Pan’s Labyrinth: Where the Monsters Lurk

A fairy tale for our times

I mentioned Guillermo del Toro in last week’s discussion. He’s among my favorite filmmakers. I adore how his films celebrate and affirm the power of different genres and how they champion the capacity for human goodness. At the same time, his films don’t shy away from the monstrosity people are capable of. I love his works for how they touch upon this dual nature of good and evil inherent in people and ultimately lean heavily on the side of virtue. There’s something vital and essential about his movies, which also take readers to meet fantastical characters and enter astonishing worlds.

My favorite film of his is Pan’s Labyrinth from 2006. It’s a film that’s so rich and has gotten richer with every rewatch and every essay I’ve encountered on it. I’m especially thinking about its powerful themes now.

The setting of Pan’s Labyrinth (written and directed by Guillermo del Toro) is Spain in the 1940s, during the regime of Francisco Franco. The protagonist, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), is a young girl who accompanies her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to the countryside on the command of Ofelia’s new stepfather and husband to her mother, Captain Vidal (Sergi López). Vidal is an officer in Franco’s army and is tasked with squashing a group of rebels that are based in the countryside. While staying at Vidal’s base, Ofelia comes across wondrous creatures in the nearby woods, including a faun (Doug Jones, voiced by Pablo Adán) who tells her that she might be the human incarnation of a princess of the underworld. Whether or not Ofelia successfully completes a series of tasks will determine if she truly is the fabled princess whom the faun claims has been anticipated by the beings of the underworld.

The sets, costumes, and makeup in this film are marvelous. The design of the various creatures such as the faun and the Pale Man have become iconic, and the locations such as the labyrinth and the Pale Man’s lair possess the surreal and uncanny elements of the places we visit in dreams. So much of the special effects are practical, and this fact means that the fantastical elements feel tangible and real. Films that rely too much on CGI risk getting outdated so fast, and this film has wisely avoided excessive CGI. Thus, the effects hold up so well even after so many years.

Makeup artists David Martí and Montse Ribé won well-deserved Academy Awards for their work. I give major props to them and their teams. Art director Eugenio Caballero and set director Pilar Revuelta also rightfully won Academy Awards for their brilliant work on the sets in the film. I also commend costume designer Lala Huete for the amazing costumes of both the human and supernatural characters. There’s something elemental about Vidal’s uniforms in their severity, Ofelia’s outfits in their simplicity, and the clothes of both the workers at the countryside outpost and the rebels in their utility. And the supernatural creatures are amazing, with the faun especially striking the balance between regal and humble, terrifying and familiar.

This is a masterpiece on a technical level, and it’s also brilliant on the level of story. One of the motifs that has always stirred me the most from this film has been the exploration of evil and its consequential violence.

Vidal embodies authoritarian and fascist violence. He is ruthless and expects everyone to bend to his will. A haunting scene is when he finds hunters in the woods and believes them to be rebels. He brutally murders them before he even checks their bags to confirm their truth that they were hunters; a hunted rabbit among their belongings proves that they really were just trying to find their next meal. He shrugs off his murder of the innocent people, unfazed by what he has done. Evil might be an understatement.

Throughout her quest to fulfill the mystical tasks, Ofelia encounters otherworldly evil, particularly the Pale Man, who entices victims with his table set with mouth-watering foods. He eats his victims, but I believe that he, despite his monstrosity, is less evil than Vidal is. The Pale Man is bottomless avarice, all-consuming, like a warped predator from the natural world. Vidal is cruel and brutal and possesses the capacity to act differently, but he always chooses the vicious act, the selfish one, the one that serves him and the regime he tortures and kills for.

This is something del Toro excels at in so many of his stories: illustrating that we humans are the most monstrous beings of all. But, as I’ve described, he also depicts the goodness that humans are capable of.

Some of the most heartfelt scenes in this movie involve Ofelia receiving and expressing love. As her mother falls ill due to her pregnancy, Ofelia finds a maternal figure in Mercedes (Maribel Verdú), a housekeeper for Vidal who is also a leader in the rebel group Vidal has been tasked with squashing. Mercedes shows warmth and kindness to both her comrades and Ofelia. In Ofelia’s time of need, a compassionate stranger steps in to care for her.

The choice to have a young protagonist means that the main character can act with purity and innocence, which serves as a stark contrast from the violence and cruelty committed by adults. A scene that always touches me is when Ofelia presses her head against her mother’s belly to speak with her unborn brother, who is also Vidal’s son. She tells him to be kind to her mom and to make the pregnancy less difficult. This gesture is both completely futile but achingly essential, in my view.

Ofelia acts out of a child’s sense of wonder and curiosity, out of an uncorrupted sense of right and wrong. Sometimes, her actions lead to unfortunate consequences, but nothing she does is malicious. Her very way of navigating the world is a threat to the authoritarian Vidal simply because she exercises her own will instead of bending to his.

The film’s conclusion is both brutal and uplifting. Ofelia’s mother dies giving birth to Ofelia’s brother. Vidal is the sole parent now, and he’s fixated on molding his son into his image. The faun tells Ofelia that her final task involves bringing her infant brother into the labyrinth. She does so, while Vidal, whose inward monstrosity has manifested outwardly due to the scar on his face resulting from Mercedes fighting and escaping him, pursues Ofelia.

In the labyrinth, the faun tells Ofelia she must submit blood from an innocent person and is asked to cut her brother to give up his blood. Her brother isn’t meant to die, just get injured, but Ofelia refuses. This is despite the fact that she barely knows her brother, despite the fact that a child’s logic could tragically but understandably blame her brother for her mother’s death. After all, Ofelia had asked her brother to be kind to her mother, and she could view that act as having been done in vain. Still, she refuses to allow her brother to be harmed in any way. The faun leaves, and then Vidal arrives. He shoots Ofelia and takes her brother away.

Justice comes for Vidal and his monstrous actions. Leaving the labyrinth, he is surrounded by rebels led by Mercedes, who recover Ofelia’s brother.

A symbol throughout the film is a broken watch that Vidal owns, which once belonged to his father. If I remember correctly, Vidal’s father also served in the army, and Vidal claims that his father smashed the watch while on the brink of death so that his son would know the time he died. I interpret Vidal’s obsession with his father’s death during wartime to illustrate the fact that fascism is an ideology of despair and death. Vidal’s father’s commitments and ideologies aren’t revealed explicitly in the film, if I remember correctly. Vidal however very much supports fascism, and his fixation on his father’s death depicts how his own view of the world is so limited and narrowly focused on self-destruction. He cannot imagine a better way to die than in combat, serving the country. He hopes for a fate like his father’s.

When the rebels surround Vidal, he desperately tries to have his wish fulfilled. He asks that his son be told who his father was and how he died. Mercedes defiantly tells him that his son will never even know who Vidal was. These are the last words Vidal hears before the rebels kill him.

Entering the labyrinth, Mercedes finds Ofelia dying on the altar where her brother’s blood was supposed to be offered. As Ofelia dies, Mercedes hums the lullaby she had hummed for Ofelia earlier in the film. The last time I watched this movie, I couldn’t stop crying at this scene. Mercedes’s gesture, like Ofelia’s plea to her brother, is both futile and essential. How useless is a lullaby when someone is dying, one might say. Yet, how important it is, to help someone die with some peace and comfort, I believe. It’s such a human thing to do, in the sense that it flows from the best we are capable of.

This is an optimistic film ultimately, though it does stare uncompromisingly at human darkness. The ending reveals that Ofelia’s defense of her brother results in her passing the final test. Her soul enters the underworld, where the faun as well as the king and queen of the realm welcome her to her throne. She is restored to her rightful place as the princess of that realm.

Pan’s Labyrinth is many things, and I admire how it depicts the resilience of the human spirit and the triumph of the human heart over fascism. In the face of entrenched violence and cruelty, we might feel overwhelmed and powerless, the way a child often feels in the face of immense hardship. Ofelia has to reckon with the fact that her stepfather is a monster, and that her beloved mother has chosen this monster to be a part of their lives. In the face of overwhelming tragedy and evil, we still cannot give up. We must resist with every fiber of our being. We must act according to our better natures. Even small acts that seem futile can change people’s lives significantly. Pan’s Labyrinth teaches us all of these lessons.

I’ve loved this film for so many years, and I find it particularly resonant now. So much of Guillermo del Toro’s work is an explicit condemnation of fascism and a valorization of selflessness and decency. His moral vision and his expansive imagination combined with his expert craftsmanship make me proud to be a fan of his work.