Pan's Crapyrinth

Huh. Well, that sure sucked some balls. I’m referring, of course, to the subject of 2007's first movie review –

Pan’s Labyrinth.

Billed as a fairy tale/horror story, I can say with confidence that it was pretty damn horrific. Set in Spain after the rise of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and Facism, Pan’s Labrynth tells the story of a young girl (Ofelia) who goes with her pregnant mother to live with her adoptive father, the father of her baby brother, a powerful Captain in Franco’s army. The girl gets drawn into a labyrinth by a fairy and taken down into some otherworldly location, where she speaks to some grotesque-looking faun. He tells her she’s some reincarnated princess for this land below, and she can return if she completes three tasks. Meanwhile, the Spanish army people are fighting off resistance fighters, the Captain is a sadistic asshole, and having the baby may kill Ofelia’s mom.

Warning: Spoilers follow. Seriously, if you want to watch the movie, don’t read.

So what’s the problem? First, there appears to be gore for the sake of gore, which I really don’t care for. I complained about the second episode of Heroes for the same reason – it seemed like they were mutilating corpses willy nilly for the sake of shock value, like “Ooh, this villain is so scary/badass, he somehow nails people horizontally to a wall, or freezes them and rips the upper portion of their body off, for no apparent reason.” If there’s a purpose behind the gore, that’s one thing. If there’s symbolism, that’s another. But if it’s just gore, I’ll pass. Maybe the symbolism was that this girl is experiencing horrors, real horrors, absolutely terrible things, and the only way to portray them adequately was to make them as disgusting as possible. Fine. But then the Captain bashes some guy’s face in with a bottle. Okay. Then some chick sticks a knife into his mouth (?) and slashes out the side of his face. Ew. Not only ew, but stupid. If you’ve got that much leeway in slashing him, why not cut his throat and be done with him? No, she sticks the knife in his mouth and cuts his face, allowing him to survive, then come after her. Retard. Then, at the end, the resistance fighter shoots him through the cheek. What the fuck? Are we to assume his aim was bad, or just that he honestly thinks shooting people through the cheek is a good way to finish them off?

Then there’s the “fairy tale” portion. Absolute crap. The frog in the tree – I’m assuming that was symbolic for something. Maybe the Nazis/Facists getting fat and rich off the people, and stifling growth. Fine. But that’s not exactly a bold statement, since the Nazi’s don’t have much of a fanbase these days.

Then the feast and the monster with eyes in his hands. First of all, why, when the monster has eyes in his hands, does he have to hold his hands up by his head, where most creatures’ eyes are? Doesn’t that kill the advantage of having eyes on your hands – that you can look all sorts of different places, that you can look around corners, that you’ve got an expanded field of vision? No, let’s hold them up by our head to look ridiculous. I mean, come on. Is he intended to be scary? Bizarre, certainly. Mentally challenged, clearly. But scary? Eh. Then, the idiot girl who eats the grapes, after being warned repeatedly not to eat the food. The faun told her straight out, it was a matter of life and death. Eat the fruit, you’re likely to die. So she goes in there, gets what she needs, starts to leave. Looks at the feast, and thinks “Hey, let’s have a grape, even though everyone and they momma said not to.” The fairies fly in, warn her off, she swats them away, and starts eating grapes. Her excuse afterward? “I didn’t think anyone would notice.” Dumbass! What about the “life or death” concept? Forget the monster sitting dormant at the end of the table; didn’t it even cross your mind the food might be poisoned? And Kristin pointed this out - - it’s not like there was any real compulsion. She wasn’t starving. There was no enchantment on the food drawing her to it. She was just a retard. “I didn’t think anyone would notice.” Gah. I wish the monster would have killed you.

Then there’s the two-dimensional Captain, who is always either a) an imperious soldier, committed to his own supremacy, the idea of honor and duty, and dying like a soldier, or b) bat-shit crazy and sadistic, killing and torturing at will, generally an asshole to those around him. A villain should have some sort of depth, something that makes understand and sympathize with what they’re doing. The Captain, much like this movie, had no redeeming qualities.

And the fairy tale ending? The girl died, spilling her own blood, thus completing her final task. Then she was rewarded in her kingdom. But the fairy tale clearly didn’t exist in the real world, because the faun wasn’t there when the Captain found Ofelia in the Labyrinth, and then she died. Lovely.

Okay, so maybe there was more to the movie. It’s gotten rave reviews, and everyone who I know that’s seen it seemed to enjoy it. I can see how someone would appreciate the story, find it moving, find it heartbreaking, find it mystifying. To me, it was just depressing. That’s not the kind of movie I want to watch.

So from what I can tell, the moral of the story was life sucks, then you die, and if you endured enough pain and suffering in life while still doing good deeds, you will be rewarded in the afterlife. Which, for an alleged fairy tale, is pretty fucking dark.

At least the movie ended. So, I guess, in a way, the theme came true – we suffered through a disgusting, depressing, thoroughly disappointing movie, and the only reward we got came once it was over.

My grade: D
Recommendation: Only if you hate yourself, and either want to subject yourself to a terrible movie, or you want your life to seem better by comparison.