An Analysis of Pan's Labyrinth

Originally posted to firesofcreation.gaia.com on Jul 23rd, 2007

The other night I rented Pan’s Labyrinth. I’ve had several people recommend this movie so I finally decided to check it out. The visuals were stunning along with characters and scenery of the Underworld. The soundtrack was haunting and the depth of the story lead me to think about it continually over the past few days. I finally decided to write about it. There are many spoilers in here so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, read no further. Be forewarned that this film is pretty violent. I had to close my eyes through several scenes which were too disturbing to watch.

Also, if you haven’t seen the website, check it out! It’s spectacular. They have the entire soundtrack for you to listen to along with Guillermo del Toro’s sketch book to browse. There are also some amazing artists showcased in the sketchbook contest. I downloaded the English version of the screenplay which is available along with a copy in its original Spanish. So, if any of the dialogue sounds a bit different from that of the movie, it’s because I snagged it from the script.

The movie begins in the Underworld, a realm where there are no lies or pain. We learn that a princess living here dreamed of the human world, “blue skies, the soft breeze and sunshine.” Finally, she eluded her keepers below and escaped but was blinded by the brightness above which lead to her memory being erased. She then experienced the wages of her sin; cold, sickness, pain and death. Her father who was the king, knew she would someday come home and return in the form of another child.

In a way this symbolism is a metaphor for every human birth. Every child comes from the peaceful realm of the womb where the dreamlike nature of the Underworld most likely matches their experience. Then they are thrown out of this paradise into the world of bright lights and all memory is a blank slate, with no recollection of what came before birth. The life we take up after birth is filled with cold, sickness, pain and eventually death. This is also a metaphor for the story of Adam and Eve where they are cast out from the perfection of the Garden of Eden and must face the suffering in life as mortals.

After the Underworld sequence, we are introduced to the main character; a young eleven year old girl named Ofelia. She drives with her mother, Carmen, towards a new life with a cruel stepfather. In the back of a car, Ofelia reads her fairy tale books which earn scorn from her mother. Adults are too old to believe in make believe. It is interesting that the adults who are supposed to be grown up are the ones at war (The setting of this story is 1944 Spain engulfed in a bloody civil war.) while the children who live in make believe are closer to peace.

This fact is punctuated after Carmen’s birthing pains with her unborn son bring the car to a stop and Ofelia finds an eye carved in stone on the road which she connects to the vacant eye socket of a celtic statue nearby. You know that this child has vision where the blindness of the adults have taken them away from peace and into war.

When the convoy arrives at Ofelia’s new home in the country mill, we are introduced to Captain Vidal, Carmen’s husband and Ofelia’s stepfather. We don’t yet know what a monster of a man he is. Ofelia tries to shake hands with him but uses her left hand which her mother chides her for. The left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain which is ruled by intuition and emotion while the left hemisphere controls the right hand and is ruled by logic and reason. It is the feminine, creative side of the brain that Ofelia’s character personifies.

Soon we learn that Captain Vidal is leading a small army of men at the mill against guerillas in the country side. It is this setting that stands as the backdrop for most of the movie. Ofelia and her mother settle into their rooms and share the same bed initially. In their first night, Ofelia tells a story to her unborn brother through the womb. It is a story about a granite mountain of thorns guarding a rose of immortality that grows at the top. “But among the men, they told tales of pain and death in hushed voices because they feared pain more than they wanted immortality. The rose remained alone and forgotten at the top of that mountain, forgotten until the end of time.” Ofelia’s bedtime story is alluded to later on in the movie which I will revisit.

We meet another main character, the Doctor, who is told by Captain Vidal that he wanted his boy to be born near his father which is why he sent for his wife against medical advice. When the doctor replies, “What makes you so sure it's a boy?” Vidal responds, "Don't f--- with me." From this point forward we clearly see Captain Vidal’s strong aversion to the feminine. Soon after this scene we learn of Vidal's cruelty when he kills a father and son for hunting rabbits near the mill at night. He accuses them as communists because they carry a Farmer's Almanac, which is known to use intuition for aiding farmers in their work.

Ofelia is paid a visit in the bedroom by a stick insect who met her on the same road on which she found the celtic statue. This time it morphes into a fairy and beckons her to follow. Outside, she is lead behind the mill into a vast labyrinth in which she finds a central rotunda with a circular staircase leading to the Underworld. At the bottom she meets a Faun who introduces himself as the “mountain, forest and earth.”

Although the Faun is a masculine creature, he lives in and only appears to Ofelia during the (feminine) darkness of night. Could the Faun’s masculine presence within the feminine symbol of earth, represent the balanced form of Yin? Before developing this idea further, I should bring the Yin and Yang definition of Chinese philosophy into the picture. Yin is the shady, passive, night oriented, feminine, downward-seeking, dark element while yang is the sunny, active, light, masculine, upward seeking bright element. We soon learn through the faun that Ofelia’s father is king of the Underworld. Ofelia replies, “My father was a tailer.” The faun then responds, “You are not born of man. It was the moon that bore you.”

It is here that the faun makes it clear to Ofelia that her identity is beyond that given to her from the DNA of her parents. “You are not born of man” means that Ofelia’s identity is beyond that of the material (masculine) world that makes up her body. “It was the moon that bore you” speaks of the (feminine) spirit symbolized by night and the moon that gave Ofelia life behind the illusive veil of the material world hiding her true identity. This fact is confirmed in a later scene when Ofelia uncovers a birth mark of the moon on her shoulder.

After returning to the mill, Carmen gives her daughter a beautiful dress she must wear for a banquet in which her stepfather was attending. Ofelia fakes to her mom that she likes the dress but her refusal to grow up and embrace the adult world is evidence by her continual return to the world of fairy tales. At a giant fig tree in the forest, Ofelia leaves her dress on a limb to be blown into the mud while she travels inside to meet a giant toad. Before this scene, we meet Mercedes, a woman doing house work at the Mill for Captain Vidal. While milking a cow, Ofelia asks her if she believes in fairies. Mercedes replies, “No, but when I was a little girl I did. I believed in a lot of things that I don't believe any more.”

The next time Ofelia goes into the labyrinth to meet the faun, on the way down the staircase she shouts, Echo! Echo!, alluding to Echo in mythology who Pan kills and spreads over the earth. The faun then gives Ofelia three tasks that would be revealed to her in the book of crossroads whose blank pages miraculously form images and text instructing her as to what must be done before she can return home to the Underworld during the full moon.

During the night of the banquet, we hear a priest speaking to the dinner guests about how God has already saved the souls of the guerillas and that, “what happens to their bodies, well, it hardly matters to him.” This scene alludes to the way religions have been used to sanction wars throughout history. Further into the dialogue, Captain Vidal reveals his fascist mind to the guests. “I want my son to be born in a new Spain. Because these people (resistance) have the idea that we're all alike.” These words clearly fit with the Captain’s views that the feminine is inferior to the masculine.

We see more clear evidence that reveals Captain Vidal isn't in touch with his feminine, emotional side, when he chastises his wife for telling the guests the story of how they met. "Please forgive my wife. She hasn't been exposed to the world. She thinks these silly stories are interesting to others.” The second scene that shows Vidal’s disdain for women is when he tells the doctor that if he has to choose between saving his wife or the child, that he would want his son saved. "That boy will bear my name and my father's name, too.” Again and again throughout the movie we discover how much of a monster Vidal is. After capturing a wounded guerilla in the forest, he is brought back to the mill to be tortured by the captain.

Ofelia’s three tasks are interrupted when her mother almost dies from the heavy bleeding her pregnancy has caused. The faun shows up in Ofelia’s new room at night to give her a mandrake root shaped like a baby. He instructs her to put it under her mothers bed in a bowl of milk along with two drops of blood.

Such instructions would seem absurd to anyone operating from the logical side of their brain but Ofelia gladly obeys the faun and has complete intuitive faith that this trick will do the job. After her mom shows improvement, Ofelia sets out to accomplish the second task as revealed in her book of crossroads. She is sent through a door in her wall (which she creates with a stick of chalk) into a banquet hall where a spectacular feast sits at a table guarded by an eyeless pale monster. She is instructed by the faun not to touch any of the food and that her life depended on it. After retrieving a package, she is tempted to steal a couple grapes from the banquet table. She gives into her impulse as the pale monster comes to life and seeks to catch Ofelia. Two of the three fairies are eaten alive after trying to ward off the monster. Ofelia, barely escapes.

This sequence with Ofelia stealing grapes from the banquet table has some deep metaphorical significance to the theme of masculine vs. feminine running throughout this film.

In this next clip taken from Pan's Labyrinth, we see the main character Ofelia as a symbol for Yin out of balance. Ofelia is completely operating from the Yin side of her brain. When she begins taking grapes from the banquet table, the fairies with her continue warning that if she broke the rules, it could mean grave danger. The fairies are symbolic for the masculine side of Ofelia's brain which is the side capable of connecting with the material world and understanding cause and effect as well as consequence. Because Ofelia continues to ignore this side of her brain, she flirts with death. The monster is a wrathful symbol of the material world and how brutal this side of reality can manifest to human beings who ignore it.




When the faun discovers that Ofelia broke the rules, he tells her she can never return to the paradise of the Underworld. Like Adam and Eve before her, she broke the rules and ate the forbidden fruit. The faun then lays down her sentence. "Your spirit will stay forever among humans. You'll live among them, you'll get old like them, you'll die like them and your memory of us will fade. And we'll vanish along with it!”

This statement from the faun alludes back to what Mercedes tells Ofelia about how she used to believe in fairies but no longer believed such things after she grew up. The act of growing up to approach death and face the harsh reality of the world erases from the memory of adults, what it was like to be a child and believe in the magic of myth. The fall from grace comes when children grow up and are expelled from the paradise of childhood into adulthood. The garden of eden can also be seen as the peaceful womb from which we all came. It is interesting that the poster of the movie shows a fig tree resembling the birth canal while Ofelia can be seen in front trying to go back to the Underworld from which she came.

For Ofelia, the belief in the miracle of the mandrake root baby, helped her mother heal. But when separated from the belief in magic, she was subject to the laws of the material world; the faun disappears and the mandrake baby dies. The job of saving Ofelia’s mom was left up to medical science which ends up failing her.

When Captain Vidal finds the mandrake root under Carmen's bed, he is ready to beat Ofelia. But Carmen calls out, "please, leave her be!" When Vidal show’s Ofelia’s mom the mandrake root, she is more gentle with her daughter. It is the feminine side that is more capable of reaching out to understand what seems irrational to the masculine mind, who becomes furious when faced with that part of them-self which has been disconnected.

After the Captain leaves, Ofelia’s mom warns, "You have to listen to your father. You have to stop all this." These words come from a woman who has had her feminine side beat up by a husband who would rather see his son born even if it meant the death of his wife. Ofelia responds to her mother with a call to leave. Carmen responds, "Things are not that simple. As you get older, you'll see that life isn't like your fairy tales. The world is a cruel place. And you'll learn that, even if it hurts." Then she throws the mandrake root into the fire as it screams and writhes in pain as Ofelia cries out, "Nooooo!" Carmen responds, "Ofelia! Magic does not exist!" She then grabs her daughter by the shoulders and shakes her. "Not for you, me or anyone else!" After Carmen says this, she is overcome by shooting labor pains.

Meanwhile, Captain Vidal discovers the doctor has performed a mercy killing on the captured guerilla he had been torturing after commanding that he help revive him enough for the next torture session. "I don't understand, why didn't you obey me?" The doctor responds, "To obey without thinking -- Just like that, well, that's something only people like you can do captain." The doctor refers to sanity as thinking and knows that the cold logic of the masculine out of touch with the feminine can create unspeakable horror for others, especially torture and warfare. After the doctor finishes his last words, he turns around and walks away as Captain Vidal kills him with a bullet to the back.

The sentiment expressed by the doctor is the same sentiment that guides the organization, Doctors Without Borders, who understand the insanity of living in a world with governments perpetuating preemptive wars over irrational lines that don't exist to truly thinking and sane individuals.

After casually shooting the doctor, Vidal waits outside Carmen's room where she struggles through the trauma of labor and dies in the process of birthing the Captain’s son. Not long after, Vidal confronts Mercedes over the doctor's death and mentions word of an informer under his nose. "What must you think of me, my dear young woman? You must think I'm a monster." Mercedes replies, "What someone like me thinks of you, hardly matters, Sir." Mercedes understands that anyone who is cut off from the feminine side of their brain will cut them-self off from the feminine side of others.

Late in the night, Captain Vidal discovers Mercedes and Ofelia escaping in the woods together. His men bring the two back to the mill and Mercedes is tied up at the same post in which the Captain used to torture the guerilla. When his second hand man, Garces remains in the room, Vidal speaks, "You can leave Garces.” "You're sure, captain?" "For God's sake, she's just a woman." After Garces leaves the room, Mercedes replies, "That's why I was able to get away with it. I was invisible to you." The invisibility of the Captain’s right, feminine side of his brain corresponds to the invisibility of Mercedes in his imbalanced mind.

To be fair, it is worth noting that there is a piece of yin within yang and a piece of yang within yin. This is evidenced by Mercedes and her burst of masculine power in the attack on Captain Vidal. She is able to uncover a knife in her apron, cut her ropes and then stab Vidal as he prepares the torture instruments. She stabs him once more and then cuts a sinister smile out of his left cheek corresponding to the left side of his brain that has lost touch with the right.

After Mercedes escapes into the woods with a band of guerilla’s, the faun returns to Ofelia’s room and gives her one last chance. "You promise to listen, to do everything I tell you? Without question?" Ofelia nods. The faun might be a representative of the balanced masculine and feminine and symbolic for the unity of God. He is a masculine creature living inside the (feminine) earth at (feminine) night. In the beginning, Ofelia didn't listen to the rules he laid out for her because she let impulsiveness lead her to eat a grape from the pale monster’s banquet table. This is the same with Adam and Eve who disobey God’s orders of not touching the fruit from the knowledge tree of good and evil.

But now that Ofelia knows about the suffering that can come from not balancing the masculine voice of reason with the feminine voice of emotion, she follows the faun’s instructions. Ofelia’s earlier mistake shows the opposite side of the spectrum from that of her step father. Now that Ofelia again obeys the voice of the faun to reunite the masculine and feminine side of her brain, the material world begins to break its rules for her when she needs it to escape the Captain. After stealing her baby brother from the Captains possession, he chases her into the Labyrinth as the leafy walls move aside and guide her safely to the center rotunda.

Ofelia reaches the faun who immediately requests her to give him the baby. "Quickly, your majesty, give him to me. The full moon is almost here and we need him to open the portal." The faun holds in his hand the golden dagger taken from the package Ofelia retrieved from the pale monster's room. Ofelia hesitates as the faun continues, "The portal will only open if we shed the blood of an innocent. A pin prick - that's all. Just a drop of blood." Ofelia continues to renege. "You promised to do it, so give me the boy." "No. My brother stays with me." "You would give up your sacred rights for this brat?" "Yes, I would."

Ofelia has now taken the form of a Christ like figure. She represents the (feminine) spirit’s embrace of the material world. Ofelia would sacrifice herself to save the masculine just as Christ sacrificed himself. Ofelia’s stepfather is a contrast of her selfless nature. Captain Vidal wanted to destroy the feminine to save the masculine when he asked the doctor to choose his baby boy over the life of his wife.

Surprised at Ofelia’s altruistic actions the faun replies, "You will give up your throne for him? He who has caused you such misery, such humiliation?" This is like the question repeatedly asked of Christ by some disciples and the devil who wanted him to embrace their favored masculine warrior side to become ruler of the world. But Christ chooses to exemplify the divine feminine instead who seeks to save the very masculine forces seeking its destruction. Ultimately the feminine saves its opposite because it is the masculine that arises from within the feminine. Spirit saves and tames the monster within matter who it gave birth to from the very beginning.

Suddenly Captain Vidal storms into the rotunda. The faun grants Ofelia her wish as she holds on tight to her baby brother. Vidal shoots Ofelia with the infant still in her arms. She falls to the ground near the edge of the well, clutching her baby brother. Vidal snatches the infant from her arms and storms out of the labyrinth with him. He is met on the other side by a band of guerillas along with Mercedes. They promptly shoot the Captain and take the infant safely to their side.

Now Ofelia appears in the royal court of the Underworld. Her mother and father, the king and queen sit side by side to each other on thrones. "Arise, my daughter." The king and queen point to another throne, empty and waiting for Ofelia. "It was your blood and not that of an innocent that made you worthy of the throne. It was the last task. The most important one." The faun commends Ofelia; "And you chose well, your highness." Now the queen speaks to her daughter "So, come sit by your father's side, my child. He's been waiting so long." The queens words bring reference to how Ofelia had come from the other side of the masculine and she was now welcomed to be reunited with her opposite. She sits in a thrown between her father’s and mother’s, (screenplay) bridging the two sides of the masculine and feminine just like the corpus collosum bridges the two polar opposites of the human brain.

This sequence in the Underworld reveals the film director, del Torro’s ideas of death that he explores in the movie. The story Ofelia tells to her unborn brother in the womb at the beginning of the movie about the immortal rose at the top of a thorny mountain, reflects the perspective del Torro explores concerning what comes to us after death. This theme is also very similar to that explored in many religions. In Christianity, Christ must first die before he is resurrected three days later into eternal life. In Buddhism, Buddha must also die before he can transcend life and death for the pureland of nirvana.

As expressed about humans in Ofelia’s story, “they feared pain more than they wanted immortality.” This line of Ofelia’s story corresponds to the path taken by the majority of humans. Most of us will hang on to life rather than the alternative of dying young. “The rose remained alone and forgotten at the top of that mountain, forgotten until the end of time.” This refers to the path most of us take into old age and then eventually death at the end of our time. Like the many religions in our cultures teach, the last obstacle separating us from immortal life is death.

In the labyrinth above, Mercedes sings a lullaby to Ofelia as she finally dies. "And it is said that the princess went back to her father's kingdom. And that she reigned with justice and a kind heart for many centuries. And that she was loved by all her subjects." Justice and mercy are able to flower when the masculine and feminine sides are finally in balance. The log line of the movie is, “Innocence has a power evil cannot imagine.” The message here seems to be that in order to remain innocent within a world sometimes full of evil, one must avoid the mistake of being cut off from the feminine, creative side of their brain which is the part of us capable of great imagination and compassion.