PAN'S LABYRINTH
Reviewed by Tracy Nicholas
Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro’s epic parable, is a dark fantasy that holds an unflinching gaze at the brutality that drives morality tales. In the film, there is a fluid movement between the worlds of the mundane and the magical that the central character Ofelia inhabits.
The mundane world is 1944 Spain, where Ofelia has accompanied her mother Carmen to a remote area of the Spanish countryside. It is five years after the end of the Spanish civil war and bands of anti-Franco fighters hide and attack the military forces sent in to control the people. They go to join Carmen’s new husband, Captain Vidal, who is there to hunt down the rebels. The Captain is a viciously cruel sadist whose own self-loathing, evident throughout the film, serves only to make him a less sympathetic character by driving home the fact that he has no shred of compassion, not even for himself. Once they arrive, Carmen grows increasingly ill with a pregnancy and the captain instructs the local doctor that if a choice is to be made between his wife and his child, the doctor should choose the infant, which he is convinced will be his legacy in the form of a son. As Carmen takes to her bed, the housekeeper Mercedes runs the home and looks after Ofelia, all the while secretly supporting the rebels. Ofelia, left to her own devices, explores an abandoned labyrinth on the grounds of an old mill that the captain has commandeered as his headquarters.
It is in this labyrinth that Ofelia encounters a magical faun that tells her that he suspects she is really the reincarnation of Princess Moanna, daughter to the King of the underworld and she will have to perform three difficult tasks to confirm her royal blood. He gives her a book that appears to have blank pages, but with tasks that are revealed when it is time for Ofelia to complete them. The faun warns her that there will be dire consequences if she does not follow the instructions exactly while completing her quest.
Meanwhile, in the mundane world Carmen becomes more and more ill with each passing day. When Ofelia becomes too distracted by worry over her mother to complete her tasks, the faun gives her a mandrake root, which she is to hide under the bed. When she does, her mother begins to recover. As long as the root remains hidden, Carmen thrives. When the Captain finds the root and sneers at the magic within it as it is tossed into the fire, Carmen’s health again fails. As the mundane world she inhabits crumbles and the danger around her grows, Ofelia’s quest becomes more desperate as she searches for a way to save herself, her mother and unborn brother from the dark force of the Captain’s cruelty and loathing.
The visuals in this film are nothing short of stunning, which, in addition to plunging the viewer deep into a world of dark creatures and difficult choices, serves to highlight a central theme of the film: the seen versus the unseen. In the mundane world, the rebels survive and cause chaos because they are hidden, both in the forest and in plain sight. Mercedes is able to support the rebels because the Captain cannot see her for anything other than an insignificant woman, there only to serve and cower, confirming his ultimate power over them all. The magical world of the labyrinth remains hidden from all but Ofelia, allowing her to pursue her quest.
Even in the labyrinth, though, much remains hidden. The Princess Moanna is lost to the underworld because she tried to get a glimpse of the world above and when she did, “The bright sun blinded her, making her lose her memory”. In the opening scene of the film, Ofelia finds a stone which turns out to be the eye of a nearby statue. When she replaces the eye in the statue a stick bug is startled out of the underbrush. It catches Ofelia’s eye, but it isn’t until later that she realizes that the bug is a disguised fairy. The faun shows her proof of her royalty by pointing out a moon-shaped birthmark that she herself had never noticed before. When the Faun handed her the book with the tasks she was to complete, Ofelia saw that the pages were blank. She would come to discover that the words would only become visible at inconvenient times, when she would be thrust into adventure at the precise moment that would extract the highest cost from her.
Ultimately, though, the story is about what each of the characters sees or does not see within themselves. The doctor remains complicit in the soldier’s torture until he cannot any longer and tells the Capitan that he is not the kind of man who can follow orders blindly. Mercedes sees herself as a coward while living in constant danger so she can support the rebels. Carmen sees the Captain as safety in a dangerous world while he is the biggest threat to her and her children. The Captain sees himself as the strongest person there, while mired in and ultimately undone by his own crippling fear, masquerading as arrogance. Ofelia herself cannot see the noble princess that she is, but rather sees a scared child that is sent on reluctant adventures outside of her control. Even the Faun is not what he appears, though it seems in the end, he could see everything as it is after all.
One by one, as each of the characters begin to see what they could not before, a choice lies before them and they must step up to fulfill their part of destiny or be brushed aside so the story can continue.
A labyrinth, after all, is not a maze in which the traveler can choose any number of paths and get lost endlessly, but rather a single path to the center point where they all must ultimately arrive.
Reviewed by Tracy Nicholas
Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro’s epic parable, is a dark fantasy that holds an unflinching gaze at the brutality that drives morality tales. In the film, there is a fluid movement between the worlds of the mundane and the magical that the central character Ofelia inhabits.
The mundane world is 1944 Spain, where Ofelia has accompanied her mother Carmen to a remote area of the Spanish countryside. It is five years after the end of the Spanish civil war and bands of anti-Franco fighters hide and attack the military forces sent in to control the people. They go to join Carmen’s new husband, Captain Vidal, who is there to hunt down the rebels. The Captain is a viciously cruel sadist whose own self-loathing, evident throughout the film, serves only to make him a less sympathetic character by driving home the fact that he has no shred of compassion, not even for himself. Once they arrive, Carmen grows increasingly ill with a pregnancy and the captain instructs the local doctor that if a choice is to be made between his wife and his child, the doctor should choose the infant, which he is convinced will be his legacy in the form of a son. As Carmen takes to her bed, the housekeeper Mercedes runs the home and looks after Ofelia, all the while secretly supporting the rebels. Ofelia, left to her own devices, explores an abandoned labyrinth on the grounds of an old mill that the captain has commandeered as his headquarters.
It is in this labyrinth that Ofelia encounters a magical faun that tells her that he suspects she is really the reincarnation of Princess Moanna, daughter to the King of the underworld and she will have to perform three difficult tasks to confirm her royal blood. He gives her a book that appears to have blank pages, but with tasks that are revealed when it is time for Ofelia to complete them. The faun warns her that there will be dire consequences if she does not follow the instructions exactly while completing her quest.
Meanwhile, in the mundane world Carmen becomes more and more ill with each passing day. When Ofelia becomes too distracted by worry over her mother to complete her tasks, the faun gives her a mandrake root, which she is to hide under the bed. When she does, her mother begins to recover. As long as the root remains hidden, Carmen thrives. When the Captain finds the root and sneers at the magic within it as it is tossed into the fire, Carmen’s health again fails. As the mundane world she inhabits crumbles and the danger around her grows, Ofelia’s quest becomes more desperate as she searches for a way to save herself, her mother and unborn brother from the dark force of the Captain’s cruelty and loathing.
The visuals in this film are nothing short of stunning, which, in addition to plunging the viewer deep into a world of dark creatures and difficult choices, serves to highlight a central theme of the film: the seen versus the unseen. In the mundane world, the rebels survive and cause chaos because they are hidden, both in the forest and in plain sight. Mercedes is able to support the rebels because the Captain cannot see her for anything other than an insignificant woman, there only to serve and cower, confirming his ultimate power over them all. The magical world of the labyrinth remains hidden from all but Ofelia, allowing her to pursue her quest.
Even in the labyrinth, though, much remains hidden. The Princess Moanna is lost to the underworld because she tried to get a glimpse of the world above and when she did, “The bright sun blinded her, making her lose her memory”. In the opening scene of the film, Ofelia finds a stone which turns out to be the eye of a nearby statue. When she replaces the eye in the statue a stick bug is startled out of the underbrush. It catches Ofelia’s eye, but it isn’t until later that she realizes that the bug is a disguised fairy. The faun shows her proof of her royalty by pointing out a moon-shaped birthmark that she herself had never noticed before. When the Faun handed her the book with the tasks she was to complete, Ofelia saw that the pages were blank. She would come to discover that the words would only become visible at inconvenient times, when she would be thrust into adventure at the precise moment that would extract the highest cost from her.
Ultimately, though, the story is about what each of the characters sees or does not see within themselves. The doctor remains complicit in the soldier’s torture until he cannot any longer and tells the Capitan that he is not the kind of man who can follow orders blindly. Mercedes sees herself as a coward while living in constant danger so she can support the rebels. Carmen sees the Captain as safety in a dangerous world while he is the biggest threat to her and her children. The Captain sees himself as the strongest person there, while mired in and ultimately undone by his own crippling fear, masquerading as arrogance. Ofelia herself cannot see the noble princess that she is, but rather sees a scared child that is sent on reluctant adventures outside of her control. Even the Faun is not what he appears, though it seems in the end, he could see everything as it is after all.
One by one, as each of the characters begin to see what they could not before, a choice lies before them and they must step up to fulfill their part of destiny or be brushed aside so the story can continue.
A labyrinth, after all, is not a maze in which the traveler can choose any number of paths and get lost endlessly, but rather a single path to the center point where they all must ultimately arrive.