The Fairy Tale Darkness of Guillermo del Toro.
SPOILERS FOR PAN’S LABYRINTH FOLLOW
I’ve been a fan of Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro since I saw the first Hellboy film. At the time, I didn’t know who he was and I don’t think a lot of people outside of film buffs did but as the film unfolded across the screen I was spellbound by the scope of this simple film about a demon fighting demons. The sets, the costumes, the performances, and the characters, everything was so rich, deep and intriguing. The film captured my imagination like nothing else and I just had to find out more about who made this film, their other work and just where these fantastic ideas came from. I watched the other of Del Toro’s Hollywood films (Hellboy 2, Blade 2, Crimson Peak, Pacific Rim) and was still struck by the captivating allure of the horrific, creepy yet somehow folkloric aspects in the films. The angel of death in Hellboy 2 looks as if they stepped out of a H.P Lovecraft story crossbred with Grimm’s fairy tales. While the Reapers in Blade 2 are a modern menace of grime, blood and ravenous hunger they are still infused with that folkloric magic thanks to the makeup effects and the reactions from the traditional vampires (the reaper autopsy is vintage Del Toro).
Then I saw Pan’s Labyrinth. I must admit, the first time I tried to watch the film, I made it as far as the toad scene before turning the film off. Despite that brief amount of time, the film elicited in me the same feelings I had experienced when first watching Hellboy and I remained intrigued by the movie. I watched it in full for the first time this weekend and I can say without hyperbole that it deserves its reputation as one of the best film ever made.
It’s vintage Del Toro, a dark fairy tale set in Spain in 1944 it follows Ofelia, a young girl who discovers an ancient maze in the woods behind the house of her fascist step father which leads her into a world of beguiling, beautiful and yet profoundly dangerous supernatural creatures.
I started reading Fairy tales and horror at the same time. So I was learning about Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty at the same time I was discovering Edgar Allan Poe, H.P Lovecraft and for whatever reason that clash in my head always fixated horror in a moment of childhood.
This clash gives his films and the creatures within them a visceral power, the Faun is an unnaturally tall figure of twisting roots and branches infused into a goat like body, its almost as if he has ripped himself from the living earth itself. His long, grasping fingers, rasping voice and creeping voice contrast the eerie.
What struck me while watching the film is that while Del Toro infuses his films with distinct horror themes its often not the supernatural creatures who are the true monsters but the human characters.
The horrors of Franco’s Spain are embodied in Ofelia’s stepfather and his brutal, unflinching pursuit of Spanish rebels. He barely acknowledges Ofelia and spends the majority of the film fixated on his unborn son. He even informs the doctor tending to her to ‘save the baby’ if she should be in danger during childbirth, not for any benevolent reason but in order for the child to act as a living monument to his father’s legacy. He is ultimately denied this when his former housekeeper and secret rebel Mercedes tells him ‘He will never even known your name’ before shooting him dead. While creatures like the Faun and his fairies are guised in what some would consider monstrous forms despite their true nature, the Captain by contrast is robed in the finery of a high ranking soldier, he drinks expensive whiskey, carries a pocket watch (which also relates back to his obsession with leaving a legacy) and shaves with a straight razor, always so careful to present a clean, gentlemanly and above all saviour like figure to those around him despite engaging in torture, condemning his wife to death despite professing his love for her and abusing Ofelia. It’s through the character of the Doctor in contrast with the Faun that Del Toro explores the relationship between folklore, superstition and the modern world. When Ofelia’s mother almost suffers a miscarriage, she begs the Faun to help cure her mother’s illness and while initially dismissive he acquiesces and gives her a mandrake root which Ofelia uses to ease her mother’s pain where the doctor’s medicine could not. Despite her mother telling her that Ofelia is too old for fairy tales, believing them to be nonsense, its here I think Del Toro informs the audience that sometimes we all need to have a little faith and believe in something beyond ourselves even if it might appear ridiculous to others. Carmen’s lack of faith and her husbands cruel dismissal of Ofelia and her books as ‘Crap’ leads to not only the downfall of Carmen but by extension the Captain himself.
The final lines of the film after Ofelia returns to the fairy realm as its princess reveal the coda for the film: And it is said that the Princess returned to her father’s kingdom. That she reigned there with justice and a kind heart for many centuries. That she was loved by her people. And that she left behind small traces of her time on Earth, visible only to those who know where to look.
Magic exists all around us; you only need to be on the lookout for it.
