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Writer/director Guillermo Del Toro at the "Pan's Labyrinth" premiere held at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. on December 18, 2006. |
Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro delivers a unique, richly imagined epic with Pan’s Labyrinth, a gothic fairy tale set against the post-war repression of Franco’s Spain. Entirely in Spanish, with English subtitles, the film combines historic and moral themes with visual creativity and gripping dynamics. Harnessing the formal characteristics of classic folklore to a 20th century landscape, del Toro delivers a timeless tale of good and evil, bravery and sacrifice, love and loss.
Pan’s Labyrinth unfolds through the eyes of Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a dreamy little girl who is uprooted to a rural military outpost commanded by her new stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). Powerless and lonely in a place of unfathomable cruelty, Ofelia lives out her own dark fable as she confronts monsters, both otherworldly and human.
Gifted young Spanish actress Ivana Baquero, just 12 years old, carries the film with a remarkable combination of innocence and maturity, vulnerability and strength. Having won the part over nearly 100 young hopefuls, Baquero is grateful that del Toro chose her to play Ofelia.
{quote_top}“My parents and I thought it would be good for my career to have a manager, so we spoke with some and I finally started working with one,” Baquero tells MediaBlvd Magazine. “He spoke with the casting director of this movie, so I got an audition. Then, I went to the second audition, and there I made Guillermo’s wife, and all the other people who were there, cry. The same day, Guillermo showed up, script in hand, and told me that he wanted me for the movie. He said, ‘Read the script and let me know what you think. If you want to do it, drop me a line.’ I spoke with my parents about it and they seemed to love the script. When I read the script, I was like, ‘Whoa! The script is so good that the movie has to be good too.’ When I told Guillermo I wanted to do it, it was two months of rehearsal, and then we started shooting.”
Known for such films as Cronos, Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone, Blade 2 and Hellboy, the 42-year-old Guadalajara, Mexico native has developed his own brand of gothic horror adventures, too scary and violent for most children to watch. However, Baquero, who prefers to see the films of a director she is going to work with, admits that she watched most of del Toro’s films, prior to doing Pan’s Labyrinth.
“It’s what I always do with all directors I work with,” says the only child, who is a fan of such bands as Nirvana, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “I see most of their filmography, just to see if they’re more into comedies, or scary movies. What I thought Guillermo does really good is mix the scary genre with any other genre. For this movie, he mixes war with the fantasy genre.”
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Ivana Baquero at the "Pan's Labyrinth" premiere held at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. on December 18, 2006. |
Counting fairy tales among his earliest influences, del Toro says that it was the blood and violence, as well as the beauty and enchantment, that had an affect on him. “In the time of spiritual formation, both fairy tales and the Bible had the exact same weight for me,” he tells MediaBlvd. “I was as enthralled by a parable in the Bible, as I could be about three brothers on their quest to marry a princess, and I found equal spiritual illumination in both. Even when I was a kid, I used to be able to find those fairy tales that felt preachy and pro-establishment, and I hated them. I hated the ones whose message was ‘Don’t go out at night.’ There are fairy tales that are created to instill hope and magic in children, and I like those. I like the anarchic, crazy ones. I think that all of them have a huge quotient of darkness ‘cause the one thing that alchemy and fairy tale lore understands is that you need the vile matter for magic to flourish. You need the two things for the process. So, when people sanitize and homogenize fairy tales, they become completely uninteresting for me.”
Although there wasn’t one specific fairy tale that influenced del Toro on Pan’s Labyrinth, he says that there was a whole series of them that inspired the film. “I have collected fairy tales, since I was a kid. The movie pays homage to Lewis Carroll, The Wizard of Oz, Hans Christian Anderson, Oscar Wilde, David Copperfield and Charles Dickens.”
For del Toro, the labyrinth is a very powerful, primordial, iconic symbol that he feels means different things to different people, depending on your culture. “The main thing for me is that, unlike a maze, a labyrinth is actually a constant transit of finding, not getting lost,” he explains. “It’s about finding, not losing, your way. It is a place where you do sharp turns and you can have the illusion of being lost, but you are always doing a constant transit to an inevitable center. A maze is full of dead ends. A labyrinth may have the illusion of having a dead end, but it always continues. I can ascribe two concrete meanings of the labyrinth, in the movie. One is the transit of Ofelia, towards her own center and her own reality. The other transit is the transit that Spain goes through. But, each culture will ascribe a different weight to it.”
{quote_middle}Getting to work in both the real world and a fantasy world is something that Baquero really enjoyed, in making Pan’s Labyrinth. “When I had to act in the real world, I had all these great actors who were cheering me up all the time, and who gave me advice,” she says. “And, when I was in the fantasy world filming, I had Doug Jones and all these amazing creatures to film with. I liked doing both a lot.”
Doug Jones, who first worked with del Toro on Mimic, and then later on Hellboy as Abe Sapiens, plays both Pan, the faun, and the more creepy, sinister Pale Man, who Ofelia encounters in the film. “It took him four hours of make-up for both characters,” says Baquero about Jones, who will next be seen as the Silver Surfer in the Fantastic Four sequel. “Sometimes, he had green screens, but he was basically dressed in a suit with make-up. He’s really outrageous. One of the things that I most appreciate of his work is that, in this movie, all of his dialogue had to be in Spanish and it was hard for him to learn it in Spanish because he had really big chunks of dialogue. But, he did it and it was great. I ended up getting really used to the characters because I ate with Pan, filmed with Pan and had rehearsal with Pan, so it was like acting with another actor.”
Working closely with del Toro, throughout two months of rehearsal and then four months of filming, Baquero says that she took a lot away from the experience. “He taught me so much stuff. One of the things he pushed me to do was to keep on reading fairy tales. Before doing Pan’s Labyrinth, I did read them, but I wasn’t addicted to them. But, Guillermo sent me tons of fairy tale books and movies. You can learn from them. Afterwards, I kept reading fairy tales. Whenever I can, I grab a book and start reading.”
Del Toro knows that he has left much of the story of Pan’s Labyrinth open to interpretation, and he is fine with that. “If they are enraged by the bleak hopelessness, or they are enthralled by the beauty, the poetry and the hope in the film, it’s equal to me,” says the filmmaker, whose next project will be the much anticipated Hellboy sequel. “I think that it’s a movie that is going to make people react emotionally. Ideally, if the movie connects with you, it should create an almost perfect simulation of what it is to be a kid again, both by the beauty and the fear because both are dialed up. It’s like doing a deep tissue massage to the soul, to try to reach the point where you will react to the violence. It’s so over-the-top that it will affect you. And, the fantasy is also so over-the-top that it will affect you. It’s a fairy tale for adults because kids don’t need that extreme pushing.”
Wise beyond her years, Baquero, who started at an American school in Barcelona at the age of three, doesn’t have her next project planned out yet, but she knows that she wants to continue to do good work. “I’d love to work in the United States, or in any other country. I’m most looking forward to working on a project that I feel I’m going to learn with, and that will do good for my career. I’m also concentrating on school. I would like to have a career like Natalie Portman. Not only is she a great actress, but before continuing with her acting career, she finished her studies in college, and I appreciate that. I’m going to do the same.”
