Some April When He Passes: Pan's Labyrinth

 

The title of this book, Pan’s Labyrinth:The Labyrinth of the Faun, is related to the history of the film, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), whose original title in Spanish was El laberinto del fauno (tr. ‘The Labyrinth of the Faun’) which was changed because it was felt that English, German, and French speakers would be more familiar with Pan than with the half-goat fauns of Roman mythology (perhaps even confusing the title with the idea of fawns; i.e. baby deer). Guillermo del Toro, the writer and director of the film, has explicitly stated that the faun in the movie is not Pan. This novelization of the movie by both del Toro and Cornelia Funke, appeared in 2019, thirteen years after the movie premiered. One wonders why such a gap in time.

          The double title is strangely in keeping with the nature of the book. Not only does the story deal with interactions between the worlds of myth and the everyday, but the task of telling is shared between del Torro, who wrote the film, and Funke, who worked on the novelization. Although all the pages carry the same framing decoration, the pages are differently colored, with those recounting what is seen in the movie in off-white, and those revealing background information in the form of magical short stories told in light gray. How much of this interstitial material originated with del Torro and how much is Funke (author of the Inkheart series, among many other books; she has been called ‘Germany’s best-selling author for children’) is a curious question.

The illustrations are by Allen Williams, and they conjure the look and feel of the movie’s imagery while being their own creative interpretation. Williams is “an illustrator, concept designer for film and television, and fine artist.”

As a film, Pan’s Labyrinth has always evoked the beauty and sadness of the pagan world, the dreamy horror and the struggle of the most authentic of the old fairy tales. If the ‘real world’ is terrifying and brutal, so is the magical side of reality. As a novel, Pan’s Labyrinth is somehow even darker and grittier, with the ambiguous ending of Ofelia rejoining her family after overcoming her trials being heavily hinted as being a dying hallucination; in the movie that is left more or less to the interpretation of the viewer.  So … one for the kiddies?