Soundtrack Review: ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’

By Jeff Swindoll Feb 8, 2007, 16:30 GMT

Too many soundtracks feel interchangeable, and rare are the composers who really capture a movie\'s core. But Javier Navarrete has succeeded in his Oscar-nominated score for Guillermo del Toro\'s Pan\'s Labyrinth, a dark fantasy set in 1944 Spain. The first cue, "Long, Long Time Ago," sets the melancholy tone with piano and voice; the spectral piano pops up several more times, and the theme is more fully developed in "Mercedes ...more

Guillermo Del Toro is probably who I would say when asked who my favorite director to come on the scene somewhat recently.  His latest effort sounds like his greatest one (it’s yet to appear in my local cinemaplex).  He set out to create a fairytale or bedtime story.  Not the kind of fairytales that we think of today but the kind that harkens back to the original grim (and perhaps Grimm) ones.

I’ve always heard that the original telling of Cinderella had the ugly stepsisters lopping off their toes to make them fit in the fabled glass slipper.  Sounds like a bloody mess.  Don’t expect to see such gory violence in the Disney or any other animated version these days.  They were very dark and sometimes the protagonists had very grim fates indeed. 

Pan’s Labyrinth is about an orphan girl named Ophelia in 1940’s post war Spain.  She retreats into a kingdom of ancient legends and beliefs to escape the horrors of her real world, but finds that other horrors may await her in this new world. 

Del Toro sent some inspiration pieces to composer Julian Navarrette and asked him to fashion a lullaby from those inspirations.  After some tinkering, Del Toro thought that Navarrette had hit upon the perfect sound.  It even passed the ultimate test since Del Toro’s daughter demanded that the resulting lullaby be put on her iPod. 

What Navarrette has fashioned is a score that evokes the fairytale world found in Pan’s Labyrinth, but also has an undertone of the darkness that lurks beneath, and occasionally the undertone bursts forth in all its dark glory.  The score is performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Mario Klemens and features vocal soloist Lua. 

According to the liner notes the soundtrack is a collection of music from the film as well as pieces that ultimately did not appear in the picture.  I don’t know which is which, but I can tell you that the score is excellent and provides the proper atmosphere for what sounds like Del Toro’s greatest film.

‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is now available at Amazon. Visit the soundtrack database for more information and a complete track listing.