Pan´s Labyrinth

Music by Javier Navarrete

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Divided on the narrow line between reality and imagination, Pan's Labyrinth (2006) is a visual delight that both engages the viewer in its fantasy aura as repell him in its cruel logic. More than a challenge, its soundtrack provided to Javier Navarrete a chance to explore musically diverse atmospheres and instrumental sets in a captivating result of special colors.

The lullaby theme (Long Long Ago), which needed to be ready before filming, was the starting point for the composer to develop the whole music. In the dispute between reality and fiction, reality wins on the soundtrack and the climate of resigned tragedy gives the general tone to the work. This is quite clear in The River and The Funeral.

Track Deep Forest with its majestic and frightening aura and Not Human, that goes to pure horror atmospheres, make the soundtrack sound delightfully macabre in its instrumental strenght. In The Moribund Tree and the Toad colorful orchestral efforts allows some lights within its refined writing. Pan and the Full Moon is one of the few lyrical and magical moments with its impressionistic piano and angelical voices. Full of mystery and half tones in its refined orchestral writing Pan's Labirynth is part of the very welcomed autoral comeback to the soundtracks production in contemporary cinema. A work that stands on its own away of the movie. As suggested by the director Del Toro: "The aural soundscape of this film, the voice that Javier gave this movie is so enthralling that I urge you to listen to it in a darkened room and dream of a fairy tale of your own."