Pan’s Labyrinth (2006, Del Toro, Spain)

• Starting points

  The beginning and the end of the film
• 01:09 - Opening scene

  After onscreen text detailing the time and place (1944, Spain) and the sound of heavy breathing, the low level camera pans R to L into a canted angle close-up of the film's protagonist, a young girl called Ofelia, who is dying.
• 01:47:23 - Closing scene

  The final shot of the film. After witnessing Ofelia tragically die at the hands of her step-father, a flower magically forms on a branch and blooms. A magical insect/fairy looks on. Onscreen subtitles and the Spanish voiceover informs us that Ofelia's alter-ego (if not her actual magical identity) Princess Moanna, 'left behind, small traces of her time on earth, visible only to those who know where to look.'
• Cinematography

  • Zooming into Ofelia's eye and beyond into the black of her pupil, transporting the viewer into the magical faery kingdom
  • Stark contrast between ethereal blue shots of the faery kingdom and the ruins of a church in the sun-baked landscape
  • First shot of Captain Vidal preceded by his watch, a symbol of his macho need to ape his father's bravery and his own fastidiousness
  • First two shot of Ofelia and her sickly, pregnant mother, foreshadowing the conflict between fairy tales and reality
• Mise-en-Scène


  • Detailed and idiosyncratic approach to production design, with most originating from director Guillermo del Toro's sketch work
  • Remarkable make-up and design work, such as the Fawn and the terrifying Pale Man
  • Gothic production design, with primal forces haunting the present
• Editing


  • Conventional styling, with diegetic wipes and cross-dissolves to and from black forging a link between the real and fantasy worlds
• Sound


  • Gruesome murder scene with Captain Vidal executing two farmers, the sound design adding to the horror of the event
• he will be shot just below his right eye
• are all mirroring scenes, reflecting the precise deconstruction of the watch face and his own
• The main women in the film, Ofelia, Carmen and Mercedes all suffer at the hands of patriarchy
• When Mercedes is caught by Vidal towards the end of the film Vidal laughs at the suggestion that he should not be left alone with her – 'She is just a Woman!'
• Mercedes then replies that she was able to support the rebels precisely because she was 'invisible' to Vidal
• Later Ofelia is killed by her step-father for stealing his son and defying him and Carmen dies in child birth unmourned by her new husband
• Only Mercedes triumphs in the end through her ingenuity and bravery and through her love for her brother
• However her final scene is one of profound grief as she holds the dying Ofelia in her arms and weeps for the loss of childish innocence at the hands of a brutalising patriarchy
• In the Pale Man's lair we see a chilling shallow focus close-up of all the shoes of the Pale Man's victims
• Such an image evokes comparisons with scenes from the Nazi death camps and combined with other images such as the murals of The Pale Man devouring babies and of course the sumptuous banquet that cannot be touched we are left in little doubt that this representation of a fantasy monster can also be read as a critique of a ruling elite (perhaps the Church) which systematically and brutally crushes innocence and life
• Youth is clearly at odds with the adult world in this film – fantasy is perhaps the only escape
• There are no multi-ethnic representations in the film which is excusable given its setting in Northern Spain in 1944 however the representation of nationality is absolutely foreground
• The Falangist's (supporters of the dictator, Franco) are aligned to corrupt officialdom, a morally bankrupt church and a sadistic and brutal military (no prisoners are ever taken – headshots to the wounded being the preferred means of dispatch – and if they are captured, they are then sadistically tortured)
• Vidal alone executes his step-daughter, a doctor, two farmers and an injured rebel as well as torturing and taunting a captured rebel with a stutter – 'Count to three without stuttering and I'll free you'
• Our sympathies are absolutely aligned with the rebels who are depicted as compassionate and comradely – as much a simplification as that of the Falangist's as anyone who has read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia will know
• However this is not a realist film and Del Toro is clearly outraged by fascism, dictatorships, militarism, propaganda and patriarchy – all enemies of the imagination as much as anything else
• As the doctor says to Captain Vidal just before Vidal shoots him: 'To obey… for the sake of obeying, without questioning, that's something only people like you can do, Captain'
• The Spanish rebels are thus depicted as a significantly more humanised, freedom loving and empathetic group of democrats
• The film is a magical realist text – combining beautifully constructed but very dark fantasy sequences, some verging on horror, with a graphically violent rendering of factional fighting in Northern Spain in the early years of Franco's dictatorship
• Del Toro has referred to this film as a very lose sequel to an earlier feature horror, The Devil's Backbone – itself set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War
• In Pan's Labyrinth, as we have already seen, Franco's army unit is represented as a brutalising force of occupation and its commanding officer, Captain Vidal, as a sadistic epitome of evil: cruel to everyone including his wife and step-daughter
• His evident pleasure in torture is straight out of a psycho-horror film
• The ruling elite who attend a banquet given by him are equally venal and corrupt and Del Toro clearly has little empathy for the priest and the organised Catholicism he represents
• In contrast however we find the guerrillas and their supporters, such as Mercedes and the Doctor, are presented as honourable and caring people
• Del Toro makes it very clear with whom we are positioned to side
• Indeed the narrative triumph of liberalism over fascism is literal as the movie ends with the Captain's execution by the victorious rebels and Ofelia's imaginative or real resurrection in the Underworld
• Another motif, aside from the Gothic and gore discussed above is paganism
• The moss-covered ruins of the Labyrinth and associated standing stones, and the tree beneath which Ofelia finds the toad and from which blooms her own resurrection (see above – endings) all suggest a sophisticated and elemental pagan past now acting as rare portals to the fairy kingdom
• The representation of women referred to above is evidence of the social problems women faced in this patriarchal and macho era
• A local priest, attending a meal held by the Captain, dismisses the possible pain felt by the rebels on theological grounds
• His representation lacks humanity and is clearly a barbed commentary on an out of touch and complicit Catholic church: "God has already saved their souls. What happens to their bodies hardly matters to him"
• Del Toro uses the cinematic conceit of a banquet to heighten the corruption of the local middle classes and ruling elite
• Despite his criticisms of Catholicism as a dogma and institution it is clear that Del Toro admires the spirituality of his native religion – in a later film Crimson Peak, a ghost story, he commented on his belief in ghosts