Review: Pan's Labyrinth (a film by Guillermo del Toro, 2006)

The big question Guillermo del Toro's fantasy masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth answers is this one: Why fairy-tale? The film replies: because violent war, because brute survivalism, because the injustice of fascism, because malevolent murder, and perhaps finally, because inevitable Death.

Ofelia's already poverty stricken life in war-torn Spain, 1944, enters another under the rule of her step-father, a masochistic torturer, a power-mad fascist; a deranged maniacal Captain of the ruling class. Ofelia's sickly pregnant mother chides her for keeping a stack of books filled with fairy-tales and magical pictures close by while living under his roof, telling her that she's too old for them and that "magic does not exist" in their cruel world.

Ofelia believes otherwise. Her departure from an already horrific world may not have been by her own choosing, which is why it matches reality so perfectly. Following the directives of a quite watchful insect, she follows its path into a labyrinth where she meets Pan, an old, woody faun who tells her that she is not what she seems. The faun tells her that she is actually a Princess. He tells her that to save her kingdom she must complete three tasks. He gives her chalk, a box containing three fairies, and a book with seemingly empty pages.

Take note: Ofelia's secondary world is not one of escape nor retreat, but one of revelation that offers her meaningless life meaning (saving her baby brother), purpose (re-wilding the place where she lives), and divine ascendance (reclaiming her place on the throne). And who wouldn't accept that kind of offer in a circumstance such as hers? In the dreary, dark, famine stricken landscape of political party versus rebellion, all folklore, all storytelling, and all organic life is stripped to bare bones and there isn't room for the creation and artistic practice of them. This uprootedness, which Ofelia symbolizes as a character as well, begs to be placed back somewhere where it can flourish and thrive. In Pan's Labyrinth, magic enters the equation as a component necessary for the beginning of a realm in which growth is again possible.

One portal Ofelia opens with her magic chalk exposes a fairy bouquet guarded by a pale, fleshy, eyeless, thinning creature. After Ofelia's task in the dining room is complete, she can't help but take a look at the wealth of food splayed out before this creature... she can't help but notice the large, juicy grapes dangling from a plate. Against the warnings of the fairies, she takes one, bites into it, and revels in its flavor. Unfortunately for Ofelia and the fairies, this awakens the creature who then takes the eyeballs in front of him, places them into the palms of his hands, and opens wide to see Ofelia, hungering for her and the fairies.

What crime did Ofelia commit to spawn the awakening of the hungry creature? A sensory one, where the pleasures of the flesh have been banned until the breaking of that rule. Isn't that what the Pale Man represents? The gluttony of the body which is simply body, simply flesh, simply a pleasurable feeling object to fill and release, all touch, all sight, all sound, all taste - and nothing more? In a place such as this, Ofelia is Spirit, and in her acceptance of the desire to taste - she awakens the one which is soulless, triggering that body's hunger for what she has; the Spirit which he is without.

Another interesting scene is when Ofelia's enters the ground, underneath a dying tree, in order to revive it by killing the toad who thrives off of it. The frog, a fat, sickening pile of warty bile, has within its bowels a key. By feeding it special stones, mixed in cockroaches, Ofelia causes the toad to vomit up its contents, releasing the key she needs to continue on her journey. Who is this toad eating the natural world by hoarding its nutrients until it becomes disgusting with over-accumulation and thus banishing all other forms of life?

The toad is the sickness of Fascism, the representation of a ruling class who does not think outside of its own luxuries. The unmoving toad is the changeless world, stuck on rules and regulations that refuse to budge, denying that anything else besides its power exists.

All throughout the film are sounds of insects buzzing very close. The flutter of fast wings, the urgency of them to get the point in the story where justice can actually occur. The complete imbalance of technological and the natural is at stake, and the insects are the first to know it, buzzing louder and louder until all can hear the fear in their wingbeats, their nervous flight. Pan, a symbol from the ancient world, the tree, the border between veils, the transcendent conjurer, gives Ofelia very good advice. Upon telling him that a certain door is locked closed, Pan hands her a piece of chalk and says simply: "In that case, create your own door." And that she does.