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Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ will make you believe in make-believe

By KATE WINSTON

I would kill only in self-defense at first, but then people started transforming. A man became a water buffalo and I was the hunter. As the herd charged after me, I became a leaf on the river. As their hooves pounded through the leaves, I became the water itself. As the buffalo stampeded down the river, I became the rocks and escaped their fury. Even though I escaped, I realized that I was now the enemy, that everyone who attacked me did so in self-defense. I was a monster that had to destroy everything - my parents, my sister, even my cat. I woke up soaked in sweat and to the soft meow of my cat.

Pan’s Labyrinth confounds logic at the same time that it tugs at the truth behind our motivations to go to war. Ofelia, a young girl in postwar Spain, creates a fantasy world that is more beautiful and, in many ways, more logical than the real world she inhabits. Fauns and fairies lead her on a journey away from her cruel captain step-father and toward an underworld kingdom where she will reign as a princess.

The struggles in her life, such as her mother’s difficult pregnancy and her step-father’s unmerciful pursuit of rebels, are rewritten as consequences of her failures in her fantasy world. Ofelia is willing to take on such responsibility in a desperate attempt to create order and control in her life. She alone is able to make the moral decisions that will lead her to her beloved, deceased father.

Set in 1942, Pan’s Labyrinth is a poignant commentary of contemporary war as well. After all, what is the difference between a Spanish rebel and an Iraqi insurgent? And how do we justify the civilian death toll in a country we invaded for our own self-defense? Once we lose grip on the definition of the enemy, it becomes easier and easier to fall into that category ourselves. And with an administration that seems to ignore the wishes of our elected congress, it becomes more difficult to make sense of the American war machine.

Pan’s Labyrinth is one of the most ambitious and aesthetic movies in the theaters right now. I recommend attending the matinee.