A PAIR OF REVIEWS: PAN’S LABYRINTH AND
VOLVER
Reviewed by Joel Johnson
PAN’S LABYRINTH
Directed by
Guillermo del Toro; director of photography, Guillermo Navarro; edited by
Bernat Vilaplana; music by Javier Navarrete
With: Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ivana Baquero, Ariadna Gil, Alex Angulo,
and Doug Jones. Rated R. Running time: 119 minutes
With Pan’s
Labyrinth, director and screenwriter Guillermo del Toro has created an
incredible work of art. It is beautiful, horrific, and thought provoking.
This film is most remarkable for the way it integrates both realism and
fantasy into its story. These frequently mix like oil and water, but here
they blend together, creating a powerfully compelling spectacle of the ugly
aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and the grotesquery of del Toro’s dark
fable. It is a circular film beginning exactly where it ends, but it offers
its audience the opportunity to shape its meaning. Although featuring some
of the best-known actors of European cinema in Sergi López (Dirty Pretty
Things, With a Friend Like Harry, and An Affair of Love),
Ariadna Gil (Belle epoque, Celestial Clockwork,
Libertarias, and Second Skin), and Maribel Verdú (Y tu mamá
también, Goya in Bordeaux, Belle epoque, and
Lovers), the film really rests on the prosthetic-encased Doug Jones in a
dual role as Pan and the Pale Man and to an even greater degree on young
Ivana Baquero.
Baquero plays Ofelia, the central character in the film.
She has been brought to the mountains with her pregnant mother (Gil) to be
with her stepfather Capitán Vidal (López) as Franco’s troops try to root out
the last vestiges of the Republican resistance. This young girl is coping
with the very realistic challenges of her mother’s marriage to a cold and
disapproving stepfather as well as the impending birth of a new sibling. In
the film’s fable, she’s a young princess trying to find a way back to her
father’s underworld kingdom. Baquero delivers an outstanding performance
that has not received much attention in the run-up to the Oscar nominations
even as the film has garnered six other nominations (Foreign-language Film,
Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Music, Make-Up, and Art Direction). It
is a performance that demands a full palette of emotions and must be seen as
fully credible for the film to work. She does receive considerable help from
the talented cast and the equally talented crew. Javier Navarrete’s superb
score doesn’t draw attention to itself but is highly evocative of the film’s
emotional tones. The film’s powerful visuals are the result of terrific
scene-setting art direction, some fantastic special effects, absolutely
stunning and gruesome use of make-up, and subtly effective cinematography.
Gil captures a woman coming to grips with the high cost of the security her
marriage has bought. Verdu is excellent in the pivotal role of Capitán
Vidal’s head household servant, who is secretly helping the Republican
rebels. However, the most powerful supporting performance comes from Sergi
López as the cold-hearted and vicious Capitán. Clearly, this film is one of
the very best of 2006.
NOTE: One doesn’t have to know anything about the Spanish Civil War
to appreciate Pan’s Labyrinth, but it probably would
help. We in America don’t think much about this war now. It was an adjunct
to World War II, coming in the last few years before Nazi Germany invaded
Poland in 1939, with the winner Generalissimo Franco ruling until 1975.
Franco’s Fascists attracted support from Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s
Italy, while the Republicans were supported by Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Idealistic young men from all over Europe and America felt that this was
where they should go to make a stand against injustice. However, it doesn’t
neatly fit into our thinking about a war that we date from 1941 to 1945 with
victory over Germany, Italy, and Japan. Much of what I have learned about
this war came from movies either specifically about the war or somehow
addressing its aftermath. Those movies include: Ken Loach’s
Land and Freedom,
Vicente Aranda’s
Libertarias, Fernando Trueba’s
Belle epoque,
José Luis Cuerda’s Butterfly,
Imanol Uribe’s Carol’s Journey,
Víctor Erice’s
Spirit of the Beehive,
Montxo Armendáriz’
Broken Silence, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I would
recommend seeing the documentary
The Good Fight: The Abraham
Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and, of course, Guillermo del
Toro’s earlier film The Devil’s Backbone.
VOLVER
Pedro Almodóvar;
director of photography, José Luis Alcaine; edited by José Salcedo; music by
Alberto Iglesias; art director, Salvador Parra
With: Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo,
Antonio de la Torre,
Neus Sanz,
and Chus Lampreave. Rated R. Running time: 121 minutes
1/2
Spain’s best-known filmmaker of the post-Franco era is
Pedro Almodóvar. His latest film is a vehicle for favorite leading ladies,
including Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, and Chus Lampreave.
Almodóvar himself has commented that it was his intention in writing the
film for it to showcase Penélope Cruz because he had felt that she has not
been well served by the roles she has received in most of her
English-language films in America. The family drama Almodóvar has created
has certainly gotten Cruz noticed by the voters of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) with a nomination for Best Actress. Here
she is beguiling and powerful like the great Sophia Loren in her heyday
during the 1960s, even though reportedly Cruz needed a little augmentation
for her backside to present a more womanly, Loren-like figure.
While this film is about secrets, betrayals, revenge, and murder, it is
relatively easy to overlook these dark themes. The film’s violence and the
betrayals all occur off-camera. Only the aftermath needs to be sorted out
and cleaned up. The deepest betrayals are perpetrated by men, and they end
up being the murder victims. Men, in fact, get precious little screen time
in this film. Raimunda’s (Cruz) husband Paco (Antonio
de la Torre) may be onscreen longer in death than in life. This film is
mostly about the relationships between mothers, daughters, sisters, and
female friends. There are missing mothers, misunderstandings, fights, and
rejections; but there are also love, sacrifice, loyalty, and forgiveness.
While this sounds like gooey hyperglycemia-inducing melodrama,
Almodóvar
maintains his characteristically light touch. It would certainly be a
surprise for most other directors given this type of material but not for
Almodovar, who manages to deftly keep the proceedings spritely and
straightforwardly flowing along.
It should also be mentioned that this
film relies less upon over-the-top quirkiness than perhaps any of his
previous films, and the characters seem remarkably normal for an
Almodóvar
film. Cruz has the central role that must engage the audience for the film
to work, and she more than delivers the goods needed to keep the audience
rooting for her. She is also well supported by her costars Maura (as her
long-dead mother),
Dueñas
(as her sister Sole), Lampreave (as
Tía
Paula), young Yohana Cobo (as Raimunda’s daughter Paula), and Blanca
Portillo (as long-time family friend Agustina). The film doesn’t elaborate,
but Almodóvar’s
script certainly opens the door to speculation that Agustina and Agustina’s
sister Inés (Neus Sanz) may have even closer ties to Raimunda and Sole. By
the end of the film, the audience’s heartstrings have been tugged by each of
the actresses. While Volver has a cloying, ingratiating appeal to the
heart, this is not a film that aims for an ultimate truth and burrows deeply
into the marrow of one’s bones, despite the fact that Volver is all
about the pain inflicted in our most intimate relationships. The result is a
pleasing night at the movies but not a film of greatness.
