Javier Navarrete

Javier Navarrete is a Spanish film composer best known for his Oscar-nominated score for "Pan's Labyrinth." The fantasy/horror film tells the story of a young girl who is trying to survive the horrors of the Spanish Civil War by escaping to a made-up world filled with fauns and princesses and magic doors. It's not clear if her adventures are wholly imaginary, and perhaps it doesn't matter; her fantastical experiences serve to thematically mirror the temptations and perils of fascism in the real world. Navarrete's score, when first introduced, has a fairy tale quality--deceptively beautiful and innocent sounding. Later, after we have seen the torture and brutality and fear offered by Franco's regime, that same music becomes an elegy for a lost childhood, a haunting melody that, like the labyrinth itself, enticed us with the promise of wondrous discovery but now offers only terror, danger, and imprisonment (both physical and spiritual). The music composed by Navarrete is a perfect complement to Guillermo del Toro's direction. Together they have created a strange world that, in many ways, remains frighteningly familiar.