Don't Beleive The Hat

Now might be a good time to remind you about our spoiler policy.

Narraptor has developed a relatively foolproof system for judging newly written fairy tales; More Monster = More Movie. By this yardstick, we can clearly prove that Spirited Away is ten times as good as Princess Mononoke, and a hundred times as good as Howl's Moving Castle. And yet, this also means that Pan's Labyrinth should be infinitely worse than the Pan-less Labyrinth. (And that is without taking the standard Muppet Modifier into account.)
In this case, I am going to have to leave science behind me, and cling to my belief that Pan's Labrynth is as good a film as I think it is.

I can understand if you don't have any faith left for DelToro's films, though. I can't remember a thing about Mimic, and I remember too damn much of Blade 2. Hellboy was fun at the time, but immediately afterwards I've only been able to recall the film's many flaws. I was willing to believe that The Devil's Backbone was DelToro's good film, but I've never had enough interest to seek it out.

But somehow, this movie finally delivers on the promises DelToro's been making all these years. It helps that the promise is fairly simple: That he's made a dark and fairly straightforwards fairy tale, placed in a modern setting. By the same token, I reject the slur of Magical Realism that Narraptor's leveled at the film.

The viewpoint in Pan's Labrynth is relentlessly objective. There is no narration to inform you that this is a Ofelia's personal journey. No visual cues that each character sees things in different ways. Some characters shoot at commie rebels, some make roast rabbit, and one person talks to mantis fairies. Each is handled with the same detached air. Then at the end of the film, we are treated to a scene where the drugged up Capitán Vidal sees Ofelia talking to the air, instead of the Faun.

At this point, you get to choose which movie you've been watching all along. One of them is a tale where the military commander just can't see the faun for some reason. Perhaps it was the drugs, or perhaps it's just a magic thing. Not a strong point of the film, I'll agree, but not a dealbreaker.

Instead, you can decide that it could have been all in Ofelia's head. At which point the movie breaks apart. After all, if the movie's willing to lie to the viewer to the point that Ofelia can walk through walls on multiple occasions due to coincidence, what else is it lying about? Perhaps Capitán Vidal only thinks he's a brutal killer, when in reality he breaks down sobbing in a corner, and lets someone else do the work. Perhaps the mysterious French rebel leader never existed either. After all, if Ofelia's obsession with fairies brought them to CGI life, then what validity should I place with a group of friendly communist rebels who are at the beck and call of a communist-loving Mercedes? Is that magically realistic? I'm honestly not sure... without a person flying into space from sheer beauty, it's hard to tell.

There's supposed to be some ambiguity in the ending, but you still end up picking which option you prefer. You can believe in the magic, and end up with a good movie that has a happy ending. Or don't, and you're left with a badly directed film with an unhappy end.

That is, assuming you like dark fairy tales that contain four and a half monsters. If you don't, you're not going to come out of this film happy either way.