Pan’s Labyrinth is simply a stunning film, both visually and thematically. I liked it the second time around more than the first. Opening with the story of the princess of the “Underground Realm” where there are “no lies or pain,” who dreamt of outer world and escaped to there, the film traces the story of that lost Ofelia, who has no idea her true identity. But you can see she’s called to the world of Faerie early on. Arriving at her new house, she runs straight for the woods. Given a bath and a pretty dress for a dinner party, she ruins them both in one of her magical quests. The best “surprise” she could receive is not a dress, in fact, but books.
Fans of Potter and other fantasy works will have lots of of connecting points to Pan’s Labyrinth. There are common features, like the woods, three magical tasks to accomplish, magical mandrake remedies to maladies, and a blank book with magically-appearing ink. It has a Narnia-like beginning, with the threat of war (WWII) in the background, and the young girl moving to a new house. Unlike Narnia, she moves from one war zone to another, and her own battles must be fought around the portal to the Underground Realm while WWII continues around her.
Ofelia loves fairy tales, and all the adults around her think her silly for it. Her mother tells her she’s “too old to be filling your head with such nonsense.” When Ofelia places the mandrake under her mother’s bed for healing, the mother’s husband exclaims, “This is all because of that junk you let her read!”
And her mother, much more kindly, reinforces the rebuke: “You’re getting older, soon you will see that it isn’t like … fairy tales … the world is a very cruel place. Magic does not exist.”
What Ofelia knows, however, and what J.K. Rowling and other fantasy writers know, is that the two things – magic and cruelty – are not opposites. Ofelia is in the midst of her own journey through the Perilous Realm, and disbelief never occurs to her. The question in Ofelia’s mind is not “Does the faun exist?” but “Is he good or evil, kind or menacing?”
Not only is there darkness outside her, but there is rebellion within. She refuses to obey the good magic, eats the forbidden fruit, and what ensues is quite possibly the creepiest few minutes of film ever made. The Gothic fallen world isn’t just “out there” somewhere; it’s in Ofelia’s world, and she has to wrestle it within herself.
Ultimately, her belief in true magic – a greater reality to the world than what the five senses perceive – is what gets her through. She can see things others can’t, because her vision is correct. That her mother is angry about her dress getting so dirty, which happened while she was completing one of her magical tasks, shows the way our vision gets skewed and needs Faerie to correct it. At the end, when she is speaking with the faun and arguing over the portal, the camera gives us her step-father’s view – and of course, he cannot see the faun. It looks like she’s talking to no one.
The priest at Ofelia’s mother’s funeral says, “It is in pain that we find the meaning of life.” Ofelia, like Harry, passes through the trials of a terrifying Gothic journey to find resurrection into the world to which she belongs.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Very good analysis of Pan’s Labyrinth, Travis. I wonder how you feel about Ophelia’s little brother and what you think he represents ?
And a little detail; the war around Ophelia isn’t WWII, it’s Franco’s civil war that ended in April 1939, a few months before WWII started.
I recently watched a DVD version of the film, and have to say, I did not like the film’s message at all. Oh, yes, it was well acted, and well directed, but the “magic” seemed very dark to me;the “faun” if that is what it was, seemed sinister to me from the first time Ofelia met it.
The film is very unlike the C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, or Rowling stories insofar as it seems to me to have the message that the girl had to give up her life in order to reclaim her status as a fairy. That is a far cry from the kind of life changes that magic brings to the world of the children in the Narnia tales, the hobbits in the Tolkien tales, and in the Wizarding World of JK Rowling. Now, those authors all acknowledged that magic could be used for a dark or evil purpose, but that it was important to fight for the good that magic could bring. That vision is entirely missing from Pan’s Labyrinth as far as I can see, as the encounter Ofelia has with magic creatures seems to lure her to a dark world rather than helping her cope or avoid the evil in her “muggle” world, if you will. That last shot, where she is lying with blood coming from her nose, and the older resistance female(whose name I have forgotten) was sobbing heartbrokenly, seemed to be a very dark ending indeed. Del Toro apparently has a very different world view than that of the aforementioned authors. I don’t think I care to be exposed to any more of his film work, and am thankful he was NOT chosen to be the director of the last Harry Potter films!
Victoria, thanks for the correction! I’ll have to give the question about her brother some thought. There are notes of new hope there, of course, and one of my favorite scenes is when she tells her brother the fairy tale in the womb. Since the battle is ultimately over that baby, there might be a symbolic battle for what the future will be like involved.
Fricka, are you aware that del Toro is directing The Hobbit?
I think you might like Jeffrey Overstreet’s take on this a little better. Look up his talk, “We’ve Gotta Get Out of Here” in iTunes U. Overstreet is of the opinion – and I agree – that del Toro has really just re-told the story he didn’t want to tell by turning down Narnia, because, in his view, it’s the only story that really works (self-sacrifice being the way out of the Fallen world and into the world of true magic).
I actually think Tolkien’s view is closer to Pan’s Labyrinth than it might seem. Tolkien was quite the pessimist about the trajectory of this fallen world, calling our history “the long defeat.” I think Ofelia’s surprising and jarring sacrificial death – because she refused to let her baby brother be harmed – has something of a eucatastrophe element to it, because the joyous ending and restoration to her place in Faerie is as surprising as the gunshot itself.
For the record…look at the beginning notes in the film. It is set in 1944. And the newspaper they read tells of the D-Day invasion. Since it is also about the resistance to Franco, everyone is correct!
Actually I thought the movie had a very Narnia-esque ending since the girl didn’t get to paradise till after her death, much like the Pevensies, even though they had already accepted Aslan as their true savior a few years before.
And eh, Ofelia wasn’t really immersed in any magical world at this point, she was just being tested by the magics at be. Honestly I didn’t have huge expectations for a moral given how much shorter and simpler the story that was getting told here needed to be, but I liked how it weaved in the magical with her real world problems. The scenario wasn’t a feelgood one, but hey, WW2 was like that for a lot of people, life is like that for a lot of people now, I am generally more disturbed when movies never reflect on that possibility-plus in the end she was protecting her bro, it was good enough for me. My biggest issue was that the bad guy was a little too over the top unlikable, but I can suspend my disbelief.
I totally thought it was set in the Spanish Civil war too, since all the references to anarchist propaganda were there. Oh well!
Did anyone else see “The Four Horsemen” in this story? Didn’t you wonder, too, what the “beasties” represented? I figure “War” is an ever-present character; “Pestilence”, “Famine”, and “Death” are clearly pictured, also. So, if Lewis really did find “Narnia” in the planets (Planet Narnia is on my Christmas “wish list”, hint hint), this might be a source or the source for “Pan”–a name that certainly goes beyond “Faun”. And “The Last Battle” certainly came to my mind at this film’s end. Ditto Harry’s sacrificial “dying” in each book.
Travis,
I think I had heard something about Del Toro directing The Hobbit. As long as he has Ian McKellan on board as Gandalf, I think it might not be such a bad choice. The capture of Bilbo by trolls, likewise the group by goblins, and the subsequent encounter of Bilbo with Gollum, and the group’s encounter with Wargs and Spiders, not to mention Smaug at the end, are all basically pretty dark; the tone in the book is lightened by its being told by Bilbo, so we know he got out OK in the end.
Yeah, except in this version Bilbo will probably die!
I love your point about the connection to Tolkien’s notion of “the long defeat,” Travis, and I definitely agree!
I do so love Pan’s Labyrinth.
Amy, kinda gives you hope that The Hobbit’s going to turn out to be a good film.
And I’m also hoping that after The Hobbit, he quits getting distracted by other projects and finally gets around to making At the Mountains of Madness.
Have you given the symbolic representation of the brother anymore thought?
Id like to understand your thoughts better and possibly quote you on a paper. Due tomorrow. >.<
im pretty sure he’s talking about narnia