Pan's Labyrinth

WARNING: there are some spoilers in this review. I mark them with red warnings.

There was once a princess from the land of fairy tales who got lost and forgot who she was. If she doesn't find her way back, she'll be doomed to live in the world of people, grow old and die. Or so the legend says at the beginning of Pan's Labyrinth.

In 1944 Spain, Ofelia travels with her pregnant mother to her stepfather's house. He is a captain in Franco's army. He is bent on wiping out the last of the guerilla bands that continue to fight the long past civil war. Her mother pleads with her to accept this man as her father, but Ofelia refuses. We soon discover that the captain is a sadistic man who relishes the killing and torture he inflicts on the rebels.

After she arrives at the house, Ofelia meets a fairy (or is it only her imagination in looking at a large winged bug?) who leads her down a dark hole in the ancient labyrinth on the grounds. There she meets a faun who tells her she must accomplish three tasks to be restored to her place as princess. Her father is anxious to welcome her back.

Soon thereafter her mother's pregnancy confines her to bed so Ofelia is left on her own. In the meanwhile, the rebel forces are struggling to withstand the violence of Captain Vidal. Ofelia proves to be a brave girl, both in the fantasy realm and in the real world of Captain Vidal's house. But the tasks in both worlds may be too much for her.

The film revolves around the differences and similarities between the real and fantasy worlds. Both include violence and treachery. There are things to fear all around, but it is hard to know who one can trust in either world. The real world people in Ofelia's life think she is just acting out the fairy tales she is so fond of, but the viewer can see the connection and interaction between these two worlds.

It is important that Ofelia will not accept the Captain as her father; that would make her a part of his world, a world her mother may not approve of, but accepts for the security it provides. In the real world security is achieved through strength. In the fantasy world, security is the gift of grace. Even if one fails to do what was instructed, there is still the possibility of welcome.

This is a story about immortality. The Captain sees in the unborn son that his wife is carrying his own immortality. The son (it could be nothing else) will be an extension of his life and name. Through that son the Captain will live forever. He cares about nothing as much as that son, even though it is not yet born. Even when his wife's pregnancy gets complicated, he tells the doctor that if a choice must be made, to save the child even if the mother must die.

But we discover that that immortality is really a shallow pretense. In the end that son will not provide the immortality the Captain seeks. [SPOILERS] After the child is born and the rebels have the Captain surrounded, before they kill the Captain, they tell the Captain the child will never even hear his name. [END SPOILERS]

For Ofelia, on the other hand, there is a kind of immortality. Her immortality though, is not of this world, but of the fairy tale world that she belongs to.

It is as the legend tells us at the beginning, a matter of remembering who we are and to what world we belong. It is a matter of remembering whose child we are -- a child of this world, or the child of a father in a world that others may not see or understand.