Pan's Labyrinth

"Men talked of their deaths and of pain, but they dared not speak of the promise of eternal life."

As the credits rolled, no one moved to the exits. The handful of us who had forgone March Madness basketball for an artsy film sat in the dark in a reverence that transcended mere thoughtfulness. "Pan's Labyrinth" is a beautiful film, not as a sunset is beautiful, but as a Van Gogh painting is beautiful, touching dark parts of the soul that want to be both left alone and expressed.

I know a lot of people who didn't like the film, and there was part of me that didn't want to (and part of me that really wanted to for completely shallow reasons). It's a fairly tale that is not for children, yet it's a child's perspective on the brutality of war. Like Alice and Lucy, the protagonist, a young girl named Ophelia, visits a mystical, fantasy land. But this land is much darker, often literally not just in but of earth, haunted by giant toads and fearsome, child eating trolls. As in Lucy's story, there's a fawn, but this fawn is not fuzzy or huggable. He looks made of the earth, wooden in parts, as if his knees should have leaves shooting out of them. His personality and mood seem to shift every time she sees him - giddy, condescending, spiteful, mirthful, fierce. He is repelling and inviting. He can't be grasped, controlled or predicted. He tells her she is the reincarnation of an underworld princess who must complete three tasks to return to her father. None of these tasks are particularly sanitized.

This fantasy world lurks behind a reality that is much more grim. She has moved to the country with her mother who is "sick with a baby" (as Ophelia sees it) and her brutal step-father. The step-father is a military captain charged with hounding out some resistance fighters in the residue of the Spanish Civil War. He's hot and cold - relish violence, torture and some sort of honorable death in war - and ranks among the best movie villains.

I can't describe the movie much more than that. Yet, there's a lot more I can say, but I want to blog while the film is more of an un-processed feeling. I have the same feeling now as I did after seeing 'the Godfather" for the first time. It's the feeling that this is a complete piece of cinema that needs nothing added to it. Like the Fawn in the film, it's something you can't completely hold or categorize; it's both repulsive and alluring, both damaging and healing. Part of me may long for a more obviously redemptive film, yet it offers the kind of hope that most of us see in this world - something distant, beautiful and dangerously beyond our own definitions and understandings. See the film, though heed the appropriate warning that it is as brutal as its villain, and they do not hide the violence of war or torture.

To taste the feeling of this film, go to the website at www.panslabyrinth.com and listen to the score. The tune is mysterious, playful, teasing, hopeful, full of fantasy, filled with dreams and incredibly sad. Much like the film itself.