Pan's Labyrinth is a film that provokes strong
reactions.
This is because the film taps into the mythos: it
mines a rich vein of symbolic meaning.
The reactions that the film provokes most viscerally
are grief and horror, and yet these are more than
counterbalanced by something else....some subtle
feeling of meaning, of hope, that enables us to
reconcile the murder of the innocent with a belief in
a fair universe, a moral order. In other words we find
that we don't have to deny our religion or, more
accurately, our religious feeling, even though the
world is a cruel and stupid place.
How does it manage this? How does it swim upstream
against the prevailing current of modern history,
which is the current of nihilism, of meaninglessness?
How?- by consciously plunging back into the mythos
that we have become unconscious of as a society. The
film's potent symbolic imagery triggers a response, a
resonance within the deepest levels of the psyche. Del
Toro ensures that this resonance has the best possible
chance of being heard by switching off the viewer's
extraneous mental noise. This is achieved through
shock: we are literally shocked into attention,
undivided attention: the phenomenal 'now'.
This awareness is pre-intellectual awareness; it is
the awareness of the cave-man, the hunter; it is the
awareness that created the first stories, the first
myths; it is the awareness with which myth and all
meaning is apprehended.
Now the ancient language of the soul can be heard
clearly; the language that is as old as time; older.
The language of the land, of the sea and sky and
stars. The first principles from which all variety
evolves in divine concordance. It is the very fabric
of reality itself! It is the unmanifest! - the
progenitor, the architect, the dream, the idea. It is
the red and gold faery-tale world of pan's labyrinth
that bursts creatively, intelligently into the grey,
blue world of mundane reality, through the red and
gold womb of woman. The woman is in both worlds, she
holds the faery-world inside her and gives it birth
into the universe, which is to say she gives birth
literally to the universe, for the universe only
exists as a relationship between a soul and itself.
The soul forgets itself as it is borne 'through the
light' into the world and its journey from thence is
simply a journey home. The roadmap back is a magical
one, revealed bit by bit, step by step. It is a story
that is conceived, written and revealed
simultaneously.
In this story there is a hero and this hero is
everybody.
Each of us lives a unique life, but the theme is
always the same. Each individual life is a variation
on a theme - one theme: ie the universe.
What is the theme? The theme is choice. To choose to
act from the creative centre, rather than to react
from habit or fear.
Choice presupposes value differentials: preferences.
Preference is felt in the heart. To live actively,
rather than reactively, is to be guided by one's
heart. To choose such is to choose wisely, and
bravely.
For as Ofelia discovers, to act in accord with one's
self can mean one pays the ultimate price in the
mundane world: physical death. BUT physical death is
guaranteed anyway! We can only, if we are fortunate,
choose to die honourably or dishonourably. This is why
the film is not simply tragic; this is why the film
triumphs over tragedy absolutely: life only makes
sense with death. Death is not the ultimate evil,
terror or a proof of life's pointlessness, on the
contrary: Death gives life its meaning! Death reminds
us to act, to choose, because we haven't got long!
Death relativises all morals and rules and laws - the
knowledge of our certain death allows us to overcome
the chains that bind us. If we don't fear death how
can we be afraid of anything!........
There are two (seemingly) parallel stories in the
film:
1.the realistic conflict drama between fascists and
anarchists at the close of the spanish civil war
2.the fairy tale adventure of the (tragically named)
Ofelia.
For the bulk of the film these stories run side by
side and it is only as we near the end of the film
that these currents merge and add meaning to each
other. It is at this point that our mythos becomes
updated, which is to say revivified.
The conjoining factor is the child of the captain and
Ofelia's mother. The birth of Ofelia's brother, the
only other person that the captain cares about, unites
the stories into one dual-layered tale: ie a myth.
The child represents, to the captain, his own
immortality, his own power; to Ofelia the child is of
value in-itself. Ofelia sacrifices herself rather than
shed the blood of her innocent brother. She disobeys
Pan and in doing so passes the final test, which is
the same test that the captain and the fascists fail.
The test is the choice between obedience to others (ie
society) or obedience to oneself, one's own heart.
There is no moral ambiguity here, disobedience is, as
wilde said, 'man's original virtue'. Man to be human
- has his origin in this very act of disobedience:
the moral force is with the anarchists and is with
Ofelia. Though both will ultimately lose their
battles, these losses are relative. What is absolute
is the moral force itself, the meaning of their freely
chosen actions.
Up til this point - the birth of the brother - the
film is, perhaps, metaphysically ambiguous. That is
the nature of the fairy tale reality seems open to
interpretation. It seems that one could take it to be
Ofelia's own private fantasy - a means of escape from
the horrible reality she has been thrust into.
However, two key scenes at the close of the film
establish the true nature of the fantasy world and its
relation to the mundne world.
1. Ofelia rescues her brother (in the mundane world)
using magic chalk from the faery-world.
2. the captain cannot see the faun when Ofelia brings
her brother to him.
to summarise: the faery world is real; not all can see
it; only the pure of heart.
del toro uses symbology and number and colour to
further reinforce the relationship between these
worlds. I have already mentioned the red and gold of
the faery world and womb, and the grey blue of the
mundane. the red and gold fire at the end symbolising
the irruption of the faery (the moral force) into the
mundane world, through the anarchists' attack.
the faery world parallels the mundane, but in a
creative context. that is the faery world continually
creates the mundane world - and is in turn updated by
the souls' experiences in the mundane. In the mundane
world there is the captain at his long table,
presiding over his dinner guests; in the faery world
there is the pale man at a similar table, in a similar
spot at the table, in a similar room.
this is just one example, taken from del toro's own
discussion of the film on the extra disc in the dvd
set. the establishment of the ontological relationship
between the two worlds - the eternal and the temporal
- is what myth does; myth being the key to
apprehending the eternal order.
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