I have a great fondness for cinema's fantasists, and there has been no modern creator of movie monsters and magic like Guillermo Del Toro. I've followed his career since the 1990s, through the many announced projects that never got made, and all the long hiatuses between films. He's one of the most recent directors I've written a "Great Directors" post for, but I honestly can't imagine the modern movie landscape without him.
Del Toro's Spanish language films have always been better than his Hollywood output, because he's had far more creative freedom with them. His films about the Spanish Civil War, "The Devil's Backbone" and "Pan's Labyrinth," are especially potent, offering a child's eye view of the horrors of war, through the lenses of a ghost story and a fairy tale narrative, respectively. I had difficulty choosing between the two of them, but in the end I decided on "Pan's Labyrinth" because of the stronger characters. By design, they're new takes on old archetypes - a little girl who must go on a quest, a trickster Faun who offers help, and several terrible enemies to overcome.
Monsters are at the center of most Del Toro films, not just the creations of latex and fur, but the human beings who are capable of far worse horrors. While the Faun and the Pale Man have become iconic, the movie's best monster is Captain Vidal, the evil Francoist who ruthlessly hunts down revolutionaries and subjugates everyone in his household. Ofelia's private rebellion against him is mirrored in both her fight against the fairy tale monsters of the Faun's world, and in the actions of Mercedes and the other rebels working against Vidal. What's so compelling and unexpected about the film is that "Pan's Labyrinth" is a grimly violent, unflinching war story and also a full throated fairy tale, full of fantasy flourishes, at the same time. The two sides of the film complement each other, in a universe wide enough to accommodate them both.
I appreciate that Guillermo Del Toro has consistently claimed that everything that happens in "Pan's Labyrinth" is real, and not just a product of Ofelia's imagination - even though the film itself seems more undecided. It reflects his commitment to the use of dream logic and the young child's viewpoint. The different parts of the story, and different realities don't quite tie together as neatly as I expected, and some of the symbolism remains opaque, inviting plenty of personal interpretation. I like that Del Toro lets parts of this universe remain mysterious and unknown, leaving little connections to other works, like the ruined labyrinth and the unfinished snippets of various stories, to point toward deeper, cavernous depths.
Visually, the film is utterly stunning. I love how the fantasy elements are realized in "Pan's Labyrinth" - full of danger and horror as much as awe and wonder. There's always such an unreal, stylized look to Guillermo Del Toro's work, especially the use of color and lighting. Not everything has a real world counterpart, and we see a mix of different influences, some literary and some mythological. Here, the Faun and the other creatures are tied very closely to the natural world, an extension of the hidden, subterranean parts of the landscape that echo Ofelia's subconscious. There are always little details and signs of extra effort put into every part of the frame. A great deal of the film's marketing centered on the lengths Del Toro and Doug Jones went to in order to bring their wonderfully tactile monsters to life.
Though the story is dark, the film is full of little pleasures - the murmured lullaby acting as a main theme, Ofelia's new dress turning her into an Alice in Wonderland figure (which is almost immediately subverted), and quick cameos by several familiar actors from other Del Toro projects. Several motifs and design choices recur throughout his work, and are easily recognizable. The nocturnal spirits in his recent "Pinocchio" film, for instance, immediately recall the design of the Faun. However, as much as I've enjoyed Del Toro's recent films, I've been waiting for him to make another Spanish language film, something more personal. A "Pan" sequel, "3993," was in the works for a while, but remains in limbo like so many of the other projects with his name attached over the years.
Despite all the setbacks, Del Toro has made a dozen films to date, and no one else could have made them. And I hope we'll have many more in the years ahead.
What I've Seen - Guillermo Del Toro
Cronos (1993)
Mimic (1997)
The Devil's Backbone (2001)
Blade II (2002)
Hellboy (2004)
Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
Pacific Rim (2013)
Crimson Peak (2015)
The Shape of Water (2017)
Nightmare Alley (2021)
Pinocchio (2022)
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