Pan's Labrynth-alice in wonderland for Grown up's

Every fairy tale asks us a moral question, and Guillermo del Toro’s hit fantasy movie Pan’s Labyrinth is no exception. The film is a gorgeously-rendered fairy tale about fairies and fascists in Franco’s Spain, and it asks a simple question: Can fantasies be a form of political protest? I can’t think of a better question to ask in a world of authoritarian states, and saturated by media fantasies. So what does this modern-day fairy tale tell us? Can we deploy carefully-crafted fantasies to fight the power? Well, it depends on how you define “fighting.”

Pan’s Labyrinth follows the adventures of a little girl named Ofelia who might be the lost princess of the underworld, and is undeniably the adoptive daughter of a brutal captain in Franco’s army whose job is to root out, torture and kill leftist rebels in a remote village. Some of those rebels, it turns out, are the Captain’s own servants and colleagues who pass intel and medicine to guerrillas in the forest. As Ofelia’s pregnant and ill mother wastes away in bed, the girl becomes attached to a servant named Mercedes. It turns out that Mercedes is also a covert rebel, and Ofelia defies her father by keeping this deadly fact a secret.

Most of the film is split between areal world where Mercedes uses political tactics to oppose the Captain, and a fantasy world where Ofelia encounters an old, gnarled faun, fairies and members of an ancient forest aristocracy. The faun, along with its tiny fairy companions and the freakish monsters Ofelia encounters on her tests are more of del Toro’s amazing creature creations, which are also on display in his first (Mexican) feature, the steam punk vampire flick Cronos, as well as the American films Mimic, Blade II (the best Blade movie by far), and Hellboy.

Eventually the faun reveals that Ofelia must past three tests to prove she’s the true princess of the underworld. As Ofelia battles giant frogs and a made-for-nightmares creature with eyeballs in its hands, she becomes more confident that she’s a princess – and convinced that doesn’t want to be part of the Captain’s world.

As the film reaches its climax, Ofelia is about to take the faun’s third and final test while rebels in the forest, fortified with reinforcements, begin an attack on the Captain’s outpost. As the Captain struggles to quell the uprising, Ofelia carries out the third test: bringing her recently-born brother to the labyrinth that connects the real and fairy worlds. The Captain follows Ofelia through the labyrinth, catching her just in time to find her talking to the air and clutching her brother.

From Ofelia’s point of view, we see that the faun has just told her she must shed the blood of an innocent – her brother. If she refuses, the faun will not protect her from the crazed Captain, who is waving his gun.
Implicitly rejecting the fantasy world, Ofelia refuses.
Unfortunately, reality isn’t any better: the Captain mercilessly shoots her and takes his son.

In a great concluding scene, the Captain leaves the labyrinth only to find his outpost in flames and a mob of guerrillas waiting for him. “Your son will never know your name,” Mercedes tells him, and shoots him in the face. She’s too late to save Ofelia, however, and as the little girl breathes her last in Mercedes’ arms we see her dressed in gold, joining her dead mother and real father in the land of the fairies. “Your sacrifice was the last test,” the faun tells her. She’s the true princess of the underworld.

If you accept that the underworld is real, then this is all really great. But I don’t accept it, and neither does the film. Ofelia’s fantasies are clearly designated as such – nothing in them affects the real world, nor does anyone else ever see the fairies and faun. Plus, Ofelia always has a thick stack of fairy tale books with her, and one of the fantasy fairies looks exactly like a picture we see in one of them. Given Ofelia’s namesake– the mad Ophelia from Hamlet who commits suicide – it’s clear that Ofelia’s fantasies are her slightly mad escape from the Captain’s abuse and the horror of watching her mother die.

One might argue that her fantasies area form of rebellion, a childish version of Mercedes’ political rebellion. Both the child and the woman refuse to live in the Captain’s world, one by escaping into her dreams, and the other by joining the Marxist rebels. And yet Ofelia’s form of rebellion seems ultimately useless. Stealing her brother and fleeing is probably what gets her killed. Are her fantasies in fact making her more vulnerable to the Captain and his henchmen, the very things she’s trying to resist? It would appear so, and yet her fantasies are also what sustain her. Fighting the frog and the scary eyeball creature teach her that she can be brave, and no doubt give her the independence of mind to keep Mercedes’ secrets from her father. Seen from this point of view, Ofelia’s fantasies are deeply political. They show her an alternate reality where the Captain doesn’t rule, and they help her find true allies: Mercedes and the rebels.

What’s satisfying about this film is its insistence that true resistance to despotism must always be political. Ofelia’s fantasies are more than merely escapist because they allow her to find political allies. In fact, after defeating the eyeball monster, Ofelia begs Mercedes to take her to the rebels in the forest because she’d rather live among them than stay in the Captain’s house. I suppose we can regard the film’s conclusion in this light. Though Ofelia may not have survived, she was liberated.


She fought the only way she knew how.....




also see : Official website of PAN'S LABRYNTH