While there is nothing as maddening as the inability to skip them, trailers on DVDs are a great resource to the discovery of films and filmmakers. I can’t recall what DVD had the trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone (2001), but I do remember being instantly intrigued. Despite a few hair-raising images (I think the last scene in the trailer is that of the boy ghost unexpectedly popping up through a keyhole), the trailer suggested what the film delivered: greater substance than your typical horror flick. I don’t really care much for horror, but this was a richly layered allegory set in a run-down orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. Del Toro transcended the genre, interweaving visual spectacle, rich narrative, and political metaphor like few contemporary filmmakers.
Pan’s Labyrinth (the Spanish title translates to simply “The Faun’s Labyrinth”) is set five years later, after Franco’s victory and during the continued insurgency of republican guerrillas fighting against their oppressive victor. There is no further continuity between the two films, yet Labyrinth is clearly the thematic companion to The Devil’s Backbone. Our protagonist is Ofelia, a young girl who travels with her pregnant mother to a military outpost where she is to meet and live with her new stepfather, a sadistic Franco follower named Captain Vidal.
Ofelia, we quickly learn, is a precocious girl who escapes her increasingly harrowing surroundings through her books and her vivid imagination. Through what may or may not be her imagination incarnate, she learns from the titular faun that she may be the reincarnated soul of the long-lost princess of a fantastical underworld. As strange as that may sound, by the final frames you will find yourself desperately hoping that she is, and that escape is possible. For even though del Toro’s visually stunning creations (like the “Pale Man” above) make for good promotional images, the larger part of the story is set in the “real” world, in which horror has a human face.
Although clearly not a film for children, del Toro has spun an acutely observant parable about personal choice, responsibility, sacrifice, and trust. But it may take a moment, as the credits roll and you can finally fall back from the edge of your seat, before it all sinks in.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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