Pan’s Labyrinth: A Fantastic Fantasy – Editorial

Introduction and Argument

Only a few movies dictate their dominance (like Pan’s Labyrinth) in their respective genres. Like how Marvel owned the word blockbuster with it’s recent blockbuster Avengers: Endgame in front of our eyes without surprising us. However, not every movie can be as loud as Marvel for all of us to notice. Some movies inspire, takeover, sharpen our human imagination with just a whistle. Fantasy movies have been the reigning champions of this phenomenon. And Pan’s Labyrinth is one of the few movies that has successfully captured both the beauty and horror of a folklore fantasy world. Folklore’s forgotten art form we perfected over a few millennia before we invented writing. Every Holy Book owes their existence to folktales told around campfires a few thousand years ago.

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Folklore tales are simple to follow. Their best audience is children so it kinda makes sense how creative and preposterous (at the same time) a story can be. Pan’s Labyrinth was set in a rural Spain where Ophelia, a quite imaginative girl moves to a new command post with her very pregnant mother and her Nazi step-father. The movie is pictured in such a way that both the real world and the mythical world are both cruel and unforgiving. It’s a double sided knife and the director (Guillermo Del Toro) did a fine job in immersing us completely in best of both of the worlds. In Ophelia’s case, the worst of both of the worlds.

In the real world, post-war Spain’s struggle is shown without mercy where German soldiers under the command of the Nazi Stepfather (also the commander) hunts down the rebels and troublemakers. Where in the fantasy world Ophelia meets a Faun who tries to lure her with promises and stories of her true origin.

The movie has beautifully captured visuals of guerilla war and terrifying baby eating monsters like a giant toad and the iconic ‘Pale man’ that has eyes in his hands, who eats children. By the end, Ophelia has to choose to hand over her fresh born baby brother to her maniacal step-father or the Faun who wants to sacrifice the baby so Ophelia can return to her throne as Princess. In that moral contest, Ophelia wins us over by doing the unthinkable even though it means certain death.

That’s the beauty of it. Even in the death of a brave innocent child, you can see the purity of her love and her sense of protection towards her infant brother. She could’ve just handed the boy over to the stepfather who’ll turn the boy into an authoritarian like him. Or she could’ve handed the boy over to the Faun for sacrifice and return to her homeland as Princess which she wanted to the whole time. One would’ve freed her from her stepfather and the other would’ve made her dream come true. She chose neither.

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The director made a sensible choice in playing the story in such a way that by the climax, we begin to question the reality of the mythical world Ophelia encounters. Leaving us to choose either one of the two probable choices. One, we could deny the whole mythical world and blame the girl for being too ‘childish’ (our grownup word for being imaginative). Two, we could just agree that Ophelia might be right about the mythical world and the world is a cruel place whether it’s real or not. No matter your choice, the undeniable middle ground we can agree upon is this – watching this movie is absolutely enchanting.

Conclusion

It’s hard to conclude a Fantasy movie, much less to conclude Pan’s Labyrinth. It’s not just a movie anymore, it’s an education for fantasy lovers.