‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ returns fairytales to darker roots

“Pan’s Labyrinth” is what fairytales used to be, long before Walt Disney got his politically correct hands on originally darker fair.

Pre-Disney fairytales evoked horror. They often involved grotesque deaths, unhappy endings and sadistic, rather than comical, villains. “Pan’s Labyrinth” is a return to that vein of storytelling, but it has a realistic twist that makes the fantastic elements of its story poignant.

Set in World War II-era Spain, the plot follows Ofilia, a young girl who moves to a fascist base with her sick, pregnant mother to live under the jurisdiction of her ruthless stepfather, the base’s commander.

There, through a chance meeting with a fairy, Ofilia is introduced to Pan, a mystical faun who says she is a reincarnated princess from a magical underworld. Pan tells Ofilia to accomplish three tasks to prove she is the true princess. After these tasks are completed, Pan promises she will enter a world of fantasy.

Accomplishing the tasks is difficult, as Ofilia lives under her stepfather’s terrifying rule. He desperately wants Ofilia’s mother to produce a male heir to continue his legacy.

At the same time, rebel forces hide in the surrounding woods. They struggle to survive with the covert aid of a physician and the commander’s female maid, Mercedes.

Director Guillermo Del Torro has created an amazing film in “Pan’s Labyrinth.” The movie is utterly chilling, visually stunning and yet still moving.

Often very violent, the film blurs the distinction between fantasy and reality in Del Torro’s world. This lack of distinction brings more wonder to the film’s fantasy sequences and more grit to its suspenseful real-world sequences.

By examining the relationship between imagination and childhood, “Pan’s Labyrinth” weighs the value of fantasizing when reality is too disturbing for anyone, much less a child, to accept or understand.

Ofilia finds the illogical steps of her fantastic missions more understandable than the brutality of wartime Spain. Her missions are involving and remarkable, complete with an aesthetic grotesqueness Del Torro has perfected since his last mainstream film, “Hellboy.”

These missions are punctuated by a chilling sequence involving the “Pale Man,” a wrinkled monster with eyeballs in his hands and a penchant for eating children who break the rules.

Ofilia’s stepfather is developed as a sadistic and menacing real-life villain. Like the Pale Man, the stepfather’s evil nature is attached to restrictions – but in his case, to satiate his violent appetite, he employs his militaristic rights as commander to gleefully torture and murder.

The time spent learning about the base’s inhabitants proves relevant when the film finally reaches its heartbreaking conclusion. By this conclusion, you might wish Del Torro had chosen a different destiny for his heroine, but ultimately, the ambiguity of the film’s final act perfectly reflects its major theme of imagination trouncing reality’s evils.

Grade: A