Tonight, Jenny, Christine, Andrew and I went to see "El Laberinto del Fauno". The experience can be easily summed up in one word:
"Wow."
It is an incredible film, and I have not seen its kind since... Well, ever! When I was a child, I read "The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales"1 - a collection of two hundred and nine fairy tales by easily the most impressive names in all of academia when it comes to German folklore. It is full of the kind of fairy tales you don't hear any more. The kind that Disney does not make. The kind that, if Disney made them, would still get an 'R' rating in the theaters.
For an excellent case in point, check out the original version of Rapunzel:
"On the same day, however, that she cast out Rapunzel, the enchantress in the evening fastened the braids of hair which she had cut off, to the hook of the window, and when the King's son came and cried,
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair,"
she let the hair down. The King's son ascended, but he did not find his dearest Rapunzel above, but the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. "Aha!" she cried mockingly, "Thou wouldst fetch thy dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out thy eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to thee; thou wilt never see her more." The King's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell, pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did nothing but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery.<"
Slight difference, eh? I often imagine the Brothers Grimm being the Quentin Tarantino of their time. But back to the movie itself.
In short, it is the tale of a young girl who lives in a very, very brutal world with a bit of magic in it. Really fucking creepy magic, to be precise. Guillermo del Toro's vision is... Magnificent. We see the aftermath of Franco's victory in the Spain of 1944 as Ofelia's pregnant mother travels to a rural area in the north to rejoin 'The Captain' - a brutal fuck if there ever was one.
Ofelia's mother, Carmen, must have the worst luck in men. The first man she married had the luck to be a poor tailor and get killed in the war to boot, while the second was a dashing young captain by the name of Vidal who has a penchant for sadism; namely torturing people to death. Why Carmen hooked up with this dude, we will never know. His Tarantino-style of brutality fits his personality to a T, and while he manages to look sharp twenty-four seven, I somehow get the feeling that a woman might fall in love with ovarian cancer before him, to put it mildly. Apparently, not only is love blind, it also happens to suffer from dementia.
As Carmen journeys north to hook up with Captain Psycho, we watch as Ofelia performs small acts of kindness that get her noticed by some *seriously* creepy fairies. Far more towards the demonic rather than the angelic, these are the old-school fairies of yore. The kind that eat small children with sharp pointy teeth at the slightest mistake, where a single mis-step is the heroine's last one and fauns are not happy cute little men with hairy legs but rather highly disturbing looking goat / tree creatures that look like they belong more on a sexual predator poster somewhere than in a Disney movie.
While Ofelia's mother spends half the movie suffering from morning sickness [she somehow manages to make being pregnant seem like contracting the Black Plague], Ofelia herself is following a chittering, buzzing "OMG, WTF, KILL IT NOW!" sized praying mantis / fairy around without a thought in the world as to her own safety - "Ohhh look! A GIANT KREEPY BUGABOO! I wonder if it will be my FRIEND?!" *runs off chasing freaky-ass giant skeery bug*
Well, as it turns out, it actually does become her friend rather than sucking her brains out through a straw or anything like that. She follows it into the heart of an almost Celtic-looking labyrinth, full of dark and disturbing pagan imagery. It is most certainly not a happy little labyrinth made of shrubbery. No, this is the kind that feeds on human blood rather than fresh topsoil. At the center of the labyrinth, she meets Pan the faun. Pan is... Really, really creepy. I wouldn't turn my back around him. Hell, I wouldn't even *be* around him to begin with. As we all begin to doubt the existence of Ofelia's instinct for self-preservation, we find that in reality, she is the re-incarnated princess of a dark underground kingdom. To get home though, she must perform three tasks before the moon is full.
I would write more, but I don't wish to ruin it for you. Needless to say, it's worth seeing. It is not often that I think "Wow. That movie was actually worth what I paid for it!" and I do not say it lightly. If this is the kind of movie that would interest you, go see it. You'll like it :)
1You can read all 209 of them here - yay for public domain!
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