You’ll see that life isn’t like fairy tales ✵ Pan’s Labyrinth - SMALL WORLD ✵ 1992–PRESENT - The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

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IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Fantasy, war

DIRECTOR

Guillermo del Toro

WRITER

Guillermo del Toro

STARS

Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú

BEFORE

1984 The Company of Wolves is an early example of the “dark fairy tale” movie genre.

2001 The Devil’s Backbone, described by del Toro as the “brother movie” to Pan’s Labyrinth, follows a group of boys in a haunted orphanage.

AFTER

2013 Blockbuster Pacific Rim is del Toro’s take on Japanese kaiju (monster) movies.

Fairy tales abound with the sinister and the macabre. Good invariably conquers evil, but the battle is hard fought and evil is not without power. It seems fitting, then, that one of the directors who has best captured the essence of the fairy tale on movie is one who made his name in horror. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro had honed his talent for unsettling audiences for more than a decade before making Pan’s Labyrinth. In the manner of the best fairy stories, he succeeds in finding a way both to challenge innocence and to celebrate it.

RG

This poster with the original Spanish title shows the protagonist, Ofelia, in the main image. Below her is the gnarled, hollow tree that Ofelia must enter for her first task.

"In this magical and immensely moving film, the two sides of the film come together to constitute an allegory about the soul and the national identity of Spain."

Philip French
The Observer

Fantasy vs reality

Pan’s Labyrinth consists of two narratives unfolding at the same time. One tells the story of Vidal, a captain in General Franco’s Nationalist army who has been sent to the mountains to round up the remnants of the defeated Republicans in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

The other is the story of his stepdaughter, Ofelia. She is a young girl who is very much lost in the world and who, either through her imagination or by magic (the movie cleverly leaves this question open), escapes to a fantasy realm where she assumes the spirit of a long-dead fairy princess.

A faun sets her three tasks to complete before she can be permitted to take her rightful place in the magical kingdom. Vidal and Ofelia can both be considered true believers, each fully convinced of the validity of the world they have built around themselves. Vidal believes in Franco’s cause and admits that he is hunting the stragglers “by choice.” He is a man without doubt, just as Ofelia is without doubt when she braves the horror of the child-eating Pale Man to pass the second of the faun’s tests. In Pan’s Labyrinth, evil is just as convinced of its righteousness as good. Vidal is not a hypocrite or a coward, and charges into battle without fear. He even tells a doubting comrade that this “is the only way to die.” Ofelia shows the same conviction when attempting the faun’s tasks. The sense that Vidal’s bad qualities mirror Ofelia’s good ones adds a complexity to events as they unfold.

Whether or not Ofelia’s fantasy realm is real is left to the viewer to decide. It is also up to the audience to decide which world they believe in more: Ofelia’s or Vidal’s. Both stories feel as textured and vivid as the other—the Grand Guignol set design of the Pale Man’s lair is matched by the specificity of Vidal’s quarters and his eerily controlled shaving routine. This is where the success of Pan’s Labyrinth lies—not simply as a twisted fairy tale, but one that also explores the sadness of the need to escape into a fantasy world. The movie taps into the traditional fear of the wicked stepparent, a staple of fairy tales. Vidal is uncaring toward Ofelia, even callous toward her pregnant mother, Carmen; he is using his wife solely as a means to produce a son. With her mother bedridden, Ofelia’s closest relationship with an adult is with the housekeeper Mercedes, who cares for her when her mother dies in childbirth. In this respect, the movie subverts the traditional fairy tale, because while Vidal very much fits the traditional evil stepparent mold, Mercedes’s role shows that family is not simply blood, but whatever works when it comes to support and affection.

"The film works on so many levels that it seems to change shape even as you watch it."

Stephanie Zacharek
The Village Voice

RG

Although Ofelia must trust the faun as her guide to the fairy-tale world, he is a mysterious and morally ambiguous character whose ultimate motivations are hard to discern.

Breaking the rules

Obeying rules, even if morally wrong, is integral to Vidal’s world view. He tortures a partisan for information, and when the doctor puts the dying man out of his misery, Vidal is genuinely puzzled. When asked why he disobeyed, the doctor replies contemptuously, “Captain, to obey—just like that—for obedience’s sake, without questioning, that’s something only people like you do.” At that, Vidal shoots the doctor, even knowing that in doing so, he is putting his wife’s life at risk.

Later, in the fairy story, Ofelia is given a frightful order handed down to her by the faun. In one of the movie’s most powerful moments, we ask ourselves whether she can truly prove she is better than Vidal, and if good can still vanquish evil.

One common criticism of fantasy movies is that they lack a grounding in humanity. Pan’s Labyrinth is a retort to this, a movie deeply rooted in emotion even as it dreams up terrifying monsters.

RG

The child-eating Pale Man, whom Ofelia encounters during her second task, is a nightmarish creation—but the real monsters are all too human.

“The portal will only open if we offer the blood of an innocent. Just a drop of blood: a pinprick, that’s all. It’s the final task.”

The faun / Pan’s Labyrinth

GUILLERMO DEL TORO Director

Guillermo del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1964. His debut feature Cronos was released in 1992, and proved to be enough of a success for producer Harvey Weinstein to grant him a $30 million budget to make Mimic, an American-set studio horror. It was also around this time that his father was kidnapped and del Toro was forced to pay a large ransom for his release. Del Toro went on to achieve Hollywood success with the Hellboy horror franchise, as well as setting two movies in Franco-era Spain, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, to great critical acclaim. Most recently, he directed the kaiju-influenced action-adventure Pacific Rim.

Key movies

1993 Cronos

2001 The Devil’s Backbone

2004 Hellboy

2006 Pan’s Labyrinth

What else to watch: La Belle et la Bête (1946) ✵ Spirit of the Beehive (1973) ✵ The Company of Wolves (1984) ✵ Cronos (1993) ✵ The Devil’s Backbone (2001) ✵ The Others (2001) ✵ Hellboy (2004) ✵ The Orphanage (2007)