Pan's Labyrinth is fantasy, drama film directed by, Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro. This was set in 1944 during the Spanish civil war. It is about a young girl who faces issues with her mother being ill due to her being pregnant and her due date being near there for being unable to take care of Ofelia and her step father who is a captain during that time, being a violent and aggressive character in her life.
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, screenplay, novelist and designer who uses various stories and myths from different cultures and incorporates that into a lot of his films and loves to create fantasy into his films such as the pale man and the faun in Pan’s Labyrinth. But before Pan’s labyrinth, he directed a film called The Devil’s Backbone in 2001 which is similar to Pan’s Labyrinth in some ways with there being a boy who is an orphan in trouble, same with Pan’s Labyrinth. In most del Toro directed films, he creates a sympathetic and rich character to get his audience to connect with them and he accomplishes that by using children or a living mystical creature. Another example of that would be in The Shape of Water where there is a mute girl being that sympathetic character and living mystical creature being amphibian man. He uses the theme of magical realism with is very common in Latin-American literature.
The film starts off with showing Ofelia fascination towards fantasy stories and makes the audience wonder if she had made all that up or if it was real. There are also times where the transitions between her two worlds collide with transitions through trees but also there are times where object from both universes fade into one.
With Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro aimed to create a half fantasy adventure and half historical political film. He also brings the idea of authority and disobedience. For example, the role of authority is played by captain Vidal, Carmen and the soldiers. You see the difference of how Vidal enforces authority on to soldiers and how he enforces orders onto Carmen. Due to Carmen being a woman of that century, their opinions were not as valued especially when it came to Vidal being the man of the house and wanting to control over everything that happened under that room and Carmen had to obey silently even if it may bring harm to her, her unborn baby and Ofelia.
We meet three mystical characters the faun, the toad and the pale man who resembled the adults in her real life. The faun represented Mercedes, the toad represented her ill mother and the pale man represented her step-father. The faun was a character that is described as either good or evil. There was a part at the end of the film where Ofelia has to choose between giving her half-brother up to Vidal or to let the faun sacrifice him using the knife she had stolen from the pale man but the faun wanted her to disobey and to know she was worthy, that she wouldn’t shed innocent blood creating a light in the darkness. The toad represented her ill mother being the size of Ofelia herself showing the authority over her yet being ill and incapable of taking care of her. The key inside the toad symbolised the half-brother being the key to all of it being over. The character of the pale man represents her step-father and showing the graphic of him eating those two fairies show how ruthless he can be. We see that Ofelia mirrors what Mercedes has been through by being both young and females being disobedient and being the elder sister trying to protect their little brothers.
Pan’s Labyrinth could be compared to the classic fairy tale Cinderella with Vidal being the evil step-mother, Carmen being the father that passed away and Mercedes debatably being the fairy god-mother. Jack Zipes, an American scholar and fairy tale expert said “[Ofelia] wills herself into this tale… and creates it so that she can deal with the forces of her mother, Vidal and the ending of the civil war, impinging on her life. What happens in the fairy tale is what has provided her with courage to oppose the real cruelty of monstrous people.” Meaning that Ofelia could have created this fantasy to help deal with what is doing on in her life and learn how to face those difficulties so she goes into this place of comfort where she can understand what is going on in her life since fairy tales are meant to help younger ages understand the difficulties that they may face sooner or later.
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