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Pan’s Labyrinth is one of the boldest films of recent years, and its bravery has certainly paid off. Director Guillermo del Toro has followed the trend of other contemporary Latin American directors such as Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 2000), Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, 2001), and Fernando Meirelles (City of God, 2002), who together have secured a popularity for their films unprecedented in so-called ‘world’ or ‘foreign language’ cinema. Del Toro, another member of this young and innovative group (self-titled the ‘Burrito Pack’), has shown his daring and his willing to flaunt convention throughout his career. Having refused to direct both The Chronicles of Narnia (2005) and one of the Harry Potter series, Del Toro prides himself as a director who undertakes projects for their merit and personal appeal rather than for their potential revenue. The director’s career has seen him fluctuate between English and Spanish language films to great effect; sci-fi thriller Mimic (1997) was followed by El Espinazo del Diablo (2001) which has heavily influenced Pan’s Labyrinth, and Del Toro secured huge audience figures for the fantasy thrillers Blade II (2002) and Hellboy (2004). His creation of a bricolage of elements from both American and European cinema, and his appropriation of the tropes and icons of various genres, have enabled him to create the unique blend of fantasy and horror which forms the structure of Pan’s Labyrinth.
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The boldness of Del Toro’s latest and most popular feature is encapsulated by its refusal to address an easily-identifiable demographic. At first glance, the publicity for Pan’s Labyrinth appeared to be that of a well-glossed dramatisation of a children’s legend, in the strain of The Never-Ending Story (1984) or Narnia. However, this film is most certainly not intended for children. At certain moments, even its ‘15’ certificate seems to be straining to contain the violence and the latent dark horror which Pan’s Labyrinth contains. As a hardened fan of horror cinema, rarely will any film make me turn my head, but a certain sequence here (featuring the death of a young man at the hands of Captain Vidal) I was unable to watch. Del Toro seems to be of the Hitchcockian school, refusing the overt gore of much horror cinema, but carefully crafting images that the viewer is reluctantly compelled to play over and over in their own minds. One particular scene epitomises this technique; as Captain Vidal prepares to torture a captured rebel, he details exactly what he plans to do and how he will ensure to obtain information from his prisoner. Although we see only the aftermath of this violence, the methodical and cool preparations of Vidal carry at least as much terror as the gory imagery of Hostel (2005), for instance. The visceral impact of these sequences is compounded by the film’s incredible aural depth, which renders with great potency the creaking of leather and floorboards, the crunch of grass or squelch of mud, the pounding of rainwater on rooftops or a weapon on flesh.
As well as its aural richness, Del Toro’s film is well in keeping with the tradition of aesthetic lushness evidenced by other films of the ‘Burrito Pack’; the saturation of light in Y tu mamá también springs to mind, or the fast-cut, high-impact visuals of City of God. Pan’s Labyrinth uses a range of browns and greens which allow for a painterly display of Vidal’s sparse, candlelit home, and of the dense surrounding forest in which the protagonist, Ofelia, loses herself. This rich cinematography is deployed to greatest effect in the sequences which, although their intended truth remains ambiguous, can be taken as fantasies of the young Ofelia.
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As the heroine completes the tasks demanded of her by the Faun, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro dips into and mixes the colours of this palette to create an effect perfectly in tune with that used by Del Toro to create a collage of mythical elements. After Ofelia’s first encounter with the Faun, she becomes further engrossed in a world which blends myths of disparate origin into a truly unique vision. From Celtic mythology, Del Toro takes the fairies who guide Ofelia deeper into the Faun’s labyrinth. From Greek legend, the tale of Persephone, condemned to live in the underworld after eating of a forbidden fruit, is reimagined as Ofelia is almost entrapped by the ‘Pale Man’ when the lure of a banquet becomes irresistible. The very structure of the film is appropriated from Greek and specifically Homeric legend; that of a hero encountering threats and beastlike figures, and completing tasks in order to return home.
Pan’s Labyrinth retells folklore and mythology in a way which at first seems shocking, adding violence and brutality to legend in order to create what Del Toro has called ‘the Potato Famine version of Hansel and Gretel’. However, the film has in fact affected a return to an original folklore which was itself intrinsically bloodthirsty. The tales collected by the brothers Grimm, for instance, retain the claustrophobia, terror and gore of oral lore which was largely lost with the transcribing of stories and their resultant transformation into ‘fairy tales’ intended primarily for children. Pan’s Labyrinth harks back to this early folklore, taking fairy-fantasy from Disney and reclaiming it for an adult audience. This is the most daring aspect of Del Toro’s masterpiece and it will remain to be seen whether other filmmakers will adopt this process; potentially fruitful, but risky in a cinematic marketplace where the clear identification of a target audience is integral to revenue.
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The saturation of Pan’s Labyrinth in mythology allows for illuminating analysis of the film’s relation to traditions of Latin American and Spanish literature and film. Firstly, Del Toro has engaged with the Latin American literary tradition of ‘magic realism’, and Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths seems to have been a strong influence on the film. Secondly, his heavy reliance on allegory as integral to his storytelling is reminiscent of Spanish cinema produced during the era in which the film is set. During the long reign of General Francisco Franco, filmmakers who wished to criticise the dictator were limited to masking their meaning through the use of emblem and fable, if they wished to avoid censorship and prosecution. Buñuel’s Viridiana (1961), for example, managed a successful denouncement of religious hypocrisy encouraged by the Franco regime without displaying any content which could be interpreted as a direct incitement to political action. As in the Spanish classic The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), Del Toro uses the story of an imaginative young girl to develop an allegory of Franco’s Spain.
His own political sentiments, however, are clearly illustrated by the characterisation of the repellent Vidal, a mini-Franco who obeys without question his absent leader. Both Vidal and the ‘Pale Man’ can be interpreted as representatives of Franco; both are tyrannical, yet simultaneously in servitude to an elusive higher doctrine incomprehensible to other characters, and both are blind to their surroundings until they are crossed. Until she directly disobeys him, Vidal is incapable of detecting the potential threat from his servant, Mercedes, who is aiding the rebel forces against Franco’s army. Similarly, the ‘Pale Man’ is blind to Ofelia’s presence until she fails in her task by eating from his banquet. In this respect, a potentially illuminating criticism of Franco and of all tyranny can be readily detected in Del Toro’s film.
The lesson of Pan’s Labyrinth is that those who are blind to the world around them, unable to open their eyes to the wonder and magic experienced by Ofelia, and able to recognise only those who are potential enemies, will live in servitude to their own fears and will suffer destruction. Del Toro encourages in us all the imaginative capability which provides Ofelia’s reward; he is no sceptic himself, having claimed that the film’s Faun is inspired by one which visited him as a child. By setting his film in the Franco era but achieving a timelessness through the depiction of an ancient underworld, Del Toro’s lessons are applicable to all, with the potency of myth and the strong message of fable and folklore. Pan’s Labyrinth encourages its viewers to follow in Ofelia’s footsteps: to stay in touch with their true selves, to maintain strength of conviction even against the odds, and above all never to shut the door to a potential world of imagination so often lost as years are gained.
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