The fantastical world of a girl's imagination and the harsh existence of life in Franco's Spain in the 1940s come together in this new film by writer and director Guillermo del Toro to create an atmosphere where nightmares become reality and vise versa.
The journey begins when the adventurous, book-clutching Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) travel to stay with the stern and cruel Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), Carmen's husband. The audience learns of another story, which seems to be out of the pages of one of Ofelia's books -- a story of a princess trying to regain her throne. A voice-over helps us understand the details, which involve the moon-branded Ofelia, who has yet to discover her royal past. Her imagination is as concrete as reality, whether it is the military environment of her stepfather's camp or the fairy disguised as a praying mantis that she sees the first night she is there.
When she decides to follow that fairy, Ofelia discovers the magic of the Labyrinth, which lies just beyond the camp and is formed from ancient stones creeping with damp vegetation. She descends into its depths and encounters a faun who informs Ofelia of her importance and presents her with a book as an introduction to various tasks that she must complete for him to become her true, royal self. Though the magic begins in the Labyrinth, it is the within the rest of Ofelia's story where the magic stays.
Night creatures and helpful fairies aren't the only unearthly beings she meets. The remainder of her tasks require face-to-face encounters with disgusting, oversized amphibians and terrible, carnivorous monsters.
During the day, the situation at the camp is not much better, as Captain Vidal needlessly murders anyone he suspects opposes him and orders attacks against the Resistance in the surrounding forest. Ofelia watches as her mother painfully copes with complications of pregnancy and learns of Capitan Vidal's true unemotional attachment to his wife.
The one light in Ofelia's life at the camp is Mercedes (Maribel Verdu), who shows compassion toward the young girl, and is not blind to the harsh policies of the captain. Even though Mercedes acknowledges that she lost faith in fairies and magical beings long ago, she is accepting of Ofelia. They also share secrets with one another, namely that Mercedes' knowledge has a bigger part to play in the outcome of the political tensions than anyone realizes.
Fantasy and reality begin to merge as the faun's book leads her on adventures whose objectives become apparent as she completes each step. The book also begins to predict events in the real world that become influenced by Ofelia's actions in the fantastic world. And Ofelia must continue to operate between working to become a princess and living in insignificance at the base.
Del Toro's work in Pan's Labyrinth is as magic as the story. The unworldly characters are as nightmarish as one can imagine as Ofelia navigates through the faun's instructions. Her bravery and the strength of the other female characters shine and prove the meaninglessness with which Captain Vidal labels them untrue. They make more of a difference in their world than the Captain or any of his men claim to be doing. This is a film portrays the brutality of war-time tactics, the will to combat them and the innocence of a young girl who realizes the power that she has, even when the surrounding world doesn't. It provides a chance to enter another world and a chance to see what one can make of the world in which he or she lives, even after stepping out of the theater.
