Pan's Labyrinth

Saw this movie when it came out. I was approximately ten or eleven and far too young to grasp the thematic intricacies at play and probably to watch it, period. Probably not the best choice. In my memories it has a strong association with the first Disney Chronicles of Narnia movie that couldn’t have come out more than a year and a half earlier. Saw it again in my mid-teens to write up a Spanish class assignment, loved it, and largely put it on the back burner. Deserved more than that from me. I’m so happy I decided to give it another watch today. This is a fucking masterpiece, Guillermo Del Toro’s tour de force (out of a selection that includes greats like Cronos and even his Pinocchio rendition) and is quite genuinely one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. In hindsight, seeing Pan’s Labyrinth many years ago as a spiritual equivalent to the fantasy of the C.S. Lewis adaptation is unsurprising with so many surface level narrative parallels. Rather than C.S. Lewis’ Christian emphasis on rising above human suffering in the worldly battle against war and fascism by providing the parable of Aslan, Del Toro sets out on a much grimmer course that’s not without its own source of hope. Like HBO’s My Brilliant Friend, Pan’s Labyrinth seeks to translate the innocence of a young girl into a complex battleground of overwhelming austerity, political repression, and hopelessness. Like that Disney early 2000s Witch and the Wardrobe (a wonderful series of books with a single good film adaptation), a more contemporary “girl’s creepy escape into a magical realm” like the one in Gaiman’s Coraline and its own sublime adaptation, the flourishes of a Gabriel García Márquez novel, or Issa López’s criminally underrated Tigers Are Not Afraid, Del Toro dives deep into the fantastical world-building that serves as an escape for children who have otherwise been disregarded by those who care for them amongst violence and confusion. But he has no holds barred for the particular brand of punitive cruelty her stepfather represents and benefits from wrapping its adult themes around a stunning and uncanny fantasy journey that continues to push a sense of hope even in the midst of its massively bleak ending.