Pan’s Labyrinth Movie Review

El labyrinth del fauno (Pan’s labyrinth), is a movie directed by Guillermo del toro. Del Toro is known for his characters, especially children and mythical creatures. He drew inspiration for Pan’s Labyrinth from fairy tales like snow white, Alice in wonderland, the wizard of oz and ancient Greek myths, and also the famous Spanish novel ‘Don Quixote’, which poses a similar protagonist. This extract reflects the economic, geographic, and historic factors brilliantly through the film elements like cinematography, editing, Mise-en-scène, and sound, which help us understand the scenes thoroughly. A fantasy film with authoritarianism and the after-effects of the Spanish civil war, makes this masterpiece fall under the broad genres of drama, fantasy, and war. “Dark, twisted, and beautiful, this entwines fairy-tale fantasy with war-movie horror to startling effect” (from The Empire), this can help us understand the theme of this movie in just a single line. We get to see a fantasy world from the eyes of a young girl, Ofelia, who moves to the suburbs along with her pregnant mother, to live with her stepfather who is the captain of the Spanish army and upon reaching there Ofelia and her mother were exposed to the atrocities of the falangist Spain government.

Pan’s Labyrinth takes place in Spain; 1944. The Spanish civil war had been over for 5 years, but a few guerrilla rebels continued to fight against the new fascist dictatorship led by Francisco Franco. This gives us a bit of insight into the political, historical, and social issues this movie depicts. When Ofelia and her mother enter this gruesome world because of the sadist captain Vidal, who was Ofelia’s stepfather, she starts to find out about the mythical fantasy world awaiting her and the ancient labyrinth she is forbidden from entering. Mise-en-scène plays a very prominent role in this film, from the way we get to see the way the sadist captain behaves in the first few scenes, almost helps us understand his character completely, one of the scenes specifically would be where they caught the hunters who claim to have gone hunting for rabbits, the shot was from a lower angle, which depicted Captain as an authoritative and fearful person. The faun, the enormous toad, and the pale man are all the other-worldly creatures, which show the immense efforts in the make-up and the art direction. A smooth blend of politics and fantasy in one piece. Del toro has used a lot of back and forth continuous shots. He also uses an object common to both worlds to transition from one shot to the other depicting that both, Ofelia’s tasks and the political happenings take place in the same place the same time, One of the scenes that could prove this would be the time where Mercedes finds the chalk that Ofelia had used to create the door. The chalk can also symbolize, an escape for Ofelia from the cruel reality she had to face, but at the same time, it also poses as a mechanism from the magical world as a way to save herself despite running out of options.

The first scene opens with the camera, following captain Vidal walking out of the building. In the next shot, we see him holding the door frame as he struggles to walk fast with his injuries, we can observe how he stares out at the battlefield in front of him. We can hear the sounds of a gunshot ring in the background as he walks out, the camera moves along with the captain, giving us an overview of everything he sees. We can observe how Vidal felt lost for a second as he sees the blasts and chaos, he is met with the dilemma of being the captain and father. The camera cuts to show Mercedes enters a room, calling for Ofelia. She walks towards her empty bed. As the camera captures a moving close-up shot of Mercedes, we can get a glimpse of her face which helps us understand how distressed and anxious she feels. The camera moves along with her eyes, towards the wall where there is a rectangular outline of the door drawn, which helps us read between the scenes.

In the next scene, we see Ofelia running with her brother held tight in her arms, into the labyrinth. Now we can get a wide shot and observe Vidal panting and running up to the same entrance. In the background, we can observe the place in flames and chaos, which depicts that as Ofelia tries to escape from her stepdad, there are huge rebellions occurring at the same time. The camera cuts to a backshot of Vidal running into the narrow lanes. The camera slowly moves up, covering a close-up shot of the entrance, which had a symbol representing the faun, which indicates that the entrance was to the labyrinth. In the next scene, we get to see a moving shot covering a wide view of Ofelia running into the labyrinth followed by the captain. In the next scenes, as the captain runs behind Ofelia, we can notice how exhausted he gets from running with his injuries, causing him to halt for a second. This part can prove his dedication to his son and the extends he would go just to save him. The camera follows Ofelia to a dead end and rotates around her, which gives us a glimpse of her anxious face. The wall behind her opens up, parting into two halves forming a way for Ofelia to getaway. This can portray as a factor that proves that the fantasy world was real and Ofelia is actually the princess. The camera shifts to the captain who made his way struggling till here. As he reached the dead-end we can see his puzzled face at the girl’s sudden disappearance, causing him to turn back and run.

In the next scene, we can see Ofelia and faun at the labyrinth. The camera gives us a complete shot, while it moves with her. We get an angle from the top covering both the faun and Ofelia.  The knife which was obtained by her was held by the faun. As the faun explains that the blood of a pure child is needed, Ofelia slowly steps back shaking her head and not agreeing to it. Upon denying we can hear the faun grunt and raise his voice. We can make out how Ofelia feels responsible for her brother after her mother died, from this scene, the responsibility of a sister was of much greater importance to her than becoming a princess. We can also symbolize this as the tough choices life might put forward. The faun asks her final decision, as we get to see both from different angles, the focus between Ofelia and the faun switches with the dialogues. In the shot, we can notice Vidal reaches the labyrinth with a gun in his hand and panting. Then we can see the scene from Vidal’s point of view, and we can find out how he cannot see the faun, and it appears as though she is talking to nothing, which helps us understand that the mythical beings are only visible to Ofelia.

The camera shows Vidal walks towards Ofelia, with a gun in his hand. The overhead shot from Vidal’s height shows how small and terrified Ofelia looks, as he snatches the baby from her hands. Despite seeing Ofelia protect her brother, we get to understand how ruthless and sadistic he is, as we see him shoot Ofelia absolutely without any hesitation. The camera gives us a close-up shot of Ofelia’s face, which slowly fills up with pain, from the gunshot. The camera zooms out, to also include Vidal in the frame, but he has absolutely no empathy, for his daughter, or rather we can understand that he never considers her as his daughter since the start. The camera focuses on Ofelia, she raises her hand which is completely covered and dripping with blood. She pants and falls on the ground, which can depict that she is nearing her death. In the next scene, we can see Vidal carry the child and walk out of the labyrinth, but stops, and the camera zoom into his face. We get a back shot of Vidal, walking outside as the crowd of rebels awaits him. He walks up to Pedro and Mercedes and hands the child, as Mercedes takes his child and walks back, we can notice Vidal’s eyes did not leave his son, which does mean that he values and loves his son. This also makes it evident that he already knows that he has reached his end.  Vidal takes out the watch his father passed on to him from his pocket and smashes it freezing the watch from ticking and makes his last wish of letting his child know the time of death, but Mercedes interrupted him before he could complete and told him that the child wouldn’t even know his name. Just as she completes, the camera gives us a glance onto Vidal’s shocked face with pleading eyes and back to the duo and Pedro shoots him in his face. We can also hear the baby cry in the background, as blood oozes out of his face and he dies.

Del toro has used a child’s mind of how cruel the political government was and the authoritarianism in Spain, a war between, the good, evil, and the innocent. As there is a war between the cruel fascist government and the guerrilla rebels who wanted justice, there is no place for innocents like Ofelia and her mother who were used by the captain. Del toro has shown a similar cruel world, during the tasks completed by Ofelia. The pale man, the huge toad, and the faun all of who she had to face, helped us understand that there was no way to completely avoid these horrid people but she just had to learn to get adapted to the environment. In the end, she has to die in the real world if she has to get back to the so-called kingdom, this shows the need to make sacrifices in order to live through, and the innocent will be trampled over. The two worlds in the movies show similar patterns to prove that trusting personal feelings over authority lead to a purer sense of morality. Even in Pan’s Labyrinth, del toro uses his traditional techniques of bringing fairy tale elements to the real world and using the monsters to express human morality.