Pan’s Labyrinth

This is one movie which had more than one nomination at the recent Academy awards, yet one which had evaded me. Today I managed to see it and was warmly surprised by its simplicity.

The movie tells the story of a little girl who believes in fairies and reads a lot of their tales, while her mother moves to the home of her new husband, an army captain under the regime of Franco. While the girl is not reconciled to her new father and can’t forget her own, a tailor, her mother labours (quite literally) under the pains of the impending birth of the captain’s child in her womb.

The movie is a little long, just under two hours but there is never a dull moment, nor any melodrama. The little girl portrayed by Ivana Baquero is utterly loveable and acts her age, (whatever it may be). Sergi Lopez as the captain delivers a fine performance as a brutal suppressor of the rebels. The supporting cast does its part admirably well too, especially Maribel Verdu as the housekeeper.

The movie is a fine example of several good elements of cinema, editing being one of them, not of the Scorsese variety where you can almost feel the blade which made the cut (the kind I usually like), but the kind which lets you step from scene to scene as if mimicking the unraveling of a thread, effortless and natural, but no impressive than the former. The scripting by Guillermo Del Toro, (also the director) is outstanding and reminiscent of the Tornatore school of storytelling. There is this particular monster as part of the world of fantasy which the girl enters, for whose makeup and imagery alone, I would have given out an Oscar. And then the music is absolutely apt and non intrusive into the unfolding tale.

May there be more of this kind. Must watch, No! Make that compelling watch.