Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno) (review)

At the very beginning of Guillermo del Toro’s harrowing fairy-tale film, Pan’s Labyrinth, better known in Spanish as El laberinto del fauno, a pregnant young woman named Carmen is traveling with her eleven-year-old daughter Ofelia in a Bentley limousine. They are being driven through a verdant forest to be with Carmen’s fascist husband, Captain Vidal, who is rounding up and killing the last of the guerillas in northern Spain. It is 1944, and the Franco regime has been firmly established, but there are still pockets of resistance in the countryside that the fascists need to “cleanse” and control. At one point during the trip, Carmen takes the book that Ofelia is reading in the limousine and remarks, “Fairy tales? You’re too old to be filling your head with such nonsense.” Later on, after their arrival at the fascist encampment, Ofelia asks Mercedes, the intrepid maid who is clandestinely helping the desperate guerillas in the woods, whether she believes in fairies, and Mercedes replies: “No. But when I was a little girl, I did. I believed in a lot of things that I don’t believe anymore.” Then, toward the end of the film, right before her mother dies, she warns Ofelia, “As you get older, you’ll see that life isn’t like your fairy tales. The world is a cruel place.” She moves to a fireplace carrying a magic mandrake (a root that resembles a human shape and that can have the power of bestowing invulnerability) that Ofelia had used to save her pregnant mother and unborn baby brother. “You’ll learn that,” she says, “even if it hurts.” All at once she throws the mandrake into the fire. Ofelia screams “Noooo!” Her mother scolds her: “Ofelia! Magic does not exist! Not for you, me, or anyone else!” The mandrake writhes and squeals in the flames. The mother doubles over in pain and will soon die. Without magic, Ofelia cannot save her mother, and it is questionable whether she can save herself.

These three scenes are crucial for understanding how del Toro uses the fairy tale in Pan’s Labyrinth to offset and comment on the lurid experiences of innocent people struggling to survive in the dark times of the Franco regime. As we know from history, the resistance to the fascists was noble but futile. Eventually, however, the Spaniards emerged from darkness in the 1980s to appreciate those wondrous, essential elements of life that are often unseen and neglected. Like the flower on the tree at the end of del Toro’s film, hope was reborn for a short period. But today, we live in dark times once again, even the liberated Spaniards. Fascism has returned in new and ugly forms throughout the world. Perhaps one day we may emerge from all the wars, torture, lies, arrogance, and sadism, as the Spaniards managed to do in the 1980s. But will fairy tales help us? Did fairy tales help the antifascists in Spain? Can fairy tales provide light and optimism? What good is it to read fairy tales or even view fairy-tale films in times of darkness?

These are some of the questions, I think, that del Toro poses in a chilling film that does not mince words nor delude us about the cruelty in our world. Del Toro wants to penetrate the spectacle of society that glorifies and conceals the pathology and corruption of people in power. He wants us to see life as it is, and he is concerned about how we use our eyes to attain clear vision and recognition. Paradoxically, it is the fairy tale—and in this case, the fairy-tale film—that offers a corrective and more “realistic” vision of the world, in contrast to the diversionary and myopic manner in which many people see reality.

There is another very early scene in Pan’s Labyrinth that is a good example of del Toro’s emphasis on developing sight and insight...