Why do faery tales appeal to us? Why do adults still remain fascinated by the stories they were told as children? Why do we continue to revisit them, both in their original forms and in amended and modernized forms?
Knowing many of those who read this blog personally, I feel fairly safe in hazarding, like several notable writers of both the present and past, that they appeal to us because the shadow the Great Story. They haunt us because they remind us that we are part of a Faery Tale ourselves. They offer us reminders of the hope before us. They pierce us with the possibilities that Hope is and the Hope finds us when we need it. But for all their hope, their joy, their haunting, faery tales are so often filled with a brutal edge. But then, life itself is filled with many brutal edges.
Why do ponder this? Because I am so impressed with a new faery tale.
El Laberinto Del Fauno is a faery tale in the purest form. Brutal, yet glittering. And when I say brutal, I mean that it is dark, foreboding, gruesome and unforgiving in almost every aspect of its story. Perhaps you question that a faery tale possesses brutality as a crucial quality? Ah, but it does. Even in “Disney-ized” form, faery tales begin or climax in brutality. Snow White faces an attempted murder at the order of the only mother she’s ever really known. She triumphs at last, but the queen meets a gruesome end. Cinderella is locked in a tower, her stepmother forsaking the promise made to her late husband, willing to sacrifice Cinderella’s true happiness to further her ambitions. Ariel is able to gain her love only when the prince kills Ursula with the prow of a sailing ship. Sleeping Beauty’s suitor must face a horrific dragon in a frightening battle to the death. And those are the animated versions. The more ancient versions are filled with more death and torment. Rapunzel’s husband is tossed from the tower to have his eyes scratched blind by thorns, and then must wander blindly until he chances upon her in the wilderness. Maidens and Princesses are routinely cast out nameless into the harsh world following the death of a guardian, sent to make their own way. Blue Beard’s wife discovers a terrible secret locked in a closet and escapes only by the timely arrival of her brothers. The heroine who survives the tests of Baba Yaga is avenged when her mother and sisters are consumed by the flames from a glowing skull.
Faery tales are filled with darkness and harshness and fright. Yet those things are what make them the beacons of joy they become; for the light of reconciliation, of happiness, of love earned or granted becomes a focused beam unable to be ignored or avoided when it is surrounded by brutality. Consider, what is the point of striving for a future hope or rescue if you are not in a dark place? Can you see the beam of a flashlight when you are standing in the sun? Joy, in this life, needs brutality in order to be seen.
Brutality fills the story told in El Laberinto Del Fauno. It is a dark story set in a dark period—post Spanish Civil War, as Generalissimo Franco and his soldiers solidify his climb to power. And the tale is told in shades of darkness. Del Toro brilliantly uses colour to this advantage. Not a single colour, mind you, but the presence and absence of colour. It is remarkably effective. I can only think of two other films that used this technique so effectively: Reign of Fire and Equilibrium. If you’ve seen those movies, you know the technique. If not, see them. And this one. Anyway. In the midst of this darkness and brutality, shines the light of Ofelia and her story. The heart of this story rests upon to things: belief and identity. Sound familiar? It should, because this tale, like all other true faery tales, reflects the Great Story beautifully. In this tale, the joy that arises from the brutality is almost painful because you want it so much.
We are creatures of Story. Even the most banal of our stories and movies draw from our collective nostalgia for a time when we believed that the faery tales were true. This tale is from that nostalgia. It touches the soul where that need resides, where the pragmatism and cynicism of life cannot enter.
And it makes you wonder: perhaps they don’t come true merely because we’ve stopped believing?
