Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and Disobedience

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) solidified Guillermo Del Toro as one of the all-time great directors. It’s a film I’ve seen about ten times already, and everything I love about it isn’t shown on the screen but behind the scenes. Pan’s Labyrinth had a difficult production. No one understood Del Toro’s vision, not even his production crew, but that did not deter him. The result of his perseverance was one of the most important films of the last 25 years.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a film about the virtues of disobedience. Specifically, against fascism. While this theme is familiar in western culture, Del Toro’s approach is unique.

I want to contrast Pan’s Labyrinth with Wishbone, a 90’s television show about a talking dog. Please bear with me. There’s an episode of Wishbone where the main character helps a friend steal food from the cafeteria to donate it to a homeless shelter. The authority figure demands the food be thrown in the garbage, but our main character does what he believes is right. While there are consequences, in the end, the main character is celebrated for his disobedience. I love that episode, and I think it’s a great message for children, however, it doesn’t mirror reality.

In Pan’s Labyrinth, the characters aren’t celebrated for their defiance of fascism. Instead, they’re tortured, humiliated, and killed. This is the reality we live in. We don’t do the right thing to be celebrated, we do the right thing with the knowledge that we might lose everything in the process. The characters who live to see the end of the film likely died in the weeks that followed. The Spanish Civil War was brutal, and, in the end, the bad guys won. The fascists stayed in power until Franco died in 1975.

At the end of Pan’s Labyrinth, our main character ascends to a fantasy world where she becomes a princess. This appears to be a contradiction to the film’s theme, but to me, this is Del Toro saying, “Only in a fantasy world can you expect to be rewarded for your disobedience.”