THE CINEMATOGRAPH

Pan’s Labyrinth
2006, directed by Guillermo del Toro

It would be easy to frame Pan’s Labyrinth as a contest between the virtuous little girl Ofelia and the evil Captain Vidal, but that would oversimplify the difference between them. In fact they’re more equivalent than many viewers would be comfortable admitting. He’s driven by pride, relishing his authority as a military leader in fascist Spain, and she too aspires to an elevated position, fancying herself an incarnation of the mythical princess Moanna. She lives at least partway in a fairy tale world, but so does he, believing in an ideal of a “clean” Spain where everyone thinks alike. She knows nothing of politics, but it’s not at all unheard of for children like her to turn into adults like him.

The premise of Pan’s Labyrinth is that the childish wish to be a princess (or a prince, or a hero, or any role that stands above ordinary life) is not as innocent as it seems. The movie, however, does not condemn Ofelia. Like the Captain she carries a wish to be special, but that wish doesn’t corrupt her because she comes to understand that the only real path to elevation is sacrifice. She’ll give up her own life to save her baby half-brother, the Captain’s son. In her fantasy she had been a princess in the underworld before she was born, and she returns to her position in death, earning it through her selfless action. The idea is not that the glamor of princesshood is something evil, but rather that it belongs, at least rightfully, only to the dead. On Earth, among the living, any aspiration to superior status is hubris. Captain Vidal, true to his character, sneers at the notion of equality.

It’s fitting that this fable emerges in 2006, in the midst of a prolonged princess craze. The phenomenon is taken too much for granted, and appears too benign, to attract much criticism, but thanks largely to the marketing of Disney fairy tale characters, young girls worldwide are taught not only to idolize but also to identify with princesses. Pan’s Labyrinth is a kind of antidote to this princess culture.

Guillermo del Toro, who conceived, wrote, and directed Pan’s Labyrinth, has publicly offered his own interpretation of the difference between Ofelia and Vidal. In the words of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, del Toro points out, a tyrant’s reign ends with death, whereas a martyr’s reign starts at death. Both the Captain and Ofelia are ultimately defined by their respective ideas of immortality, and one of their stories ends with failure while the other leaves an inspiring legacy. When the guerrillas shoot Vidal, his power and importance are wiped out, and he’s assured that his son will never know his name. Ofelia, though powerless in life, earns eternal respect and leaves countless small signs of her presence.

Captain Vidal is introduced holding a pocket watch, complaining of his wife’s and Ofelia’s late arrival. He’s perpetually checking, handling, or cleaning his watch, and his room in the old water mill sets him among giant wooden gears, as if he lives inside a huge clock. He intends to smash his watch against a rock when he dies, so that his son will know the exact time of his death. This obsession with clocks betrays a proud wish for immortality, a symbolic desire to live on beyond death. It’s a form of self-importance, the same arrogance that makes him cruel. He has contempt for the Republican fighters, and his interest in his new son is not paternal love but rather an aristocrat’s wish to extend his reign through progeniture. Vidal however denies knowing that his father had smashed his watch in the same manner, so that his father’s intention comes to naught, as his will too. Both men are destined for oblivion.

Whereas Vidal wishes to be a master of time, leaving his stamp on the world by force and extending it through future generations, Ofelia shows no wish to impose herself on anyone. She’s brought to Vidal’s outpost through no wish of her own, and her fantasy life is a natural response to unfamiliar surroundings and a lack of playmates. Instead of bending the world to her will, she creates a fantasy that simply translates whatever she’s given into something more wondrous:

• the Pale Man is a fantastic version of Captain Vidal, a malevolent figure seated at the head of a long banquet table who will eventually chase Ofelia with murderous intent;
• the Faun brings to life a carving centered over the labyrinth gate, but more to the point, his spiraling horns, straight nose, and pointed chin echo the uterus from which Ofelia sprang, her real “underground kingdom” where a new baby is presently growing;
• the mandrake, shaped like a human infant, is a magical stand-in for Ofelia’s unborn brother;
• the three fairies are transformations of the stick insects Ofelia sees in the forest;
• the toad is a reimagining of the Captain’s corruption; Ofelia senses something foul behind his talk of cleanliness, and accordingly the frog sits in a muddy hole eating bugs; after regurgitating all the slime in his belly there’s nothing left inside;
• the toad’s tree, like the Faun, is shaped like a uterus with a hole in the vagina’s place, suggesting that Ofelia imagines her mother polluted by the “dirty” Captain;
• the golden key that Ofelia takes from the toad corresponds to the storeroom key Mercedes uses to supply the guerrillas;
• the knife that Ofelia takes from the Pale Man’s crypt mirrors the kitchen knife Mercedes hides at her waist and uses to slice Vidal’s cheek open;
• the hourglass is a more fantastic version of Vidal’s pocket watch, each used for the merciless regimentation of time;
• the magic book, a gift from the Faun, in whose blank pages Ofelia’s tasks write themselves, corresponds to the book of fairy tales she reads in the car;
• the eyes of the Pale Man, which he pops into sockets in his hands, are like the stone eye Ofelia inserts in a roadside stele; the Pale Man cannot see her without them, just as Vidal fails to suspect Ofelia until very late;
• the magic chalk doors correspond to Mercedes’s secret trapdoor.

Until its last moments Pan’s Labyrinth goes back and forth between reality and fantasy. Although all the fantastic elements are drawn from the real world, the film is not unsympathetic to Ofelia’s flights of imagination. Its criticism of our culture’s fantasy of aristocratic privilege is implicit, directed more at the commercial exploitation of fairy tales than at the myths themselves. As Ofelia lies dying in the middle of the labyrinth, she imagines herself in a great hall, standing before her mother and father seated on high thrones, a vacant seat awaiting her beside them, but we never see her take her lofty place. The elevation of her throne is offset by her kingdom’s underground location and the pit where she dies. It’s not the proud death that Vidal seeks for himself, but the noble death of a humble martyr.

Ofelia draws her last breath though after her reception in the underworld, implying that it’s still just a revery after all… but the film is not so harsh as to deprive her of all the magic she envisioned. In its last frames, the film finds wonder in the “small traces of her time on earth” represented by a budding blossom in the forest. It’s a magic rooted, like all the other magic, in reality, and her glory is not in her elevated position but in the gifts she’s given.

Shortly after arriving at her new home, Ofelia rests her head on her mother’s belly to tell her unborn brother a legend whose purpose is unclear in the moment but later clarifies the movie’s point. On top of a remote mountain a magic rose bloomed every night that would make whoever plucked it immortal, but it was surrounded by poisonous thorns, and climbing the mountain meant certain death. The same paradox is repeated at the movie’s end, and in Kierkegaard’s maxim – death is a precondition for any meaningful immortality. Both Vidal and Ofelia understand this, and both are willing to face death, he in battle and she in sacrifice, but only hers is a selfless death worthy of immortality.

CONNECTIONS:

Day of Wrath – Unsuspected equivalence between the seemingly innocent and the guilty

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir – Idea that exalted states, whether romance or royalty, belong exclusively to the dead

Orphée – Paradoxical idea that immortality requires a sacrifice of life

La rupture – Father’s care for his son rooted in aristocratic pride rather than paternal love

The Shining – Set in an isolated outpost with a labyrinth outside