Pans Labyrinth

Pans Trailer

Pan’s Labyrinth follows the journey of a little girl named Ofelia who is said to be a princess of an underworld. She is the adoptive daughter of a cruel captain in Franco’s army whose job is to basically kill the leftist rebels. Some of those rebels are the Captain’s own servants and colleagues who pass information and medicine to guerrillas in the forest. Ofelia’s mother is pregnant with the Capitan’s son. She is very ill and is basically dying the majority of the movie in her bed. Ofelia becomes attached to a servant named Mercedes. It turns out that Mercedes is also a rebel; she helps her brother, who is with the rebels throughout the movie with supplies and information. Ofelia defies her step father by keeping this deadly fact a secret. Most of the film is split between a real world where Mercedes uses political tactics to oppose the Captain, and a fantasy world where Ofelia encounters an unsightly faun, fairies, and members of an ancient forest aristocracy.

Under World Real or Fake?

I feel that the underworld or Ofelia’s fantasy’s are not real and that it is all in her dreams. Nothing in Ofelia’s fantasies affects the real world, nor does anyone else ever see the fairies or the faun. Ofelia always has a number of fairy tale books with her, and one of the fantasy fairies looks exactly like a picture we see in one of them.

I think that Ofelia’s fantasies area a form of rebellion, a childish version of Mercedes’ political rebellion. Both the Ofelia and Mercedes refuse to live in the Captain’s world, one by escaping into her dreams, and the other by joining the Marxist rebels. Fighting the frog and the scary eyeball creature teach her that she can be brave, and no doubt give her the independence of mind to keep Mercedes’ secrets from her father. Seen from this point of view, Ofelia’s fantasies are deeply political. They show her an alternate reality where the Captain doesn’t rule, and they help her find true allies: Mercedes and the rebels. Ofelia’s fantasies are more than merely escapist because they allow her to find political allies. In fact, after defeating the eyeball monster,

Ofelia begs Mercedes to take her to the rebels in the forest because she’d rather live among them than stay in the Captain’s house. Ofelia may not have survived, but she was liberated, she fought the only way she knew how.

Fantasy anticipates reality

In the movie there are many of Ofelia’s dreams or underworld experiences that end up happening in real life. Smith notes some of the similarities “a bloody stain spreads on the pages of Ofelia’s magical book; just as (in the next shot) her mother’s nightdress is drenched with blood as she nearly suffers a miscarriage” (5). Also when “Ofelia places under her mother’s bed a mandrake root, bathed in milk and fed on blood, which mirrors the real-life fetus that drains the mother of life. The sinister faux baby squirms and squeals when thrown on the fire” (5). They also mix it up and have fantasy following reality. “A luscious feast of blood-red berries and jellies, guarded by Doug Jones’s truly disturbing Pale Man (his eyeballs inserted into the palms of his hands), echoes the real-life dinner for the Franco is victors presided over by the sadistic Captain, which we have already been shown”(5).

Feminizing the underworld

“Pan's Labyrinth also usurps the traditional male space of the Underworld, displaces it, and designates it a female realm: the questing hero is the runaway princess Ofeiia (Ivana Baquero); lies, pain and 'death' occur outside its borders; and the ultimate desire is to return to this netherworld as home rather than

brave its perils and escape from it”(Edwards). There are many parts that many people say “feminize” the underworld “from the downward wipe through the mother Carmen's (Ariadna Gil) swollen belly into the fairytale landscape, the imagery is continually organic and uterine, with warm rich colours, earthy cavernous spaces and the recurring curved feminine shapes reminiscent of the Faun's horns”(2). Edwards also says “In its affiliation with nature and the natural, this 'underland' is not divorced from abjectness or from danger and darkness, such as the horrors of the child-eating Pale Man (Doug Jones) and the slimy glutinous toad in

the bowels of the dead tree or the moral ambiguities of the Faun (Doug Jones). But it is more a place of life and rebirth than a land of the dead. Like the opening image of Ofelia's death being reversed, as the blood flows backwards, the underground realm teems with moist, breathing, growing life”(2).

Cinematography

The cinematography is well placed and hooks you in. Del Toro uses two environments, the reality of post-war Spain and the sinister fantasy world that Ofelia ventures into. The film's solid production design also anchors Pans Labyrinth nicely, from detailed and carefully-framed sets to amazing costume design and practical effects. It really is nice to watch, but it's got plenty of substance to back up the style. I like how Del Toro blends equal parts of fantasy and horror, the cold and warm corners of our young protagonist world are well-rendered and striking as well.

Work Cited

Edwards, Kim. "Alice's Little Sister: Exploring Pan's Labyrinth." Film as Text: 141-46, 49. Print.

Pan's Labyrinth. Dir. Guillermo Del Toro. 2006. Film.

Smith, Paul. "Pan's Labyrinth." Film Quarterly 60.4 (2007): 4-9. Print.