Day 47/50 - Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Mexican director/writer Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a film which merges fantastic images of a mythological world “underworld” with the realistic story of a young girl who must learn to accept her mother’s new evil husband, a leader of the Fascist Franco army. The year is 1944 in Spain after the Civil War. Resistance fighters are still hiding in the mountains.

As the film opens we see a young girl dying and the narrator tells us:

A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning...

We have two plots in this film: one dealing with myth; the other dealing with reality.

Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) reads books about fairies. As she and her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) are driven to join the mother’s new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), the mother becomes sick and they have to stop. Ofelia wanders off and finds an old runic stone with a face carved on it. Nearby is a missing stone with an eye. When she puts it in place, a stick insect flies out of the stone’s mouth. Ofelia believes she has found a fairy.

Later in the story, Carmen is restless and asks Ofelia to tell her unborn baby brother a  story. She tells him:

Many, many years ago in a sad, faraway land, there was an enormous mountain made of rough, black stone. At sunset, on top of that mountain, a magic rose blossomed every night that made whoever plucked it immortal. But no one dared go near it because its thorns were full of poison. Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death, and pain, but never about the promise of eternal life. And every day, the rose wilted, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone... forgotten and lost at the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone, until the end of time.

When she finishes her story, she tells him she will always protect him.

In the real world, Vidal is the embodiment of sadistic evil and all things bad on earth. Early on he questions a man and his father who he believes are resistance fighters. The old man maintains he was only in the woods at night trying to get rabbits for food. The young man argues with the Captain who takes a wine bottle and smashes in the young man’s face, killing him. When the old man protests, the Vidal shoots him. Later, going through the old man’s bag, Vidal finds a rabbit. The danger of illogical violence becomes ever-present in the film.

Throughout the Captain’s story in reality, he threatens everyone around him, terrorizes his new wife and daughter, fights resistance fighters allowing no mercy, shows his brutality toward everyone, is finally punished himself by one of the female servants who he has bullied constantly, gets routed by the fighters, and eventually gets his “just rewards.”

In the myth story, the insect does turn into a fairy who leads Ofelia through Pan’s Labyrinth to the underground world. Pan (Doug Jones) who says he is the faun greets Ofelia as the princess that will bring life back to the underworld. He tells her she must be tested and do three things in order to return as a princess. The first is to find a key which has been swallowed by a huge toad. (This she does.) 

Next she is to find a knife kept by the Pale Man (also played by Doug Jones), a terrifying human-like monster with shark-like teeth, long sharp nails, and eyes he inserts in the palms of his hand. She has been instructed not to eat anything in his realm, but she eats two grapes before leaving and is chased and almost eaten by the monster. Pan rejects her at this point because she has disobeyed him.

Evil appears in the world of myth where monsters like the Pale Man can exist and where the Faun can turn from being kind to threatening in a moment.

[Spoilers] Eventually Ofelia’s mother dies in childbirth and Ofelia is instructed to take her baby brother to give to Pan. When she realizes that Pan plans to shed the boy’s blood to open the portals, she refuses to allow it. Blood must be shed, and in the real world, she is shot by the Captain. 

[Spoilers] Shedding her blood allows Ofelia/Princess to “return” to the land in the Underworld where her father and mother await her. According to director Del Toro, the film is about Soren Kierkegaard’s quote which says “the tyrant’s reign ends with his death, but the martyr’s reign starts with his death. I think that is the essence of the movie; it’s about living forever by choosing how you die.”

The film is one of the most haunting films I have seen. The special effects are unforgettable. The violence in the film is sometimes hard to take, but the lyrical beauty of the film often transcends it. There is danger in the world, but Ofelia learns that protecting another weaker than herself is worth all risks.

I smiled when I learned that at the Cannes Film Festival, the film received 22 minutes of applause.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006) *****