“Lullaby and Horror” in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”
“Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) is a fairy tale movie that children are not allowed to see under any circumstances due to its graphic violence. Some moviegoers even comment that the film’s violence turns them off. Many sadistic scenes in the movie make them feel squeamish. Ironically, it is still a “children’s film”, not only because its protagonist is only a young girl named Ofelia, but because some of its contents consist of “stuff that dreams are made of !”as Shakespeare said. Only in this film it is rather a grotesque dream.
Though not a fan of horror genre, I am impressed with Guillermo del Toro’s ingenious juxtaposition of the innocent children’s fairy tales with the cruelty and horror of war. The director intentionally blends these two opposite elements into one unparalleled cinematic masterpiece.
To tell the truth, I’m losing count how many times I’ve watched “Pan’s Labyrinth”. Strange, despite the blood and gores, the film resonates with beauty to me. What keeps me coming back for more is the tragedy of the innocents victimized by the brutality of the world of indifference.
Nothing is more appropriate for the opening of this film than a lullaby. Also the use of lullaby as a recurring motif helps make the movie’s theme stronger. Guillermo del Toro shocks us since the start with the scene of a dying young Ofelia, the film’s central character. When the movie begins, a rivulet of crimson blood does not yet cease flowing from her nostrils.
She dies from the hand of her own stepfather, a new husband of her beloved mother who also recently died of childbirth, from trying to bring her little half-brother into the world. Lullaby, a song usually known for soothing children and lulling them to sleep is now used not only to comfort the dying child but to put her to sleep for eternity. (Of course, she will resume an immortal life as a Princess Moanna in the Underground world. This time she will live happily ever after among the faun and the fairies in the kingdom of her father.)
The movie is narrated in a flashback. The beginning starts with the end, then spiraling in an everlasting circle like being lost in the labyrinth, the central locus of the story. As said, the movie starts with the horrid picture of a dying child, yet it ends with the blooming of a flower, petal by petal, and the voiceover (perhaps that of the Faun) saying that some delicate thing is meant only for those who have eyes to see.
In this movie, lullaby and fairy tale motif unfold against the brutality of war and the stark violence of the adult world. You never know for sure when reality starts and where fantasy stops. I think this “Children’s film” by Guillermo del Toro belongs to Magic Realism, a Latin signature art form. Intricately and seamlessly interwoven, these two worlds are places where the child has no problems stepping in and out. For adults, her world, strange and outlandish as it is, defies common sense and logic. How can you imagine fairies and fauns frequenting a Fascist military headquarter in the middle of the forest, talking to the child, and succeeding in commanding her to accomplish the three tasks of never?
With some suspension of disbelief and the magic spell that the director conjures up, it is not difficult for us to move along and lose ourself in the wonder of that cinematic world.
In the earlier part of the movie, we witness Ofelia riding in a car with her mother to join her stepfather in his military headquarter in the middle of the forest. She brings along her books of fairy tales which she holds tightly against her chest. Perhaps she intuitively wants to use them to protect herself against imminent dangers.
The film’s narrative shifts back and forth between the world of reality and fantasy. The adult’s world runs in parallel with the child’s world. However, as the film progresses, it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate between real life and the pages of fairy tales. Ofelia’s childish obsession can be seen either as a natural inclination of a child her age or as a means of escape from the undesirable life as a stepdaughter of a cold and heartless man.
I think the scene of her mother’s miscarriage exemplifies best the overlap between reality and fantasy in a magic realist manner. The child, in seeing her mother’s suffering, wants to help alleviate her pain. After the Faun’s advice, she shoves the mandrake root, a gift from the Faun, under her mother’s bed hoping it will work its magic. It works! The magic exists. Then it’s not the girl’s overactive imagination or an impulsive urge to escape from her stepfather’s world that brings about all this fantasy after all.
But once the stepfather enters the room and smells something fishy, he menaces the girl and searches for the weird thing. He crawls under his wife’s bed and finds the mandrake root soaked in the milk bowl. Mad, he threatens to punish the girl for such prank. The mother intervenes and saves the girl. Though saving her, she scolds her daughter for being immature. Her words highlight the message of the movie. Wake up, Ofelia. The world is not a fairy tale. It is a cruel place for growns up. Having said that, she dejectedly throws the mandrake root in the shape of a baby into the fire. To our surprise, the mandrake root, catching fire, screams and squeals like a dying baby. With the destruction of mandrake, the mother’s condition gets worse and worse until it’s too late.
Fantasy and reality meets and blends seamlessly in this scene. Had the stepfather, in crawling under his wife’s bed, found nothing, the child’s fantasy world would have been intact. However, when the stepfather does find the mandrake root, a thing from another world, we are not sure anymore which is reality, which is fantasy. The two worlds become one. There is no clear-cut demarcation between fantasy and reality.
Most important, isn’t it true that reality sometimes becomes unreal or even surreal beyond our comprehension? To illustrate my point with some political incidents, it’s hard to imagine how a holocaust, anywhere, past or present, is capable of taking place. Who can imagine that any human, anytime can commit such an inhuman act? This kind of atrocity defies our logic and comprehension. It is totally absurd. However, such brutality did happen against our rationality.
In the movie, the implication of a holocaust, though somewhat irrelevant to the movie plot, appears in the scene that Ofelia has to go down to the underground abode of the eyeless child-eating monster to accomplish the Faun’s second task of never. There she commits an unforgivable violation of the Faun’s rule. It almost costs her own life. But I’m not going to be a spoiler by going into details. I just want to highlight the paintings decorating around the monster’s hall. Watching them makes your blood frozen because they all depict children brutally eaten alive, not to mention the shocking huge pile of children’s shoes, in all shapes and sizes, as disfigured as their implied departed owners.
This pile of shoes in the hall of the eyeless monster is a powerful reminder of the holocaust, especially the massacre of the Jews by Nazism during the two World Wars. Though irrelevant to the plot, it indirectly helps to reinforce the movie’s theme of the victimization of the innocents.
To link this scene to the stepfather’s world, the extreme brutality that Captain Vidal commits in defense of General Franco’s regime is so incredibly sadistic. No one could imagine how someone is capable of doing such a cold-blood violence. (In casting for the character of Captain Vidal, Guillermo del Toro insists that the actor chosen to play the role of Captain Vidal must be suave and good-looking to contrast with his inner deformity.) Captain Vidal’s atrocity is so surreal. One wonders how that evil thing can co-exist with his civilized world where people have nice conversation over sumptuous dinner, where gentlemen perform proper gallant manner, rising politely when a lady leaves the dinner table, where a man carefully looks after his appearance and meticulously orders how his meat should be cooked. I cannot emphasize enough how violence commit in this movie defies logic beyond our comprehension. The brutality looks surreal, yet sadly it’s real.
For those who have eyes to see, sometimes fantastic things in children’s fairy tales are more “real” than the “surreal” atrocity in our physical world.
*I don’t necessarily write about newly released films but I choose to write about interesting films with timeless message regardless of their date. You can easily find these films online.
Thank you for reading. Sorry for the mistakes in my English. I am working on it.😜
