Imagination in Pan’s Labyrinth

*contains spoilers*

Franco’s Spain has been immortalised in many depictions: Hemingway and Orwell’s novels, Auden’s poetry, the paintings of Picasso, the plays of Goya. None, however, quite capture the totalitarian regime as well as Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). ‘A labyrinth is essentially a place of transit’, said the director in 2006. A careful melding of history, of the intricacies of fascist Spain and the imagination of a child, the parable of the film is what really distinguishes it. What makes El laberinto del fauno so emotive and powerful as a fantasy film is just that factor: Imagination.

Although Ofelia, a child unwillingly isolated in a fascist homestead in the Basque country, is physically trapped, her capacity to imagine frees her. This is what, in my opinion, denotes this film as the greatest symbolism of fantasy in cinema. The paradigm of fascism is the elimination of choice and nobody incarnates this better than Captain Vidal, a genuinely twisted psychopathic force of order, with no redeeming features. His thoughtless devotion to control, and expectations of others to do so, is a knowing elimination of choice and freedom. To live and die by a clock, his life is already planned out. Ofelia, in contrast, depicts a constant of freedom and imagination. She rejects conventional values, as shown by the destruction of a beautiful dress whilst pursuing a gargantuan slimy toad through a subterranean tunnel. Her flickering imagination, her inconsistency, her worries, and her failings all define her as a wonderfully human and far less one-dimensional character than her adoptive father. Vidal is perhaps not the only one to claim a father-like presence over the child though, whilst being a diametrical opposite. The eponymous Faun, whom the director highlights is not the Greek god himself, is a paradigm of the Earth and encapsulates all the supposed harshness of ancient religion. He is something of an oxymoron, monolithic in stature and durability, but so brilliantly frustratingly difficult to pin down morally. Having watched this film many, many times (at least 30), I have repeatedly changed my mind, and whenever I have asked fellows watchers, their opinions have always varied.

The film's ambivalence between such clearly defined characters guarantees that it is relentlessly engrossing. There are obvious ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, despite the fact that characters such as Mercedes are deceptive and lie to clear authority. Yet, it is ultimately the viewer that determines the character's virtue, and this is where the film’s capacity for fantasy comes into its own. Engagement is the most important part of the film, encouraging us to ask the same questions that the characters ponder themselves. As an example, the giant insect from Ofelia’s opening scene is not that unusual in forests. Thus, any significance given to that creature is entirely created by the viewer. That the creature later ends up being a fairy is only possible due to the connotations that the spectators have already given it. Or is it?

Is our imagination that of Ofelia’s? Are we seeing the world for what it is, or are we simply observing the world through the eyes of a traumatised child? Is the constant dwelling in fairytales a foreshadowing of events to come? Or is it the world that is instead created by these books and the influence they have on the young girl? Del Toro’s work is rich in suggestions and whispers, and the labyrinth takes them just beyond another corner, behind another high stone wall, always just out of reach. Multiple times throughout the film all this is hinted at just being fantasy, like in Mercedes’ admission of having believed in fairies as a child and the warnings her mother gave her about fauns. Vidal staring at his stepdaughter holding his son and talking to nothingness also requires the spectator to create a reason that he cannot see the Faun himself (he is not an innocent? He is not of the bloodline?). Even when the fantastic melts into the everyday, like the mandrake root, how are we to know that the recovery of Carmen is not simply a coincidence and Vidal is furious at discovering a rotting tuber vegetable under his wife’s bed.

This is why it is such a brilliant fantasy film: so much is left to the spectator. Francoist Spain was not made up – men like Vidal did truly exist, as did the brave resistance shown by the doctor and rebel fighters. However, whether Fauns and giant toads and the Pale man existed is up for debate. For Ofelia, they clearly did. Her stepping into her birthright as a princess of the underworld seems incredibly anti-climactic to the drama, sadness and death portrayed in the film up to this point. It is only when we realise that this is perhaps her oxygen-starved brain flickering for the last time that the enormity of the situation sinks upon us. Perhaps she has died for nothing and no reason other than the voices in her head. Perhaps she died for a fantasy that killed her by saving her. In no other film is fantasy quite so convoluted and quite so important. There were, and still are, thousands of Ofelias, children isolated and traumatised, who have a world that is theirs. This world is theirs even if it is the only thing that they have. It is real to them. Ofelia’s fantasy has permeated her reality so much that it begs the question: who is to say that it is only her mind? If imagination is what makes us human and Vidal died for his lack of humanity, Ofelia dies because she’s all too human. Anyone watching the film, although they may not believe in fae, in fauns or creatures of the night, will eventually find that they were not so sure as they once had been. By crumbling into our consciousness, and merging history with the other, Del Toro has us wondering what human reality actually means.