Pan's Labyrinth and the Internalization of Pedro Almodóvar

June 17, 2007

It turned out I really enjoyed the Spanish film Pan's Labyrinth (2006) .. but I had the odd feeling that I was watching a film that had gotten its message and values from the films of Pedro Almodóvar. I am not saying that just because I thought the faun (above, played by Doug Jones) was a dead ringer for Antonia San Juan, the transsexual in All About My Mother.

Leaving that notion aside, I thought the thematic parallels ran deep. The setting for Pan's Labyrinth is the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. A cruel captain leads the military against a band of rebels hiding out somewhere in the forest. The young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is living in the fort, but she discovers an alternative fairy world. The two secret worlds of fairy and rebel (both encountered mostly in the dark) are contrasted with the sunlit world of the military. The goal of the captain is to clean up the vermin that are the rebels:

Almodóvar develops alternative societies that can stand against normative social patterns. Arguably his best film is All About My Mother, and there we find a rag-tag group of women (+transsexual) who create their own family and values. The film is not set in the Civil War, but there is a masculine chaotic force present in Lola.. a sense of death. I find Almodóvar's vision of an alternative social group more gripping than that of Pan's Labyrinth because it does not lose itself in fantasy and history.. but firmly points the way toward an imaginatively engaged and socially fulfilling life within the modern world as it is.

Almodóvar is also always in favor of the body. Live Flesh (1997) begins with the birth of Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal) in the midst of the national state of a emergency of 1970 called by the dictator Franco. This is a Spain that does not let the nameless and dirty get ahead. Victor is framed for a shooting (although we don't know this at first) and when he gets out of jail he begins to claim a real life.

In claiming his own life he upends the life of the policeman, now in a wheelchair, whom he had supposedly shot. It is hard to imagine an American film in which a policeman handicapped in the line of duty would ultimately be shown to be living a lie.. But that is the sharp edge of this film: the healthy and poor are no longer going to be held back by "correct" people.. no longer going to give deference to what is "morally right". The movie becomes an allegory for a new Spain.. one in which Almodóvar can thrive.

Pan's Labyrinth is officially about the Spanish Civil War.. but I don't buy that, really. It is the same world as Almodóvar.. and operates within the same conceptual framework. Guillermo del Toro (director of Pan's Labyrinth) is equally enthusiastic about the alternative worlds of fantasy and rebellion.. and equally insistent on a physical revolution in which the clean and self-righteous are overthrown by the dirty and free. It is as if he has internalized the main themes of Almodóvar and cast them into a genre more amenable to international audiences.