Pan's Labyrinth 2006
In Pan’s Labyrinth the main villain uses violence and torture to get what he wants. So does the director of the movie, but he uses it to manipulate his audience rather than get information from rebels. It must have worked because critics absolutely raved over this movie. This is such a discordant mess of a movie that only critics could like it. It centers around a little girl after the Spanish Civil War is over and Franco’s victorious fascists are wiping up remnants of resistance. Her pregnant mother is sent to a forward base to be with her husband (not the girl’s father, who was killed during the war).
I was expecting much of the movie to take place in the fantasy world seen in the previews and talked about in the reviews. But really most of the movie takes place during the war, focusing on how evil the father is and the agonizingly painful health problems the pregnant mother has. There are some rebels, of course, who we are supposed to like. Every now and then the girl goes into the Labyrinth where these bizarre and scary monsters live. One of them slices up and eats children.
So you have three different stories going on, all of them horrible. There is nothing that really holds any of this together. There is no character development from the mother, who loves her daughter and is in pain all the time. None from the father, who is a caricature of evil. The girl is appealing and sweet, but the labyrinth doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the rest of the movie. Though reviewers have said the fantasy world is an escape from the war, honestly, the girl isn’t exposed to the war very much until the very end. So it’s more of an escape from the boredom of living in the country and the stress of watching her sick mother. But it is a nightmare of an escape, not really a fantasy, like Chronicles of Narnia.
My problem is there is absolutely nothing redeeming in here. It’s just dark awful stories the whole way through until the dark awful end. Even Schindler’s List had one nice undercurrent to it. And The Diary of Anne Frank was mostly just about her being with her family, with a tragically sad ending when the words stop. This movie has nothing but outsized, prolonged evil. It is like watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but not as funny.
While there is some nice cinematography (it was nominated for an Oscar for this; so was the director) and the story keeps your attention, I can’t give this movie more than a D.
Owned on: Digital