Maribel Verdú – Movie Musings

Superb fantasy film, full of heart, visual imagination and beautiful story-telling, truly one from the heart

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Ivana Baquero (Ofelia), Sergi López (Captain Vidal), Maribel Verdú (Mercedes), Doug Jones (The Faun/The Pale Man), Ariadna Gil (Carmen), Álex Angulo (Doctor Ferreiro), Manolo Solo (Garcés), César Vea (Serrano), Roger Casamajor (Pedro), Pablo Adán (Narrator/Voice of the Faun)

What do you do when your world is terrible? Sometimes the only way to survive is to embrace your own world, even if that world has its own darkness and terrors. Guillermo del Toro’s masterful Gothic fairy tale mixes the terrors of Francoist Spain with one of untrustworthy magic and monstrous spirits and compellingly balances bleak horrors with the chance of hope. Visually stunning, thematically rich and heartbreakingly emotional, Pan’s Labyrinth is a Grimm’s fairy tale bought shockingly up-to-date, a uniquely heartfelt film from a distinctive director.

It’s 1944 in the woods of Spain and the Reds are still fighting their lonely crusade against Franco’s fascists. Captain Vidal (Sergi López) is here to stamp out these rebels and has summoned his heavily pregnant wife Carmen (Ariadna Gil) and twelve-year old step-daughter Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) to his distant command post so that he can be present at the imminent birth of his son. Ofelia hates the punctilious and coldly obsessive Vidal (rightly so – he’s capable of coldy indifferent but shocking acts of violence) and escapes more-and-more into her fairytale books. One night, she wanders into an old maze and encounters a Faun (Doug Jones), who tells her she is the long-lost princess of the fairy kingdom and must perform three tasks to return home. Ofelia now exists in two worlds: an increasingly Gothic fairy one of and a real one of violence, ruled by her monstrous father-in-law.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a beautifully balanced film of multiple interpretations. It’s never clearly stated whether Ofelia’s fairytale world is ‘real’ of a product of her imagination. It’s clearly a way a scared girl could process real world traumas – the death of her father, the appalling Vidal, the horrors of war around her – with many elements of the fairy world reflecting things happening around her. But on the other hand, the mandrake root the Faun gives her to help heal her sick mother by placing it under her bed has an immediate impact and Ofelia’s magic chalk and the labyrinth itself offer secret doorways that allow her to escape Vidal in the film’s final act (or perhaps a by then disoriented and drugged Vidal is just mistaken). Essentially, you are left to embrace the idea you prefer – much as it is implied Ofelia herself chooses the version of her life she wishes to embrace.

Choosing for yourself and not blindly following orders is one of the key lessons of Pan’s Labyrinth. The ‘real’ world of Franco’s Spain is full of regimented orders to be blindly obeyed without question. In this it has the collaboration of the Church – at Vidal’s dinner-party, a subservient priest self-satisfyingly fills his plate with food while shrugging off concerns of the starving poor – and Fascism echoes Church mantras (one of Vidal’s lieutenants repeats the same propaganda ‘prayer’ to Franco over-and-over again while he hands out the bread ration to the cowed villagers). Franco’s Spain is one of order and regimen, where individuality and choice is stamped out.

And there are echoes of this in Ofelia’s fantasy world. Played with a gentleness, vulnerability and strikingly earnest decency by Ivana Baquero, Ofelia refuses to accept the world must be the way it is (unlike her mother who has sadly accepted it must). But her fairy world, the Faun – expertly portrayed by Doug Jones’ lithe physicality – is a far from gentle guide. Creaking from the wood he is formed from, he’s sinister, mixes vague statements with subtly presented orders and constantly holds information back while presenting Ofelia with tight rules for her tasks. Just as Fascism takes choice away real world, the Faun presents Ofelia with a book that reveals the future (but only one page at a time) and her tasks increasingly demand complete obedience, under the threat of punishment.

This is not a comforting world. Ofelia – who at one-point wears costumes reminiscent of those other famous children in dark, surreal and dangerous fantasy-worlds Alice and Dorothy – confronts a vile toad and, most chillingly, an albino child-eater with eyes in his stigmata hands who lives in a room decorated with nightmare reflections of the real horrors of the 40s (most strikingly a Holocaust-reminiscent pile of children’s shoes). For all its fantastical, it’s also very much a nightmare version of a real-world that could have been dreamed up by a child processing horrors.

Pan’s Labyrinth celebrates individuality and choosing for yourself. Ofelia’s story is one of increasingly taking her own choices: from refusing to accept her mother’s new husband, to escaping into her fantasy world (twisted as it is), to finally outright refusing the increasingly dark instructions of the Faun. It’s in doing this that she can eventually prove herself a true hero, someone who does not accept the established order but can make her own decisions.

This makes her a contrast to Vidal. Truly he is one of cinema’s most loathsome monsters. In a superbly controlled performance by Sergi López, Vidal isn’t repulsive because he is a larger-than-life, sadistic monster but because he is a small, inadequate bully who has controls his small world in order to make himself feel important. Vidal is obsessed with order and detail – introduced tutting at the 15-minute-late arrival of his wife, his office is filled with the gears of the mill and he fetishistically cleans his pristine uniform, shaves himself and repairs his father’s watch. This watch – the only memoir he has of his hero father, who died when he was a baby – is the root of his obsessions, Vidal desperate to become his father and pass on his own toxic legacy of ancestor worship to his son. It’s striking that, as Vidal’s world collapses around him, his clothing and body becomes more and more scarred, bloody and disordered – his external appearance resembling the monster within.

In Vidal’s world everything fits neatly into place, governed by his Fascist ideology. Carmen – a fragile Ariadna Gil, struggling to accommodate to a world of harsh choices – is of interest to him only because of the baby she carries. He operates the mill as a tightly organised regime, in which the rebels are unwanted ghosts in the machine. He uses violence ruthlessly but as a tool, not with sadistic relish. He brutally beats a suspected rebel to death with a bottle with robotic indifference and tortures suspects with a practised patter. To him, everything is justified if it is obeying an order. So much so, that he literally cannot understand the refusal of Dr Ferreiro (in one of the film’s most moving moments) to blindly follow orders, no matter the consequences.

Dr Ferreiro (a beautifully judged performance by Álex Angulo) is one of two figures whose independent thought Vidal is unable to recognise, even when they are under his nose. His maid Mercedes (Maribel Verdú, one of the passionate hearts of the film) is fiercely independent, the sister of the rebel leader and working subtly against Vidal. She forms a bond with the gentle Ofelia while showing that refusing to be part of a blind system is a crucial part of humanity. She also provides possibly one of the most satisfying moments in cinema during a confrontation with Vidal.

Del Toro’s film beautifully balances these fascinating ideas of choice and independence within its brilliantly evocative design. It’s a beautifully shot film, in a gorgeous array of Velazquez-inspired tones, its moody darks and blues gorgeously captured by Guillermo Navarro while its design work is extraordinary in its texture and detail. But it’s a classic because del Toro’s superb creativity and quietly emotional direction. Pan’s Labyrinth makes us really care for this child just as it makes us despise the cruelty of her step-father. Combined with gorgeous design, del Toro’s film truly comes from the heart, a loving, very personal tribute to the power of stories and individual choices. The film is so powerful, you even forget that it opens as it ends, and that we know in our heart-of-hearts how this journey will finish. Nevertheless, Pan’s Labyrinth ends on a note of joy and acceptance so pure, it could only be from the fantasy world not the real one.

The final death rattle of the DCU franchise, a terrible film fill of bad storytelling and lousy gags

Director: Andy Muschiette

Cast: Ezra Miller (Barry Allen/The Flash/Young Barry Allen/Evil Barry Allen), Michael Keaton (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Sasha Calle (Kara Zor-El/Supergirl), Michael Shannon (General Zod), Ron Livingston (Henry Allen), Maribel Verdú (Nora Allen), Kiersey Clemons (Iris West), Antji Traue (Faora-Ul), Ben Affleck (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Jeremy Irons (Alfred)

This is how it ends. Not with a zippy bang, but a stumbling fart. The Flash is, quite simply, one of the most dreadful, misguided messes you are likely to see: the final sad, rammed-together-by-committee piece of pandering from a franchise declared DOA before the film was even released. Could The Flash have worked if the DCEU had been a success? Its defenders might say yes, but let’s be honest: no. And not just because of Ezra Miller. Though God that didn’t help.

Anyway the plot. We meet Barry Allen/The Flash (Ezra Miller), fighting crime with the Justice League. Because the DCEU was in a rush (and never bothered to make an origins film allowing muggles to understand who the hell he is), after an action-packed opening we are basically rushed at dizzying speed through his backstory (the sort of thing Marvel, back in the day, would have spent two films building). Allen’s Dad (Ron Livingston) is in prison for the murder of his Mum (Maribel Verdú) though he’s innocent. Allen works out he can go back in time to change this. He does but then (naturally) ruins the past. He finds himself back in Man of Steel time which – we are hurriedly told – is the same time he got his powers. The grief that made Barry a hero in our timeline didn’t happen here so the Barry of this timeline is, to put it bluntly, a complete prick. He’s also changed lots of other fan-pleasing stuff, lost his powers, wiped most of the DCEU characters from history (no loss) and has to team up with a different Batman (Michael Keaton) to train his past self and save the world.

First and foremost – who thought it was a good idea to make a film that depends on this much knowledge of a character who has never had a film made about him before? Marvel’s Spiderman got away with jumping over the origins story because we’d already seen it twice. Joe Regular Public has no bloody idea who Barry Allen is. They aren’t ready to be introduced to his backstory like it’s established, famous stuff and watch it being twisted upon. Or watch a plot twist about the granting of its powers unfold at the same time as we are told when we event got them in the first place. It’s totally bizarre – it’s like the film is throwing in call-backs to films that never happened.

This sort of plot, watching our hero change the past, needs us to actually have lived through the past with that hero. To understand the emotional impact it’s had on him and to have watched him mature. Instead, we get all this stuff dumped on top of us and then watch a version of a character we don’t really know teach another version of that character how his powers work without us having been given any knowledge ourselves of how those powers work, meaning we are as ignorant as he is.

It doesn’t help that we’re given no reason to bond with Barry Allen – any of them. Firstly, let’s get the elephant out of the room. We now know what will prevent a Hollywood studio cancelling a troubled star: if they have invested $200 million on a film in which they appear in every single frame. Miller is sort of beyond toxic now: someone who has stolen, assaulted women, groomed minors, proclaimed themselves an Indigenous messiah and faced multiple arrests and restraining orders. If this film had cost $20 million it would never have been released. Hell, if it had cost $75 million like the tax-written-off Batgirl, it would have been spiked. But DC and Warner had too many eggs in the Ezra basket so hoped we might forget they were asking us to bond with a literal criminal.

Leaving that aside though: all iterations of Barry Allen seem pretty awful people. The first is selfish whiner with poor empathy. The second is an absolute douchebag, a character so irritating he manages to make the original look like a wise mentor. The third who pops up later is a 2D man-child. Nothing Barry does is engaging or sympathetic, but yet the film assumes we love him as much as those working on it clearly do.

This multiple iterations could have worked if we had seen Barry mature over multiple films and then gone back to meet the “initial” version of himself. It makes no impact when we have no bond with the character. The film assumes emotional connections with characters and totems that simply don’t exist. For example, Future Barry is furious Past Barry uses a cherished teddy bear (his dead mother’s last gift) as a dartboard target. That might mean something if we’d seen Barry carry this totem for a couple of films: The Flash has to give us all the information about the totem (including its existence) within thirty seconds. It’s a small example of the film’s topsy-turvy nonsense.

While sprinting to introduce a franchise, it also indulges in piles of fan-bait nostalgia. The most obvious is, of course, the return of Michael Keaton as Batman. Perhaps due to Miller’s toxic nature, the film played this angle up big time in its trailers. But it’s nostalgia that only really means something to people in their 40s and 50s and literally sod all to most of today’s audience. Every second Keaton appears on screen it “homages” the Burton pics – he can’t take a crap without hearing Elfman’s music, the visuals are littered with references and Keaton wearily says things like “let’s get nuts”. Keaton looks like he hates himself for saying yes to the (presumably) truckloads of money he was paid to be here.

He only doesn’t win “most disengaged actor” because we have a thinking-of-his-castle Jeremy Irons and Michael Shannon trotting through the film practically wearing a t-shirt saying “by contractual obligation”. Shannon centres a CGI filled smackdown that inevitably ends the film’s penultimate act, before the multiple Allens disappear to a CGI world of parallel universes and dead actors recreated by the power of special effects and the desire of deceased actor’s estates to earn a tasteless quick buck (there is something really tasteless about Christopher Reeve’s appearance in particular).

The CGI in this film, by the way, is some of the worst you are ever going to see in a tentpole release. Never mind the uncanny valley of its array of nostalgia cameos or the blurry, explosion in a paint-shop vision of alternate realities, crammed with utterly unconvincing CGI clones of its actors. Watch Barry’s rescue of babies from a collapsing hospital in act one – these are hellish figures of uncanny unreality, looking like nothing less than the spawn of Satan. Let them fall Barry, let them fall!

That’s before we even start on the crazy morality of this film. It’s idea that that past is sacrosanct and must never be changed fits it’s worship at the altar of nostalgia – after all it’s the film where a film from 1989 is treated like a holy text. It could have worked if the film had committed to its idea that we have to learn to let go of our grief and that heroes need moments of tragedy to set them on the path to greatness. But after witnessing all this, our Barry at the film’s end… changes the past AGAIN to save his Dad. Did he learn nothing? What kind of message is this?

But then this sort of muddled nonsense probably comes from the length of time the film gestated: it was in development for nearly a decade. So long, that its star became a toxic criminal, a separate TV-show about the Flash was developed, screened for eight seasons, adapted this very story and ended and the franchise this was meant to be part of died. The Flash emerges from this rubble as a catastrophic piece of contractual obligation. The death rattle of a franchise, which was released because its studio had invested so much in it, it was desperate to make something back. It’s a film no-one wanted to make, release or see. A test case for the nightmare modern franchise box-office film-making is.