A tale of two worlds

Pan’s Labyrinth is a gorgeously-realised tale of fantasy and horror which mixes a child’s fairy tale with a violent and realistic story of Spanish fascists hunting rebel guerrilla fighters after the Spanish Civil War.

Young Ophelia travels with her heavily-pregnant mother to a remote military outpost to be with the man her mother has just married, Captain Vidal. Unhappy in the dismal and distressing surroundings, she wanders out into the woods where she discovers a labyrinth and, at its centre, a faun who claims that Ophelia is the spirit of a long-lost princess of the underworld. The faun tells her that her true father in the underworld has been waiting for her to return to him for a very long time, and to do so she must complete three tasks before the moon is full. Ophelia’s tasks take her to places both beautiful and frightening where she encounters wonderful and terrible creatures. Meanwhile, the film also tells the story of her step-father, Captain Vidal, a horrifyingly brutal man, as he tries to crush the anti-fascist guerrillas hiding in the hills, and find those in his own household who are helping them.

Director and screenwriter Guillermo del Toro – best-known for comic-book blockbusters Hellboy and Blade 2 – has created a fascinating film in Pan’s Labyrinth. Although the elements of fairies, fauns and a little girl who discovers she is secretly a princess might suggest that this is a children’s movie, it is anything but. The horrifying violence portrayed on screen makes that utterly clear. The director claims that, ‘This is not a child’s movie but a movie about being a child.’[1]

The story sets the fantastic world of the labyrinth, the faun and the other creatures that Ophelia discovers against the brutal reality of fascist rule and a military struggle, led by a cruel and driven man. Ophelia’s adventures could be viewed as being the product of her imagination – a desire to escape the grim reality of life in the military stronghold and discover her true father in place of her wicked stepfather the Captain. Yet although the film never makes it clear whether Ophelia’s fantasy is real to anyone beyond her, it never trivializes it either – the fantastical elements are presented as being just as valid as the rest of the film. At the same time, the story of the fascists’ hunt for the guerillas is far more than merely a backdrop. It is a completely realized story in its own right, interwoven with Ophelia’s quest, and it is a tribute to the writing and acting that this more realistic story never feels pedestrian even when it is set against the fantasy elements of the film.

Pan’s Labyrinth is not a film with two separate storylines, even though it takes place in two different worlds. Ophelia’s quest to complete her tasks interweaves with Captain Vidal’s fight against the guerillas, and the story of the rebel spies within the fascists’ stronghold. Ophelia’s experiences in the real world – such as her mother’s sufferings during a painful and dangerous pregnancy, and the friendship of Mercedes, the kind-hearted head servant of the Captain – affect what happens in the fantasy world. Ophelia is not actually escaping from reality into her imagination, but using her imagination to interpret the terrible events going on around her.

One of the most powerful aspects of the film is the evil embodied in Captain Vidal. In the midst of the horror that Ophelia finds in her fantasy realm – including a slime-covered toad and a terrifying child-eating creature – Vidal emerges as the true monster of the film, dispensing horrendous violence against a villager he feels is showing disrespect to him, and engaging in the chilling torture of a captured rebel. Indeed, Ophelia’s final task to prove her worthiness for the faun involves facing not a fantastical creature (as she has done before), but Vidal himself. The suggestion could be made that there is no difference in type compared to the previous monsters she has faced – it is merely that Vidal is the last and greatest monster she must overcome.

So, in spite of the monsters that Ophelia faces in the world of the labyrinth, the greatest monster resides in the real world. Vidal’s cruelty and evil are all too realistic, and ring true to film watchers living in a world where we are faced with human evil regularly when we watch the news. Director Guillermo del Toro holds a particular distaste for the brutality of the Spanish fascists (evidenced by his treatment of the subject before, in his earlier film The Devil’s Backbone which he considers to be a sister film to Pan’s Labyrinth). But what he exemplifies in this film through the character of Vidal is repeated throughout the world and throughout history: the fact that human beings seem to have a great capacity for evil, cruelty and violence.

The Bible affirms the existence of the human capacity for evil: examples abound of Biblical characters doing evil, whether it is Cain killing his brother, Jezebel persecuting the prophets of God, or the Roman soldiers torturing Jesus. Yet the Bible goes even further than this, offering the challenge that all of us have evil within us. The apostle Paul writes that, ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’[2] We may not carry out the violent excesses of Captain Vidal, but we all fail to live up to God’s standards, or even our own standards. We may think of ourselves as ‘good people’ – especially when we hear of the atrocities committed in real life by murderers or dictators – but whenever we fail to control our temper or give into the temptation to tell a lie we recognise our failure to live consistently good lives.

The biblical worldview also talks about two different worlds which are intertwined. The world that we see around us is not all that there is; there is another spiritual reality beyond our sight and it affects our lives in this world. As the fantasies in Pan’s Labyrinth contain both good and evil creatures (such as the helpful fairies and the hideous child-eating Pale Man), so the spiritual realm which the Bible talks about contains both good and evil forces. As well as the angels of God, such as Gabriel, there are real demonic forces, as Paul explains in his letter to the church in Ephesus ‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’[3] The Bible gives occasional glimpses of what is going on in the spiritual realm – the first two chapters of the book of Job, and the majority of the book of Revelation being two significant examples – and it is clear that what happens there affects what we see on earth. Yet as Paul affirms in the quotation above, the opposite is true as well: what we do on earth affects what happens in the spiritual realm too.

The resolution of Pan’s Labyrinth centres around the power of innocent blood to open a portal to another world where Ophelia will be able to live in happiness with her true father. As a Christian watching the film this story development immediately brought to my mind the death of Jesus. The New Testament writers speak often of Jesus’ blood purifying his followers, and the letter to the Hebrews says that, ‘we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus.’[4] In other words, through Jesus’ death we are able to gain access to our true Father, God in heaven.

In an interview with Empire magazine,[5] director Guillermo del Toro made it very clear that Pan’s Labyrinth is not about Ophelia escaping from reality into her imagination; rather, she uses imagination to understand what is happening in reality. The Bible says that faith in Jesus Christ should have a similar effect – rather than ignoring what happens in the world and focusing solely on the promise of heaven, we should find that the security of our future in heaven and of God’s love for us informs the way we live our lives now and inspires us to strive to do good. ^[6]

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