Iconoclasm Records #2
Here I am, back again with a heavily critical mood to criticize another cherished piece of entertainment: Pan’s Labyrinth.
Unlike my previous blog post on Stalker, this movie actually has redeeming qualities. I am generally a fan of Guillermo Del Toro’s tone and style (mainly Crimson Peak), but this movie didn’t land with me. Its overall story follows a girl dealing with a family and housing change in Spain in late WW2. Her new father, who’s a lout, leads a troop of soldiers while being a rather terrible dad and husband. She also gets involved in a series of trials provided by a creepy faun creature in a separate fantasy world. These plot elements are interesting and tell an overall cohesive story, though my suspension of disbelief did not extend far enough to overlook several significant problems I had with the story.
The main character, Ofelia, does several things I found convenient for the plot but not understandable/realistic for the character. During the 2nd trial she has to pick correctly from one of several options as well as not succumb to temptation from a table full of food that is guarded by a creepy fantasy monster should she eat from it; after she randomly (i.e., conveniently) chooses the right option, she randomly becomes tempted by the food and eats some. It wasn’t well-established that Ofelia was hungry at all, nor that the food was appealing (to be honest, it all looked kind of gross), so I didn’t buy her decision to give in to temptation. Couple that with the facts that the faun explicitly told her not to eat anything from the table and that the creepy fantasy monster that guarded the food was sitting right at the table ready to act, it just made her character look dumb. It altogether felt contrived, for the purpose of plot—it needed conflict, so she caused conflict to happen. I think the overall character isn’t really that much of a character, probably due to her being a child (and thus realistically not very developed mentally), which makes it difficult to understand or care about who she is and what she does.
I think the fantasy aspect of the movie, the trials themselves, altogether weren’t very compelling due to their ambiguity of purpose. I didn’t really know why Ofelia needed to complete the trials, nor did I really know why Ofelia wanted to complete them. The ending/climax seemed kind of arbitrary (and, again, convenient), like it happened to work out that she would face the decision to kill an innocent under the pressure of she, herself dying. It’s also convenient that her dying was what allowed her to supposedly pass the trial—if she chose not to go through with the trial and no one was there to kill her, what would happen then? Also also, the faun’s character and motives felt pretty arbitrary—due to Ofelia “failing” the second trial, the faun gets upset and says she won’t be able to do the third, but then later gives Ofelia the third trial anyway because… I don’t know. Anyway, the ending came off as more symbolic rather than satisfying.
The primary, real-world plotline had a few too many plot holes for my liking. Which is unfortunate, because for a fantasy film I don’t really want to be considering the logistics of historical warfare. I guess the war aspect conflicted with the fantasy aspect, though both were dark and gritty in different ways. From the trials not really being understandable, to Ofelia (and other) characters not really being understandable or realistic (or sympathetic), and to the warfare taking up most of the movie’s time while not being that interesting or consistent, Pan’s Labyrinth left me with a vaguely unsatisfied feeling that was further lowered by the overall depressing and grim tone.
