A little while ago I finally saw Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006) by Guillermo del Torro (Blade, Hellboy), yet another dark fantasy film. I can’t say I know what to make of it... Much Ado about Nothing? It’s set during the Franquist repression in Spain at the end of the Second World War. A woman named Carmen travels with her young daughter Ofelia to her new husband, the Falangist Vidal. To escape her new life with this brutal military stepfather, and to escape the general violence in her war-torn country, Ofelia retreats into a fantasy in which she is a long-lost princess of the Underworld. A Faun in an overgrown labyrinth gives her three assignments to test if she really is the daughter of the King of the Underworld.
It’s true that the girl’s fantasy world (a reversed Platonic Cave allegory, if you will) contrasts poignantly with the horrors of the real world. Her pregnant mother grows increasingly ill. One of the servant maids who took the girl into her care turns out to be an agent of the guerrilla resistance. But other than as contrast with and escape from reality, Ofelia’s fantasy barely interacts with her real life. So the two stories mostly remain separate, neither one of them very compelling... Nor am I sure what to make of the names of the female characters: Carmen (the gypsy factory girl who seduces a soldier, only to fall in love with a bullfighter); Ofelia (Hamlet’s potential bride who met her untimely death)... How far am I to take the significance of their names? And does that mean that the girl’s fantasy is a death wish, suicidal ideation, a mortal hallucination? I can’t make sense of it all...
It’s true that the girl’s fantasy world (a reversed Platonic Cave allegory, if you will) contrasts poignantly with the horrors of the real world. Her pregnant mother grows increasingly ill. One of the servant maids who took the girl into her care turns out to be an agent of the guerrilla resistance. But other than as contrast with and escape from reality, Ofelia’s fantasy barely interacts with her real life. So the two stories mostly remain separate, neither one of them very compelling... Nor am I sure what to make of the names of the female characters: Carmen (the gypsy factory girl who seduces a soldier, only to fall in love with a bullfighter); Ofelia (Hamlet’s potential bride who met her untimely death)... How far am I to take the significance of their names? And does that mean that the girl’s fantasy is a death wish, suicidal ideation, a mortal hallucination? I can’t make sense of it all...
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