Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun

Book Title: Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun

Author: Guillermo del Toro & Cornelia Funike

Date Started: June 28th 2019

Date Completed: July 9th 2019

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Historical, Horror

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

A literary adaptation of one of my favourite films by one of my favourite childhood authors? I literally couldn't wait. Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke are both massive influences on me and have evolved the beloved fairytale genre into a contemporary and still vitally important sphere. I was hoping this book would uncover some of del Toro's other ideas that didn't make it into the film, and while you do get this in a few tiny little instances and through the beautiful fairytales Funke intersperses throughout the story, it's few and far between.

The main drag on my experience of this book was how much it spoon-fed you. I get that you can't lace the image with a million little hints to the overarching story like you can in a moving picture, but the problem with book-to-movie adaptations done backwards is that they spend far too much time trying to recreate the movie experience, rather than changing the story to fit with a literary format. As it is, the perspectives and locations are confusing because they jump about so rapidly in order to simulate editing that it's hard not to just let the original film play in your head instead of letting the book conjure up its own images.

There needs to be space for the writing to breath and expand itself. In adaptations, there's really three important things: character, meaning, and tone. Sure, the first two are there, but the make or break element of tone was lost because everything was so literal. It needed to be a retelling with a little creative license, not a written down version of a film. And that's not an easy task and with all due respect, these guys do a great job of recreating the movie on paper. But I don't think that was the goal - or shouldn't have been anyway.

Of course, the story is amazing. You can't get these two geniuses together and not make something good. But for me, it was the little fairytales - the one thing that was allowed to expand completely from the original film - that gave this 'retelling' strength. In traditional fashion, the folkloric tales parallel characters, events or lessons in the real world which gives the enhancement that you really need from a literary version.

If you're going to remake a story in another format, something needs to be added to it for it to be worth reliving in a different way. Do the illustrations and fairytales do that? Sure, why not. But it's not groundbreaking. I feel like the problem may have come from the target audience because while I was reading it really felt like it was made for younger readers - and in a way I love that, because Pan's Labyrinth does have darkness, and I think it's great something more real is made accessible for younger readers without being patronising. But at the same time, it really limits how far the novel could grow on its own, making it ultimately one in a long line of movie-to-book adaptations that make you wonder why you don't just watch the film.