Repartee: Pan's Labyrinth

Although it is not the express purpose of this blog to review movies or books or Cd's, I believe that every once in a while a work of art comes out that is so compelling, so important in its impact on the arts--and the artists behind the work--that I must offer some sort of commentary. The brilliant epic Pan's Labyrinth certainly fits this criteria.

On at least one level the movie brutalizes the fairy tale stereotype. Intense as it is, however, hope shimmers just below the surface. Indeed, the tagline for the movie reads 'Innocence has a power that evil cannot imagine.' And Pan's Labyrinth never shies away from portraying that evil. Almost abrasive at times, the film assaults the viewers with violence, but in the end emerges as a triumph of imagination and a testament to the power of innocence amidst the tyranny of suffering.

Set during the Spanish Civil War, Labyrinth follows the life of a fatherless young girl who is forced to live with her new stepfather, Capitán Vidal, an officer in the Spanish army. He is a proud, cruel man, given to extreme measures and callous torture. Ofelia hides from him most of the time, cowering in fear. To complicate matters, her mother 's pregnancy ravages the woman's body, leaving her sick and close to death.

Despite the ever-present reality of her mother's illness inside the house, and the all too frequent sounds of fighting and warfare outside the house, Ofelia never loses her innocence.

This begins a series of posts in the form of a conversation between myself and fellow blogger Ben, discussing various elements of the film. Our first exchange involves the idea of story.

----

Andrew: One of the greatest strengths in Labyrinth's storytelling lies in its insistence on treating both the mundane and the fantastic with the same objectivity. Neither is superior to the other; the 'real' world is not hopelessly mired in evil and despair, and the 'fantasy' world is not some magical panacea.

Do you think that's a fair assessment?

Ben: I think so. I especially like the fact that the 'fantasy' world is both beautiful and dangerous. To compare it to two other popular fantasy movies, Labyrinth is more colorful and 'magical' than 'Lord of the Rings' but at the same time not as idealistic and 'clean' as 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' The fact that the 'fairy' is actually a bug still gets me excited.

Andrew: Exactly. Whereas those two stories sanitize the world, to some extent, Labyrinth never allows viewers to escape from the very real fact of human suffering and pain, and instead reminds us that nobility and innocence are worth pursuing regardless of what realm we occupy.

Another detail that contrasted sharply with LotR and the Chronicles shows up in the focus of the story: Labyrinth zeros in on the characters themselves, particularly Ofelia, and apparently covers only a three or four day period. This narrow focus, as opposed to the epic breadth of other fantasy stories, helped to ground the tale firmly in reality.

Ben: In my opinion, the best fantasy stories are not stories that provide an escape from this world but stories that are about this world. For me, the best fantasy stories are a sort of bait-and-switch: they draw with the exotic excitement of a new world and end up telling you something true about the world you already live in. Labyrinth is just more explicit about this than many other fantasy stories in that it has a prominent 'mundane' or 'real world' element to it.

Andrew: I really think that you are onto something. Recently a good friend of mine and I got into a minor debate over whether or not stories are escapism. My position throughout the discussion went along these lines: Stories exist to 1) reflect a deeper reality that we often miss, and 2) remind us that regardless of the setting, hope continues to point the way toward rescue.

Ben: I think there needs to be a balance. By its very definition fantasy must be about a different world; a world whose 'elementary principles' run contrary to the world we understand.. Thus fantasy should offer a portal or a doorway or an escape hatch into a new world. But I think escapism as an end to it self is too self-centered. We should escape into fantasy so that we can look at our current world from our new vantage point and look at it in a new light.

Eugene Peterson has a good quote that expresses the real nature of story. He says that "story is the most natural way of enlarging and deepening our sense of reality and then enlisting us as participants in it.' The storyteller's most noble purpose is not to simply provide an escape from a mundane or painful or evil world but instead inspire people to engage that world. Regardless of what we may want to believe, fantasy worlds do not exist and any time spent seriously attempting to reach one is time wasted. Fantasy is only good so far as it engages us in our own reality. This is the only world we've got; fantasy just helps us understand it better.

That's not to say that fantasy stories can't serve to entertain and intrigue. But when it's a question of where our sense of reality dwells, it must dwell firmly in the real world.

Andrew: Would you like to expand on that?

Ben: Sure. The question could be posed, "Did Ofelia's choice at the end of the movie have any application to the 'real' world?" I think it did. Thus the supposedly magical rules or 'elementary principles' of the fantasy world were revealed as the true principles of the actual, real world. Since a good fantasy story is like an extended parable, the purpose of a fantasy story is the same as that of a parable: it paints a picture that seems foreign to us, in order to change our view of what is really real. Thus the world of the fantasy world is more 'real' than our world . . . but its purpose is to reveal that 'more real' world within our own.

To be continued. . . .