Guillermo del Toro’s Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy:

At its simplest, the dark fantasy film Pan’s Labyrinth tells the story of a young girl called Ofelia and her encounters with a mysterious faun. Written and directed by Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro, the film is set in Spain 1944, a period in history where the fascist Franco regime was in power.

(Warning: this contains spoilers for the film, do not read on if you haven’t seen the film.)

The faun believes that Ofelia is the reincarnated spirit of his princess who used to reside in the Underworld before her death. He gives her three tasks to complete to determine whether her essence is intact and her soul is worthy of returning to its rightful home.

Running parallel to this is the account of Ofelia’s stepfather, Captain Vidal, a twisted soldier who is devoted completely to hunting down and executing anti-Franco rebels.

Pan’s Labyrinth follows the rules and conventions that Vladimir Propp laid out as touchstones that must be hit in order to be viewed as a traditional fairy tale. The rule of three being an example of this (in fairy tales the number three recurs often and is treated like a magic number). Del Toro, in honour of this, litters his film with many instances of the magic three: Ofelia must complete three tasks before returning to her true home, three fairies guide Ofelia on her journey, the Pale Man’s lair has three rooms, etc.

Some are obvious like the above listed, whilst others are subtle and complex in the way they’re integrated into the film. For example, Ofelia encounters three villainous creatures across her journey: the giant toad, the Pale man and finally Captain Vidal, the most twisted and monstrous of all the creatures seen in the film.

Similarly, each of the three central female character’s (Ofelia, Carmen and Mercedes) relationship with Vidal can be viewed as the three responses to a fascist regime. Carmen’s weak acceptance, Ofelia’s understated rebellion and Mercedes’ full-blown resistance of Vidal’s ideologies and everything he stands for.

The eventual downfall of Vidal feels entirely satisfying and justified. By the end of the film it is not enough for Vidal to simply die as he has done too many truly evil acts for it to be that simple. He must be utterly destroyed. Vidal requests that his son be told the time of his death however Mercedes’ merely replies that: ‘He will never even know your name’ before her brother shoots him. As dictated by the tradition of the fairy tale the villain is vanquished.

Multiple characters undergo physical transformations during the course of the film. Vidal starts off immaculately groomed, hair slicked to perfection, the model commander and representation of the new fascist regime. However he ends the film physically scarred, drugged and stumbling about after Ofelia in a manner similar to the terrifying Pale man sequence.

The faun also transforms, he begins incredibly old and it takes a lot of effort for him to move. With each subsequent encounter he looks younger, more able-bodied and in a way more beautiful which juxtaposes with his increasingly sinister and distrustful behaviour.

The fantasy and fairy tale genre are not the only conventions that Pan’s Labyrinth must adhere to. As it is a feature film, there are rules of screenwriting that must be followed when crafting the story. Possibly the most important things to be monitored are the goals, the stakes and the urgency.

Without a clear goal a protagonist is not interesting, or even worse, boring and passive. Ofelia desperately wants to escape from her current life and return to the Underworld she feels she truly belongs.

The stakes are strengthened by asking what happens if the protagonist doesn’t achieve their goal. The bigger you make the gains and the losses means the stakes will be higher and thus a more interesting story will be told. If Ofelia fails in her goal then she will have to live in fear and tyranny of an evil man who has invaded his way into her family.

The urgency is so vital and Ofelia has only two weeks to complete the tasks the faun sets her. By setting such a small time frame, the likelihood of Ofelia completing these tasks and achieving her goal is small and as such becomes more suspenseful and compelling to watch. If there was no urgency in completing the tasks and Ofelia had as long as she wanted then the story would suffer greatly.

Del Toro, as both the films writer and director is able to infuse many visual motifs and enhance his story through skilled camera work. Vidal is often shot in light, whereas the faun and his labyrinth are cast in darkness, as is Ofelia many times. This goes against many classic rules of cinema; it reverses our expectations and teaches us to not be so distrustful of the darkness and the world it inhabits, as it’s the real world, in all its bright glory that is the damaged one.

There is an unwavering view of violence in this film although the most horrific act of violence, the torture of the stuttering rebel by Vidal, is never shown. This makes the scene even more disturbing because we only see the outcome of Vidal’s handiwork. It is left up to the audiences to imagine what it was he did to him.

Del Toro paid a lot of attention to his framing and blocking in certain scenes. Vidal, just like the Pale man, presides over a rich, bountiful feast. The dining room of both men are also laid out in the same way; a long rectangle with a chimney at the back and the monster at the head of the table. This was all intentional by Del Toro to make the two antagonists of each of Ofelia’s worlds (the real world and the Underworld) mirror each other.

Pan’s Labyrinth has a strong theme that resonates throughout the film. It is the idea of obedience versus disobedience; whether you should blindly follow rules or question them and rebel against it. The backdrop of this story involving the fascist regime offers many opportunities to mine conflict which is essential in creating drama.

In one of the first scenes, when Carmen and Ofelia meet Vidal, Del Toro shows us two opposing ideas: Carmen obeys Vidal, Ofelia does not. She sticks out her left hand, and even after he points out it’s the wrong hand, she says nothing and doesn’t offer him her right hand. Already, this early into the film, we can see the difference between Ofelia and her mother and gain a greater understanding into the type of person Ofelia is.

Vidal believes in blindly obeying the chain of command. The doctor telling him: ‘to obey without thinking just like that. Well – that’s something only people like you can do’ really sums up the entire theme in one sentence.

Carmen obeyed Vidal and destroyed the mandrake root that was in fact keeping her alive. By blindly obeying Vidal she inadvertently caused her own death. Ofelia is different though, by disobeying not only Vidal but also the faun and sticking to what she believes is right and not what a higher power tells her to do is what deems her soul worthy of returning to the Underworld.

Guillermo Del Toro’s film stands apart as such a wonderful and refreshing take on the classic fairy tale story. So much care and attention was spent crafting the story and making the characters into people we would root for, or in Vidal’s case truly hate, that they feel real to us. The film has layers upon layers of subtext and depth that when analysed is seen as a classic fairy tale that feels fresh, a dark fantasy that we wish to embark in and an unforgettable cinematic experience.