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Pan’s Labyrinth, Fear and the Fairy Tale
Laura Hubner
(draft)
This paper locates some of society’s fears as they are embedded in film, looking at
Guillermo del Toro’s El Laberinto del fauno / Pan's Labyrinth (2006). The main
focus of the paper is the pre-pubescent heroine, Ofelia, as she faces her terrors, by
fabricating a dream-world, partly as an escape and partly in defiance against her stepfather’s violent regime. The paper considers the film’s reception in critical reviews
and investigates these in relation to secondary sources of critical theory on fairy tale,
gothic and gothic horror. A close analysis of sequences from the film establishes how
fairytale themes - fears of ‘otherness’, rites of passage and liminal phases of fantasy,
dream, nightmare and death - are interwoven with the historically specific, to address
traumas caused by Fascism and male brutality.
Pan’s Labyrinth is set in 1944, five years after the end of the Spanish Civil War.
Events take place in a remote hamlet within woodlands in the north of Spain close to
the French frontier. Vidal, a captain in Spain’s Civil Guard, has been posted here to
purge the area of the maquis, the Republican resistance movement. Crushed in the
Civil War, a small number of the Resistance continue to fight a campaign against
Franco’s regime. José Arroyo suggests in Sight&Sound that, plot-wise, the physical
setting provides the resistance movement with a ‘potential escape’.1 The woods
certainly offer a space for Outlaw existence, but the Resistance aim to fight rather
than to escape. As Captain Vidal observes:
The guerrillas are sticking to the woods because it’s hard to track them up
there. Those bastards know the terrain better than any of us.
The woodlands can be liberating for those who know how to navigate it. To the villain
Vidal they represent his fears, of the unknown ‘other’, of all that is uncivilised and
less easily controlled. His intention is to starve the creatures out2 commanding his
forces to block all access to food and medicine. In this way, the wild wood also
becomes a threat to the Resistance. Its remoteness from civilisation leaves them
hungry and trapped. As Arroyo goes on to assert: ‘Generically, the setting allows for
the dense woodlands, darkness, rain and damp traditionally associated with horror.’3
With the horrific slaughter of some of the Resistance, the wood becomes what Carol
Clover calls the ‘Terrible Place’, in which the victims at some point find themselves
in the horror movie,4 symbolically here the dark, amoral side of the human psyche,
invaded by the monstrous Fascist regime.
In this respect, we should note horror’s homage to fairytale ambivalence, where wild
woodland can be both threatening and dangerously appealing. It offers Ofelia a
temporary form of escape and defiance, as is made clear from the start of the film.
The film opens with the sound of the faint melody. It is the film’s theme tune, sung by
Mercedes to soothe Ofelia later in the film. Mercedes is Vidal’s maid, secretly helping
the resistance fighters. The melody is accompanied by Ofelia’s breathing. White
words on a black background explain the context. We then see a close-up of Ofelia’s
face looking towards the camera but slightly off-frame, blood streaming from her
nose. The camera rotates to reveal that her face is on the ground, her left hand out
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towards the corner of the frame; the sound of her breathing becomes louder. It
becomes apparent that the shot is being played in reverse as the blood starts retreating
back into her nose. She adjusts her gaze to look directly at the camera as the voiceover starts up.
We might note some of the complexities of the film even at this stage. In an interview
for the Guardian with Mark Kermode, del Toro states that Pan’s Labyrinth is a
‘female movie’.5 The close-up on Ofelia’s face identifies her as central to the tale, and
the Brechtian break with naturalism as she stares into the camera suggests that we
become aware of her position and perspective within the political events of the film.
However, the male voice-over narrating the tale of a princess who fled to our world
from her magical kingdom only to die, leaving her father yearning for her return
suggests a further perspective, a male authorial voice. The film returns to the close-up
of Ofelia’s face at the end, but the final images of a flower opening and insect are
accompanied by the same male voice-over.
After initial shots of the young princess leaving the dark underworld and running up
the spiral staircase to the bright circle opening to the human world, the main narrative
begins with Ofelia, travelling with her mother, Carmen, to join her new step-father,
Vidal. The first shot is of Ofelia’s hand turning the page of a book. There is a cut to a
close-up of the page. Next to the words we see an illustration of a girl in a floating
dress, surrounded by four fairies flying around her. A cut to medium shot reveals
mother and daughter side by side, and the woodland outside Ofelia’s window. The
mother holds her stomach, her other hand holding a tissue to her mouth as she tries to
stave off the sickness of late pregnancy. The sharp distinction between the adult world
and the fantasy world of the child are depicted in the relationship between mother and
daughter. For instance, when they stop the car for Carmen to relieve her sickness and
Ofelia ventures into the woods, an insect, somewhere between a dragonfly and a
mantis, flies around her face. She is called to return to the car, by her mother, stood
with a military official of the Civil Guard:
Ofelia: I saw a fairy.
Carmen: Just look at your shoes!
In this short scene, it is clear that the woodland is the place that ignites Ofelia’s
imagination and where she lives out her fantasies. As they return to the car, the
camera is positioned behind the insect watching them leave. When it moves around
the tree to the other side, the camera follows to view the cars leaving from the other
side as the vehicles (two shiny black cars followed by the luggage truck) leave in an
ordered line. The insect follows them.
From the opening, then, Ofelia’s imaginary world is one that we are invited to share.
The otherworldly clicking sound of the insect switches to the orderly ticking of
Vidal’s pocket watch, shown in close-up before there is a cut to the captain looking
up, uttering ‘15 minutes late’. Ofelia sees the insect again after her first meeting with
Captain Vidal, suggesting a powerful rejection of his world. The insect takes her to
the labyrinth, an old ruin within the woods, not far from the old mill and their new
home. Mercedes, who becomes her friend, warns ‘Better not go in there. You may get
lost.’
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Within the new woodland context, Ofelia begins to be lured to the magical fantasy
world. During the night, the insect returns to Ofelia, transforms itself into the fairy in
her book and leads her to the labyrinth, where they descend through the circle into the
underworld shown at the start of the film. Deep within she encounters the faun6 who
tells her that she is the lost princess, and that if she completes three tasks before the
advent of the full moon she can reclaim her rightful place in her father’s realm. She
must use the book he gives her, full of blank pages, to guide her. Though of her own
imagining, Ofelia seems to be physically drawn to the labyrinth, and to the dark wild
wood.
Woodland signifies a space in-between, its liminality a pointer to something once
seemingly understood as primeval, prior to discourse, providing an insight into an
archetypal understanding of human behaviour. Through the course of western history,
diverse fairy-tellers (Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier, Charles Perrault, Wilhelm and Jacob
Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Walt Disney, for example) have used woods
and forests to warn children against straying from the path. Jack Zipes argues, for
instance, that Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers transformed Little Red Riding
Hood from ‘an oral folk tale about the social initiation of a young woman into a
narrative about rape in which the heroine is obliged to bear the responsibility for her
violation.’7 While there have been multiple modifications of this tale making it
difficult to assess an original (‘true’) folktale, Zipes demonstrates the point that fairy
tales are subject to social, cultural and moral shifts, and that meanings interpreted by
authors and readers are ideologically positioned. As a warning against revolt,
woodlands can be a symbol of repression, as much as a symbol of escape, pointing
finally towards a return to civilisation, a sanitised norm governed by societal law and
order, as part of a necessary rite of passage for those between the age of childhood
and adulthood.
Paradoxically, the attractions of fear and the pleasures of the tale lie also in the
possibilities of straying from the path. Due to recent shifts in attitudes towards gender
and sexuality, writers (such as Marina Warner, Angela Carter and Vicki Feaver) have
investigated the fantasy of straying, and of actively desiring to stray, as a possible
voice for female sexuality. Despite multiple retellings and re-workings of fairy tales,
the fears of burgeoning female sexuality and the ambiguities of the female body, and
female desire, remain a controversial talking point that is never finally resolved.
In ‘The Power of Myth’, del Toro states that it is important that Ofelia is not mature
sexually, that she is still a girl. He acknowledges the film’s homage to fairytale
conventions in which pre-pubescent girls pass through a rite of passage, ‘blooming
into womanhood’ or ‘independence’. He states that, while most people can identify
Ofelia with Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the tradition is
much older.8 However, while Ofelia is approaching womanhood, her burgeoning
sexuality is glossed over in the film, encoded with slightly conventional, or even
tame, symbolism.
To claim that Pan’s Labyrinth is tame gives a misleading and incomplete picture.
After all, it confronts the horrors of human brutality and terror, positioning these
within a specific historical context. The Spanish Civil War and Franco’s regime are
traumatic events that have traditionally received little attention in the history of
filmmaking. Perhaps this is because, along with other real-life atrocities like the
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holocaust and Hiroshima, there has been a long silence stemming from deep-rooted
subjection, trauma and fear.
It might also sound odd to claim that the film is tame bearing in mind the graphic
level of detail used to represent the human carnage, making it a very hard film to
watch and listen to. We see, for instance, a starving father and son out hunting rabbits
slaughtered by Vidal, who assumes that they are resistance fighters. He smashes the
son in the nose and face repeatedly with a metal truncheon until he is dead, then
shoots the father in the throat. Within the frame, the specks of blood fly. When Vidal
finds the skinny dead rabbit afterwards, he takes it home for supper. We also see
Vidal’s brutal torture of ‘the stuttering man’. He tells him that if he can count to three
without stuttering he will go free. The scene, shown in a long take and in close-up
lingers to capture the blood flowing from the man’s mouth, his every breath clear on
the soundtrack, as he fails to say the number three. We also watch as Mercedes later
slices Vidal across the mouth, part self-protection, part-revenge. These are just a few
examples of the graphic realism afforded the many violent acts. It is not tame to
represent the effects of Franco’s rule with such graphic closeness.
However, to some extent there is a sense that the film functions according to a rather
‘simple’,9 essentialist understanding of gender and sexuality. Del Toro claims that,
while Fascism is a ‘boy’s game’, the film centres on the ‘11-year-old girl’s
universe’.10 Ofelia’s innocence is linked with her gender, placing boundaries on her
insight and capabilities. And at the end of the film, the fatherly (Godly) male voiceover tells us that Ofelia returns to the realm of her father. Gender roles are divided
reductively in the sense that the females are unquestionably good, possess magical
powers and intuition, and Mercedes doesn’t quite manage to kill Vidal. In contrast,
Vidal is naturally evil. The (male) voices of the priest at the funeral, the faun, the
father (Father) and the final voice-over preach the Catholic law that one must suffer
pain to receive transcendence.11
Moreover, the film glosses over the sexual themes that emerge in fairytale and gothic
horror films featuring pre-pubescent and teenage girls. This is not necessarily a
limitation though. We have only to think of The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
and Carrie (Brian de Palma, 1976). Women’s creative power lies in their biology, and
the female body is depicted as hideous, ‘other’, to be feared, out of control, without
limit and regressively linked with witchcraft. As Barbara Creed argues:
Menstruation was also linked to the witch’s curse – a theme explored in
Carrie… Historically, the curse of a woman, particularly if she were
pregnant or menstruating, was considered far more potent than a man’s
curse. A ‘mother’s curse’, as it was known, meant certain death.12
The convention of working through fears of the female body, the menarche, the
menstrual cycle, female sexual desire and childbirth13 all take as their inspiration a
combination of folk/fairy tale and gothic traditions (note the punishment of the female
sexual deviants in, for example, Jayne Eyre and Rebecca).
In this respect it is possible to argue that Pan’s Labyrinth is refreshing, in the sense
that it is a rite of passage film, where gender (overtly, at least) seems less important
than a universal understanding of humankind. Parallels can be made with del Toro’s
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previous film El Espinazo del diablo/The Devil’s Backbone (2001), centring on the
heroic determination of a young boy and his male friends at a deserted orphanage
during the Spanish Civil War.14 In both films, the child has visionary capabilities,
probes further to know the darkness, prepared to save others’ lives, risking his or her
own. This humanist belief in the individual underscores both films.
Moreover, Ofelia’s imaginary world is as dark as the ‘real’ world, giving expression
to the unspoken dualities and taboos of human nature, reminiscent of the subversive
functions that Rosemary Jackson attributes to Fantasy literature:
The fantastic traces the unsaid and the unseen of culture: that which has
been silenced, made invisible, covered over and made ‘absent’.15
Ofelia confronts head-on her visions of the faun tearing off raw flesh with his teeth.
She approaches the corpse monster whose eyeballs rest on the table along with the
dripping red fruits of the banquet. She looks at the portraits of babies being devoured
by monsters on the walls. Her encounter with these decadent, gothic and grotesque
images of ageing and decay suggests an awareness of a dark, tangible, mortal side of
humans befitting a hero on a quest rather than a passive ethereal princess.
Furthermore, Ofelia’s ability to make decisions and act upon them, sometimes in
defiance, is empowering. As Kira Cochrane argues:
In a contemporary landscape in which many young girls aspire to a dull,
passive version of princesshood, Ofelia offers something different,
something complex, something uniquely powerful. She is a strong antidote
in a sea of blandness.16
For Cochrane, what makes Ofelia stand out as a female hero17 is that she is
represented as having ‘a clear certainty, self-absorption and objectivity, which make
her far from simplistically vulnerable.’18 Cochrane also argues that ‘the sexual themes
are far less pronounced than usual, and Ofelia’s creativity is presented at face value.’
She suggests that the celebration of the female does not rest solely, as it does in so
many of these pre-pubescent fantasy tales, on ‘our ability to reproduce.’19
I would agree that the sexual and reproduction themes are less pronounced, but only
so far. There is a certain awe surrounding the female body in the uterine imagery of
Ofelia’s fantasy world, the infinite circular archways and interiors20 and the shots of
Ofelia’s baby brother in the womb. Sexual themes are often couched in a more
stylised symbolism in the plethora of fairytale literature and films. For example, there
is the indelible icon of red (Little Red Riding Hood’s cloak) or red on white (the three
drops of blood on the snow/milk in Snow White and the pricking of the finger in
Sleeping Beauty) to symbolise emerging womanhood, sexuality or the loss of
innocence. And traditionally, this tends to be a symbol of fear, of something to be
kept in check.
Pan’s Labyrinth’s use of red on white embraces some of these fears. At the end of the
film, Ofelia’s body shines white in the light of the full moon, blood floating from her
mouth. A golden light marks her transcendence into the realm of her father, where
emerging wearing bright red boots, reminiscent of Dorothy, she inhabits the
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womblike red golden palace of her father’s kingdom. This new birth comes as the
result of pain, linking her emerging sexuality with death.
Fears of childbirth are also striking. In one scene, Ofelia watches as red ink blotches
fill the pages of her fairytale book like blood on cloth. She rushes from the bathroom
to find her mother bent double, blood spilling around her white skirts below the waist.
The female body is linked with death, magic and witchcraft as Carmen’s pregnancy
takes a turn for the worse after she throws the mandrake root Ofelia has been keeping
under the bed into the fire. Carmen eventually dies after giving birth to a baby boy.
The thematic use of red and white demonstrates the film’s dependence on the imagery
surrounding the mystique of the female body in transition. Nevertheless, as Cochrane
goes on to argue, there is evidence that the film also resists nature and biology when
Ofelia responds to Mercedes’ caution that ‘having a baby is complicated’ with ‘Then
I’ll never have one.’ In a powerful way, Ofelia disobeys throughout the film: she
refuses to call Vidal ‘father’, she ventures into the woods and returns to the labyrinth.
Finally she disobeys her step-father and steals her baby brother, she disobeys the faun
by not handing over the baby and she says ‘no’ to Vidal after he takes the baby.
Biology and the (male) bloodline are also undercut at the end of the film. Vidal
appears from the labyrinth holding his baby son, having shot Ofelia. He realises that
he faces death as he turns the corner to find the resistance fighters waiting for him, his
house ablaze behind them. He walks up to Mercedes and Pedro, handing over the
baby. He takes out his pocket watch to crush it at the time of his death, a tradition
handed down from his father. When he says, ‘Tell my son - Tell him what time his
father died – Tell him that I’, Mercedes interrupts with ‘No. He won’t even know
your name.’
Pan’s Labyrinth raises questions about fears associated with the female role, in
relation to death, childbirth and the (male) bloodline, often rooted in gothic horror as
well as fairytale traditions. The final ending offers a cyclical return to the fairytale
realm of the father, but the horror of Franco’s regime as historical actuality remains.
The fairy tale, as elastic, fantastical vehicle for imaginary worlds and taboo subject
matter, can act as a strong voice for societal fears. But its powers to subvert and
challenge existing codes and practices only partly account for its functioning in
respect of fear, since fairy tales also use fear to purify and refine, to revert as much as
to subvert, often embracing long-established boundaries and pathways. Although
tame or limited in some respects, Pan’s Labyrinth goes some way in subverting some
of the fears of the female body entrenched in fairy tales, gothic and horror. Ofelia’s
role offers an empowering, progressive representation of a young female hero who, in
discovering disobedience, is capable of subverting regressive mythologies of
femininity.
1
José Arroyo, Review of Pan’s Labyrinth, Sight&Sound, BFI: Volume 16, Issue 12, December 2006,
p. 66
2
In this sense, the treatment of the fighters is reminiscent of abandonment in fairy tales, such as Hansel
and Gretel.
3
Arroyo, p.66
7
4
Carol J. Clover, ‘Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film’ in Fantasy and the Cinema, ed. by
James Donald (London: BFI, 1989), p.101
5
Speaking to Mark Kermode, ‘Guardian interview at the National Film Theatre with Director’
(courtesy of the British Film Institute in association with the Guardian), Pan’s Labyrinth 2 Disc DVD
set, Optimum Home Entertainment, Disc 2
6
Despite the English translation of the title, del Toro is clear that the Faun is not Pan, that this is a mistranslation, and a misleading one; Pan is ‘too dangerous a character to put in a fable like this.’ Del Toro
speaking on ‘The Power of Myth’, Pan’s Labyrinth 2 Disc DVD set, Optimum Home Entertainment,
Disc 2. (‘The Labyrinth of the Faun’ is perhaps less inspiring than ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’.)
7
Jack Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre (London and New York:
Routledge, 2006) p.28
8
Presumably here he refers to young heroines in fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White
and Rapunzel.
9
Del Toro uses the word ‘simple’ when discussing the character types he draws from fairytale
traditions. Speaking to Mark Kermode, ‘Guardian interview at the National Film Theatre with Director’
10
Speaking to Mark Kermode, ‘Guardian interview at the National Film Theatre with Director’
11
Though note that Ofelia’s refusal to sacrifice the baby opposes Abraham’s agreement to hand over
his son Isaac to God.
12
Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London and New York:
Routledge, 1993) p.74
13
With respect to childbirth, we might also consider films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Hand that
Rocks the Cradle.
14
Note that del Toro has often stated that these two films are linked together, that Pan’s Labyrinth is
the ‘sister movie’ to The Devil’s Backbone, which he sees as the ‘boy’s movie’. C.f. for example,
speaking to Mark Kermode, ‘Guardian interview at the National Film Theatre with Director’
15
Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London and New York: Routledge, 1981,
1991) p.4
16
Kira Cochrane, ‘The girl can help it’, in Guardian Unlimited, Friday 27 April 2007, viewed on 1
May 2007, http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2066034,00.html
17
Cochrane suggests that Ofelia is rather like Rosaleen in this respect, from The Company of Wolves
(Neil Jordan, 1984) adapted from Angela Carter’s short story.
18
ibid
19
ibid
20
Note that these rounded interiors contrast with the sharp phallic angularity of Vidal’s world (for
example, the long columns of cars and men with guns, and the scene where he is stood beside his long
table, planning their attack).
Bibliography
Arroyo, José, Review of Pan’s Labyrinth, Sight&Sound, BFI: Volume 16, Issue 12,
December 2006, pp. 66-68
Clover, Carol J., ‘Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film’ in Fantasy and the
Cinema, ed. by James Donald (London: BFI, 1989)
Cochrane, Kira, ‘The girl can help it’, in Guardian Unlimited, Friday 27 April 2007,
viewed on 1 May 2007,
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2066034,00.html
Creed, Barbara, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London
and New York: Routledge, 1993)
Jackson, Rosemary, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London and New York:
Routledge, 1981, 1991)
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Pan’s Labyrinth 2 Disc DVD set, Optimum Home Entertainment
Zipes, Jack, Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre (London
and New York: Routledge, 2006)
Zucker, Carole ‘Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth: The dangers of dreaming in Neil
Jordan’s The Company of Wolves’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 2000, 28/1, pp.66-71