BY: JERRY P

Guillermo del Toro has opened the doors to lush symbolism with this dark, adult fairy tale set in 1940s fascist Spain, newly released on DVD.

The first thing to be said about “Pan’s Labyrinth” is the universal acclaim it garnered from critics and reviewers. After the first time I saw it, I checked Metacritic.com and I could not believe the high marks it got, like a grade of 98, and the first 26 reviews listed gave the film a 100. That would be equivalent to a gymnast scoring a 10 on the balance beam. It is an uncommon event, a degree of excellence rarely bestowed on athlete or filmmaker.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that Guillermo del Toro, the director and moving spirit behind the film, one of the three or four hot Mexican directors on the scene these days, had an impressive track record before he made “Pan’s Labyrinth.” He is the author of “Chronos,” “Mimic,” “Blade II,” and “Hellboy.” He also made a first rate ghost story called “The Devil’s Backbone.” In “Pan’s Labyrinth” he expanded his horizons far beyond the horror genre; instead he transformed the horror theme into the person of a fascist captain who kills without remorse and with utmost cruelty, and into a few mythical creatures with scary elements in their images. Captain Vidal (Sergio Lopez), who is never without his uniform or his father’s pocket watch (he’s a fanatic about punctuality), terrorizes his pregnant wife and new stepdaughter. The year is 1944 and Vidal has been assigned the task of clearing the hills of a bunch of rebels who are still causing the Franco government trouble. Offsetting this historical track is the story of Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), the Captain’s stepdaughter, a 12-year-old girl who is in love with fairy tales, as del Toro was growing up. That is track number two, the world of myth that runs a parallel course with the historical world, only it seems beyond the touch of time as we know it. Del Toro layers the two tracks, historical reality, with all its concomitant horrors and cruelties, and the world of myth, with its fantastic characters and magic realism, with a rotating and colliding collection of signs and symbols that seem to exist on both sides of the dividing line between the worlds. They are like billiard balls bouncing off the cushions of our deeper mind. But this colliding and rotating and commingling of elements is not a chaos - to the contrary, it is a carefully and subtly organized meshing of signs and symbols designed for expressive purposes and to make us feel and think in a new way.

Here is one example, which points to a nexus between two ordinary objects, in this case a long dinner table covered with food in two different scenes. In both instances we see the table in one point perspective; but other aspects of the scene are quite different and bespeak their different worlds. In the historical world the captain sits at the head of the table and he controls what happens with his guests. There is a darkness and muted color to the dinner table and its environs. The color is coded to suggest real world grimness. In the mythic world the table is in an underground chamber, which is nevertheless aglow with red and golden colors, and at the head of the table is seated The Pale Man, a tall, ghoulish creature with pinkish skin that sags and with eyes in the palms of his hands; a creature that Ofelia must deal with, like Pan himself, who has instructed her to go down into this magic space. (An actor named Doug Jones plays both roles; he specializes in such parts.) The underground chamber with its lush coloring and table festooned with food is coded to suggest its otherworldly nature. It is the same table seen from the same angle, but with different connotations and meaning. Del Toro is extremely adept at orchestrating his symbolic codes.

The same could be said about doors or “portals,” as they are often referred to in the film. There is the door to the storeroom with all the provisions and medicine, which is kept under lock and key by the captain. Then there are the “Doors of Perception” that Ofelia sees, the portals into a magic world - even the labyrinth is kind of portal to this otherworldly space. To escape the clutches of The Pale Man she draws a door in the ceiling of the chamber with a piece of chalk and escapes through it in the nick of time, finding herself in the safety of her bedroom. Ofelia believes in fairy tales while her cruel stepfather hates them and is angry with her mother for letting her read such nonsense. Vidal is the Big Bad Wolf and Ofelia is Little Red Riding Hood. She’s also a bit like Alice in Wonderland, chalking in a door to escape danger.

Del Toro mentions “the law of three” in Special Features, a notion he might have derived from Gurdjieff’s philosophy. Triads of various sorts are repeated over and over again throughout the tale. Ofelia is given three tasks by the Faun (Pan) that she must fulfill before she can realize her destiny. The key she obtains from the huge frog inside the fig tree will open one of three doors in the chamber of The Pale Man. Pan has three ”friends” he keeps in a basket he carries; they are three fairies of three colors, one is yellow, another is red, and the last is blue. The Pale Man eats two of the fairies, thus echoing Goya’s famous painting of Saturn eating his children. There are three women that are key: Ofelia, Ofelia's mother, and Mercedes, a member of the rebels and Ofelia’s surrogate mother. There is an opposing male triad composed of Vidal and his two lieutenants. And at the end of the tale there are three thrones, one for Ofelia. To see how she got one, you’ll have to see the movie.

"Pan’s Labyrinth" is truly remarkable because the two tracks, the historical situation and the mythic world that stands behind (or under) the painted scenery of ordinary reality, are both equally intense and convincing. The film is like an echo chamber with overlapping resonance, as each world is separate and together, strangely but wondrously. Del Toro never states one is more important than the other. How to value them is left to the viewer.

Now I realize I haven’t run down the story or given the specifics of its unfolding. I have instead concentrated on some of the symbolic architecture of the film, which should make it more transparent when you see it. The symbolic order is the warp and woof of the tale, part of its depth, mystery and fascination. Finally, I would point out that although a 12-year-old girl has the lead in the film, and the film is partially based on children’s Fairy Tales, it is not for children. It is too scary and there are moments of shocking violence.