The National Society of Film Critics, always the most open-minded at awards season, has named Guillermo del Toro's ""Pan's Labyrinth"" the best film of the year. Theirs is a brave selection, and a good one. Few films are so immediately horrifying and comforting, ugly and beautiful. The world needs more movies like this one.
""Pan's Labyrinth"" begins shortly after fascist forces have emerged victorious in the Spanish Civil War. It is 1944, and a little girl named Ofelia still mourns her father's death in battle. Her mother has remarried the powerful Captain Vidal and become pregnant with his child. At Vidal's outpost, Ofelia is exposed to the new regime's sadistic oppression of its opponents. In the old stone labyrinth outside her home, she meets a charismatic faun that insists she is a princess. The faun assigns her various tasks, some more dangerous than others. Through them, it says, she can reclaim her lost throne. Inside this fantasy world, Ofelia deals with the evil surrounding her.
Whether or not Ofelia's visions are real is beside the point; either perspective is valid. ""Pan's Labyrinth"" contains fauns, fairies, sightless monsters, disappearing doors, books with invisible text and voodoo dolls carved from mandrake roots. Yet the film is only partially a fantasy, and those expecting ""The Wizard of Oz"" will be thoroughly confused. There are sequences of fantastic visual mastery; Guillermo Navarro's cinematography proves dynamic and nuanced. But ""Pan's Labyrinth"" is also a brutal, graphic movie involving hideous torture and nauseating brutality.
The great majority of the two-hour film is spent within the realities of fascism. When Ofelia confronts a giant, vomiting frog, she says ""I'm not afraid of you."" She tells the truth: nothing could be as comparably monstrous and vile as Captain Vidal, who in one scene tortures a stutterer for not counting to three without getting stuck.
Ivana Barquero, as young Ofelia, offers the kind of performance child actors must dream of giving. Any young actor should study her performence over and over until they understand exactly why it's so affecting; she channels the constructive energy of every intelligent child confronted with the unexplainable. Sergi LA3pez, playing Captain Vidal, is equally captivating. Vidal is not a standard movie villain; rather, LA3pez succeeds in showing the face of evil. Quiet sadism is the scariest kind, and Vidal's predisposition to violence is disgustingly routine. Yet another gripping performance is given by Ariadna Gill. As Ofelia's mother, Gill paints a heartbreaking portrait of resigned hopelessness; unlike Ofelia, she has no fantasies to express her emotion through, living at Vidal's mercy.
This is not the first film about children coping with the post-war harshness of Franco's Spain. ""The Spirit of the Beehive,"" often cited as one of the greatest Spanish films, also involved children struggling with innocence lost. Yet while that film's child heroine embraced her fantasy world as a refuge, Ofelia of ""Pan's Labyrinth"" is a stronger character—and this is an even stronger movie. Del Toro spends no time on moral ambiguities: ""Pan's Labyrinth"" is a resounding condemnation of fascism. Ofelia's world is not a way to forget reality. Rather, it is the most appropriate recourse for Ofelia, who is too young and pure to take up real arms. Her private world—real or not—is her way of fighting fascism, and she fights bravely.
