Wednesday, May 02, 2007
El Labirinto del Fauno
I read it about a month or two ago in the newspapers and being the fantasy-story fan that I am, I was keen on watching the movie. Pan’s Labyrinth was described as an adult fairytale. It promised of gruesome creatures, of darkness, and situated in the dark times of the Spanish War. The story spoke of parallel worlds: the real world at the time of the war and the world of a Princess Moanna. These two worlds magically cross through Ofelia, new step-daughter to a cruel Spanish Captain and believed to be the lost Princess Moanna. Pan is the almost sweet, mostly creepy faun who guards the entrance to the kingdom, found underground, through a labyrinth just outside the mill of Ofelia’s new family.
I cringed everytime the Captain killed and tortured the guerillas. He was more terrible than the Pale Man whose eyes were in eyesockets in his hands. He was more filthy than the giant bull frog which regurgitated dead roaches.
It was a rather dark story for a fairytale, and in the end we were left to choose the real world as against the fantasy world. As if we were asked to make a choice. In fairytales, we were made to believe that fantastical creatures coexist with the world we know of. Harry Potter or the Chronicles or Narnia, even the stories of Spiderman and Superman tell that to us. But in this case, we were made to say that it was all in Ofelia’s imagination. We could have just accepted that the two worlds existed and that Ofelia’s ultimate sacrifice was her entry into her own kingdom at last. But the brutality of reality held us back, and the cynical adults that we were thrusted the fantasy world into the wild imaginings of a desperate child.
It made me think however if I were Ofelia, would I have believed the Faun who said I bore the soul of their lost princess? Or would I have gone to a psychiatrist to have my head checked? We’ve become too immersed in the world, that we’ve become so used to choose the dark from light. We think that with so much muck in the world, we do not deserve the pony. We have become too used to the muck to even think there’s something beautiful in it. Or that we have the power to create beauty.
Could I say with finality that fauns are not real and that fairies are mere creations for children’s bedtime stories? Could I say with resignation that I believe more in the evil that exists than in the hope of goodness? I guess my wondering and my fascination for fantasies have led me to believe in the surreal and supernatural. I believe everything’s possible.
tweenkies_1106 at 7:24 PM