On Pan's Labyrinth

Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing,
through the graves the wind is blowing,
freedom soon will come;
then we'll come from the shadows.

- Leonard Cohen

I don't know why the English title of this film is Pan's Labyrinth. The Spanish title translates as The Labyrinth of the Faun, and the faun character is actually asked his name in the film, replying that he has many names that only the trees can pronounce. From then on, he's just referred to as "the faun". If he'd added "And my name definitely isn't Pan, so don't go erroneously naming any English translations after Greek gods", it wouldn't have been much clearer. But go and see it anyway, because it's brilliant.

It's hard not to compare it with the 1986 film Labyrinth: a girl who's obsessed with fairy tales finds a way into a magical world, where she's given a quest. But Pan's Labyrinth is more complex than Jim Henson's one. The older film is a straight allegory on the lines of Alice in Wonderland. As Jennifer Connelly's character makes her way through the maze, solving puzzles and defeating monsters, she learns growing-up lessons like "Life isn't fair" and "Material possessions are junk". Ofelia, the central character in the Spanish film, is younger and more flawed, and so's the world she lives in (Spain in 1944). It's much harder with this film to sum up the relationship between the real world and the magical one. For a start, the focus is on the former, which is unusual. Sometimes, when Ofelia is in the fantasy, she does find analogues to her real-world problems as in Labyrinth, but that doesn't mean she ends up solving them. It may be that she shouldn't be hiding among imaginary shadows, but actively helping her ill mother or the freedom fighters who are hiding in the hills - but on the other hand, what can a little girl do? Where Jennifer Connelly makes lots of muppety friends, Ofelia's only ally is the faun himself, a towering, hissing creature who reminded me of the rabbit in Donnie Darko and whose motives are questioned throughout.

Is Pan's Labyrinth a children's film? Well, it's got Franco's soldiers torturing republicans, and a nasty bit where someone sews up a wound in his own cheek, but I'd say it is, yes. Spain's politics may be complex, but Ofelia's view of the adults around her is simple, and so that's how we see them too. When she timidly stretches out her left hand to greet her new stepfather for the first time, his own right one snaps up in its fascist black glove and grabs her arm. He whispers "It's the other hand, Ofelia," before walking smartly off. Ah, thinks the audience, fine: this must be a baddy. I'd put the film in the same sort of tradition as Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials novels: since Jim Henson's day, fiction's discovered that children can cope with darkness and pain so long as the morality is easy to understand. That doesn't mean they're preachy, mind. It just means the characters' decisions come in the form of stark moral dilemmas rather than shades of grey.

But watch the film for its atmosphere. There's this sad tune that returns throughout. I suppose it's in a minor key or something. Anyway, it's gorgeous, and it does the same kind of job as the Godfather theme. And the visuals are beautifully terrifying. Have you ever seen Goya's painting of Saturn eating his own son? Well, there's a version of that here, but it's much better.

Is there anything wrong with Pan's Labyrinth? Yes. Given Ofelia's character, there's no way she would have eaten the grapes.