What's going down?
In fascist-controlled Spain, a young girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is taken by her mother to live with her new stepfather, a grim, sadistic officer in control of an outpost. As a resistance gathers in the surrounding woods to attack the outpost, Ofelia encounters a mysterious Faun (Doug Jones), who tells her that she is the lost daughter of a Forest King and gives her the chance to return to his kingdom.
Who's in it?
Ivana Baquero leads as Ofelia, and it's quite an extraordinary performance. She manages to convincingly and naturally interact with both humans and creatures of fantasy, lending a sense of wonder and innocence to what is otherwise quite a dark film. Sergi Lopez steps up as the evil Captain Vidal and paints the character perfectly, starting out as a man full of thinly-controlled anger, and emerging as an absolute animal. Maribel Verdu plays the undercover resistance member Mercedes, bravely acting as a mole inside the outpost and standing up to the brutal Vidal. Doug Jones continues his record for donning prosthetics, playing both the Faun (Ofelia's contact to the world of fairies) and the terrifying Pale Man.
How's the production?
Guillermo del Toro's films always have a certain darkly magical atmosphere, and this film captures that essence perfectly. Everything about the film, from the forest setting to the grotesque fantasy creatures that populate it to the themes of innocence and sacrifice are evocative of the fairy tales one expects to find written in old, leather-bound volumes in the back of a library. Del Toro also manages to skillfully blend the contrasting plotlines of the fairy tale and the gritty resistance drama into one cohesive whole - the film would not come together as beautifully as it does if either side of the story were absent.
The Greatest Scene:
Ofelia's encounter with the Pale Man. She enters his lair knowing that she has limited time to retrieve the object she came for, and that she is facing a creature of terrible evil. When the monster is stirred, she flees from him, only to find that her way back to the human world has sealed. The suspense in this sequence is wire-tight, reportedly causing Stephen King to cringe at the film's premiere.
Personal Impressions:
This was my first experience with an entirely foreign-language film, and the fact that the dialogue is entirely conveyed through subtitles take nothing away from this fantasy masterpiece - if there was ever a question of whether cinema counts as art, this film makes a solid case for the affirmative. Guillermo del Toro brings his trademark style and devotion to what will likely be his magnum opus, a medieval fairy tale reimagined for a modern, adult audience. As for Sergi Lopez... there's a reason that villains are often the most memorable characters in film, and he encapsulates this perfectly; in the final scene he chases Ofelia through the titular labyrinth, and, upon finding her with his newly born son **SPOILER WARNING** pulls out his gun and shoots her in cold blood. Few villains in cinematic history can match his brutality and sadism, and its a performance that won't soon be forgotten.
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