Film
Bristol Film Festival: Pan’s Labyrinth
- Director
- Guillermo del Toro
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 119 mins
Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar winning masterpiece is set in a remote region of fascist Spain during 1944, where dreamy young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) escapes into a fantasy world fuelled by local legends about a nearby magical labyrinth. As she enjoys underground adventures with terrifying beasts like a key-vomiting giant toad and the Clive Barker-esque Pale Man, the story consciously evokes any number of classic fantasies from Alice in Wonderland through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz to Labyrinth.
It’s just possible that the little girl really is imagining all her adventures, and so it makes sense that they overlap with the books she might be reading, but del Toro puts his own spin on the fantasy world, adding elements from his own childhood dreams and drawings. It’s a rare fantasy that doesn’t sag when the plot returns to the ‘real’ world – indeed, in the latter stages, there are as many impressive, appalling moments away from the magic as there are in the labyrinth.
These Bristol Film Festival screenings conclude the fest’s ever-popular Underground Cinema strand in Redcliffe Caves. Go here for tickets
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