including best cinematography, art direction, and makeup.<\/p>\n

Yet, something\u2019s\u00a0missing, and it ain’t Bunny Lake.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

What were the best bedtime stories you remember? Dollars-to-doughnuts, they were the ones in which mom and dad kept you in suspense, doling out the fable in miserly doses. \u201cAnd\u00a0then<\/em>\u00a0what happened, Daddy?\u201d you\u2019d ask over and over as you sat up in bed, gripping the blankets in breathless anticipation of news about the hero\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n

Like a bedtime story,\u00a0Pan\u2019s Labyrinth<\/em>\u00a0opens with narration. It\u2019s a device useful in prefacing or encapsulating a fantasy story\u2019s basic premise, but it\u2019s best used\u00a0briefly<\/em>\u2014just enough to orient the audience and hint at what lies ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, from frame one, the narrator tells us that once upon a time there was a princess who lived in an underground paradise, where there was no pain or fear. But, dreaming of what life must be like above on Earth (much like the mythical heroine Undine), she escaped to live among the mortals and died as a mortal.<\/p>\n

Fine\u2014a great set-up. But then the narrator\u00a0cannot shut up:<\/em>\u00a0\u201cHowever, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess\u2019s soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cut to a Rolls-Royce limo driving along a road through the forest, where we meet the story\u2019s heroine\u2014a beautiful young girl, Ofelia (played by Ivana Baquero), accompanying her pregnant mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil). We immediately learn that the bloody Spanish Civil War is nearing its end, and that Ofelia likes to lose herself in fairy-tale books. Then, while the car is stopped in the woods, she discovers a large grasshopper\u2014actually a fairy in disguise.<\/p>\n

Thus, about five minutes in\u2014given information that\u2019s telegraphed as clumsily as a Rex Grossman pass\u2014we already know that (a) Ofelia is the ancient princess incarnate, and that (b) the mother-daughter story is merely a vehicle to transport her back to her underground kingdom.<\/p>\n

So, at the outset,\u00a0Pan\u2019s Labyrinth<\/em>\u00a0breaks the first rule of storytelling:\u00a0Do not give away the ending<\/em>. That\u2019s why it\u2019s called \u201cthe\u00a0end<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>As Eli Wallach said in\u00a0The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:<\/em>\u00a0\u201cWhen you have to shoot,\u00a0shoot.\u00a0<\/em>Don\u2019t talk.\u201d Not just good advice for gunslingers, but for filmmakers as well.<\/p>\n

Forced to accompany Ofelia along on her predestined journey, I tell myself: \u201cPerhaps you\u2019re being too harsh. After all, our heroine is a sweet, precocious girl with a vast imagination. Maybe the narration was a red herring, meant to throw us off the trail.\u201d So we continue.<\/p>\n

We next learn that Carmen has brought Ofelia to live with her new stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi L\u00f3pez), in a castle that\u2019s been converted into a company headquarters for part of Generalissimo Franco\u2019s cavalry. Vidal, who commands the outpost, is a brusque martinet with a sadistic streak. He disdains Ofelia and regards Carmen as little more than a vessel to bear him a son to carry on the family name. Outside the castle, the forest is thick with Republican rebels whose gunfire pesters the soldiers and frightens Ofelia and her bedridden mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow, what a horribly unsuitable life Ofelia has been forced into,\u201d I think. But, sure enough, one night the grasshopper\/fairy shows up to lure Ofelia to its lair, the underground labyrinth that\u2019s conveniently located on HQ property. There, Ofelia meets Pan (Doug Jones), a cloven-hoofed man-goat. Pan informs Ofelia that she\u2019s been chosen to perform three deeds that will require all her daring, cunning, and sober judgment.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat!\u201d I\u2019m thinking. \u201cThis story\u2019s salvageable after all! Now, the rest of it will involve Ofelia\u2019s adventure through the dank underground maze.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what happens. Ofelia is sent back\u00a0up<\/em>\u00a0to face the dreariness of life in the castle and the horror of warfare.<\/p>\n

Yes, Ofelia is resourceful, compassionate, and brave. But, there\u2019s no\u00a0mystery <\/em>or suspense<\/em>. Whether she\u2019s stealing a golden key from a giant evil toad, nursing her frail mother to health with the aid of a magical root put under her bed, or re-entering the labyrinth to filch another treasure, the narrator\u2019s conceit has reduced Ofelia from a heroine to an automaton performing predictably heroic\u00a0acts<\/em>. What rightfully should have been a suspenseful tale of a little girl\u2019s emerging heroism instead becomes a tedious exercise in connecting easily anticipated plot dots.<\/p>\n

The movie ditches the fantasy quicker than you can say \u201cAbraham Lincoln Brigade,\u201d and the Spanish Civil War plot comes to dominate. Captain Vidal is one bad hombre, leading a posse of officers so rigidly fascistic they even\u00a0open their umbrellas<\/em>\u00a0in heel-clicking unison. When they capture some saintly peasant\u00a0partisanos<\/em>, Vidal takes special glee in offing them, point-blank, with head shots from his Luger. For me, Vidal came off as an unintentional parody of Al Pacino\u2019s coke-addled gangster Tony Montana in\u00a0Scarface<\/em>: He sneers viciously and punctuates his dialogue with the f-word as much as an R-rated movie will allow, which is all the time.\u00a0<\/em>I kept waiting for him to break out at any moment with, \u201cYou wanna f*ck with me? Okay.\u00a0Say hello to my little friend!\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

At this point, I\u2019m thinking, \u201cWhat\u00a0<\/em>fairy tale? What\u00a0labyrinth?\u201d\u00a0<\/em>I suddenly find myself fantasizing about director del Toro and his producers meeting during pre-production:<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d del Toro says, \u201cso we\u2019ve got about a half-hour of this medieval underground fantasy stuff that we can beef up to two hours with lots of mind-blowing CGI special effects and surround sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fat money-guy sucking his stogy and blowing smoke in everyone\u2019s face ain\u2019t convinced, though. \u201cIt\u2019s been done. Last year.\u00a0Lord of the Rings.\u00a0<\/em>Got anything else?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, so how about we take the\u00a0Lord of the Rings\u00a0<\/em>story and then bring in\u00a0For Whom the Bell Tolls<\/em>\u2014you know, to fill it out?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGenius!\u201d the money guy exclaims. \u201cRun with it!\u201d<\/p>\n

So, in the tension-laden penultimate scene\u2014after Pan has given Ofelia a chance to redeem herself by bringing him her newborn baby brother\u2014she, in an act of defiance, refuses to sacrifice the kid to his clutches. Very noble. Then, Ofelia is subsequently\u2014and perfectly predictably\u2014dispatched by Vidal\u2019s pistol. No, I haven\u2019t given away the ending: you could see it coming an hour ahead of time.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0ought<\/em>\u00a0to have been a heart-rending, cathartic moment becomes instead an\u00a0afterthought.<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cGee, I was\u00a0wondering<\/em>\u00a0when the heartless Captain Vidal would shoot Ofelia, so that she could pass her final test and resume her rightful reign as princess of the Labyrinth Realm\u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n

As the credits rolled, I sat there fuming to myself.\u00a0You mean I sat through this thing just to be served the shopworn moral that \u201cthis Earthly life is but a vale of tears\u201d? I thought I was spending my $7.50 to\u00a0<\/em>escape\u00a0that sort of thing for two hours<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Feeling like the victim of a manipulative emotional mugging, I bolted from my seat. While in the lobby afterward, I overheard a\u00a0gringo<\/em>\u00a0couple exclaiming what a masterpiece\u00a0Pan\u2019s Labyrinth\u00a0<\/em>was. Mostly, they discussed the ethereal lighting, the upbeat soundtrack, the great special effects\u2014everything\u00a0except<\/em>\u00a0the story. But, they can be excused, because middle-class\u00a0gringos<\/em>\u00a0are easily lulled into thinking that watching movies with subtitles makes them erudite and culturally sophisticated.<\/p>\n

I was more inclined to agree with the Mexican guy whom I heard giving his pal his own assessment: \u201cI knew it\u2019d end that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d his friend rejoined, \u201cme too. The f*cking narrator said it would.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, the film industry has come full-circle. In the decade or so since the trickle of independent films has grown to a torrent, the young Turks operating outside of the system have proven that they too<\/em> can create works just as slick, hackneyed, and shallow as their Hollywood counterparts. The term \u201cindependent\u201d once described\u00a0wunderkind\u00a0<\/em>upstarts like Orson Welles and John Cassavetes or geniuses like Alfred Hitchcock and Otto Preminger who earned the clout to strike out on their own. Now, it\u2019s become a euphemism for \u201cdependent on the good graces of Robert Redford and film festival juries.\u201d I offer\u00a0Pan\u2019s Labyrinth<\/em>\u00a0as Exhibit A that the \u201cindependent revolution\u201d is over.<\/p>\n

However, if you want to see a truly spellbinding fantasy flick that twists and turns and offers up a universally uplifting message at its end, I recommend\u00a0Labyrinth<\/em>, the 1986 movie starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. It speaks volumes about the current state of independent film that the Muppets\u2019 late creator, Jim Henson, could have delivered a yarn more gripping and suspenseful than this offering from the indies\u2019 latest fair-haired boy.<\/p>\n

Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 “I’m NOT ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!”: Doug Jones as Goatboy in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” \u00a0 Pretenci\u00f3n [xrr rating=3\/5] Pan\u2019s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno).\u00a0Starring Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi L\u00f3pez, Maribel Verd\u00fa, Doug Jones, \u00c1lex Angulo, Manolo Solo, C\u00e9sar Vea, and Roger Casamajor. Music by Javier Navarrete. Cinematography by Guillermo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,35,48,45,37,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-costume-dramas","category-dramas","category-fantasy-movies","category-foreign-films","category-independent-films","category-war-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}