'Pan' is a journey worth taking

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 19, 2007 at midnight

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At the conclusion of a press screening of Pan's Labyrinth at September's Toronto International Film Festival, the journalist sitting next to me paused before uttering what seemed the only possible response.

"Well," he said, "that was a journey."

See the movie and you'll know why such an apparently banal remark sums things up perfectly. Part fairy tale and part horror movie, Pan's Labyrinth is striking and vigorous, a movie that obliterates the distinction between reality and fantasy and carries us along in its powerful wake.

Although director Guillermo del Toro makes use of animatronics and computer enhancement, nothing about Pan's Labyrinth feels technically motivated. Watching it can be compared to entering a deep forest without being sure that we'll ever find our way to the other side.

Del Toro (Cronos, Blade II, Hellboy and The Devil's Backbone) has made his most fully realized movie yet, centering his tale on 11-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero). Ofelia's mother (Maribel Verdu) travels to a forest outpost to take up residence with her new husband (Sergi Lopez), a captain in Franco's army.

Lopez' Capt. Vidal has been charged with stomping out the remnants of the opposition, and he does it with matter-of-fact sadism. He's a fascist aristocrat who sees most of the world's population as vermin.

Despite threats of danger, Capt. Vidal wants his wife with him because she's pregnant; he's certain the baby will be a boy, the only gender that has value to him when it comes to offspring. It's almost as if he wants to claim the baby's soul as soon as it emerges from the womb.

That's the basis of the fairy tale: Ofelia finds herself in an intolerable situation, and the Captain becomes the story's big bad wolf. No wonder Ofelia's drawn toward fantasy, a world in which the faun Pan (Doug Jones) tells her that she's supposed to become a princess and rejoin her real father in a magical kingdom.

Few movies do a better job at mixing fantasy and reality. The fantasy world in which Ofelia moves features many bizarre creatures, including the amazing Pale Man (also Jones), a scary fellow whose eyeballs rest on a plate in front of him until he inserts them into the palms of his hands.

These scenes don't differ in tone from the more realistic scenes, perhaps because del Toro believes the world of the imagination is as real as the world that produces fascist monsters.

Del Toro perfectly balances the movie's story elements. While Ofelia tries to claim her rightful place in the world of fantasy, the captain's chief maid (Ariadna Gil) and the local doctor (Alex Angulo) covertly provide aid to the rebels.

This backdrop of intrigue creates violent scenes that may have you turning away from the screen. Beautifully designed and full of its own strange poetry, Pan's Labyrinth is nonetheless not a children's movie. Take its "R" rating seriously.

The performances are all first rate, and Pan's Labyrinth becomes an increasingly encompassing experience, a movie made with the knowledge that we sometimes must travel to the deepest and darkest part of the forest to discover the greatest light.

A journey indeed.

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