Early in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006), ten-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) tells her soon-to-be-born brother a fairytale. In it, a blue rose that grants immortality grows at the peak of a tall mountain. No one dares to go near it, because its thorns are full of lethal poison. “Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death and pain,” she says, “but never about the promise of eternal life.”
It’s a dark fairytale, as is the film. Set in 1940s Spain under the fascist regime of Francisco Franco, the story follows Ofelia and her pregnant mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), as they move into an old manor house with Carmen’s new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi López). Vidal is a cold and ruthless soldier, hunting resistance fighters in the thick woods surrounding the house.
Ofelia is frightened by the house and the man inside, and seeks solace in the forest. Exploring an ancient stone labyrinth she encounters the Faun (Doug Jones), a goatlike woodland spirit who hails her as the reincarnation of a princess from another world. The Faun, who doesn’t seem entirely trustworthy, tells Ofelia that if she can complete three magical tasks, he will take her to her true home in a kingdom beneath the earth.
When fellow Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu watched “Pan’s Labyrinth,” he told del Toro: “That’s a truly Catholic film.” Del Toro wasn’t so sure, considering his movie “truly profane…a layman’s riff on Catholic dogma,” while also admitting: “It’s true what they say: once a Catholic, always a Catholic.” Regardless of how conscious del Toro’s inspirations may or may not have been, “Pan’s Labyrinth” embodies the core tension of Catholic life: the push and pull between the eternal and the worldly.
The eternal is represented by Ofelia’s fairy stories: the ones she reads, and the one she lives. She is given plenty of reason to doubt, including the Faun’s inherent shiftiness. Her mother tells her, frequently, that she’s too old to believe in such things. But in truth, Carmen has also bought into another fantasy: the empty promises of the world, as embodied by Vidal.
Vidal is the allure and danger of fascism in human form: strong, charming, and composed, but also capable of shooting a child without hesitation. In him, Carmen sees the worldly version of a fairytale prince. Vidal is a promise of security, the strongman who can impose order on chaos through his own iron will. All he asks in return is complete, unquestioning obedience.
And he receives it. We see the wealthy and influential of the town come to eat at his table, including a priest who loads up his plate while preaching austerity for the masses. He only appears briefly, but gestures at the long collaboration between the Catholic Church and Franco’s dictatorship. It wasn’t the first time—or, sadly, the last—that the church aligned itself with oppressive forces. “God has already saved their souls,” the priest says of the resistance fighters, between mouthfuls. “What happens to their bodies hardly matters to Him.” Even those who profess a belief in eternal life can be seduced by the immediate comforts of the world.
(The church is also evoked, metaphorically, in the film’s scariest non-human monster: the Pale Man, a voracious, child-eating fiend whom Ofelia faces during one of her trials).
By contrast, it’s the supposedly godless resistance fighters who are committed to a higher ideal. Despite the overwhelming odds, they cling to survival in the woods, inconveniencing Vidal whenever they can. The captain’s housekeeper, Mercedes (Maribel Verdú), courageously risks her life to aid them. Resistance is not the safe or logical choice, and everyone who makes it suffers for it. To Vidal, their belief in a better, fairer world seems as fanciful as Ofelia’s stories. But faith always looks foolish to those who have surrendered to the world.
In the end, Ofelia needs to make her own choice between the cruel practicality of the world and the hope for something more. When the moment comes, she hardly hesitates. We talk about the innocence of childhood as a sort of blissful ignorance; but in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” that innocence involves a clear-eyed certainty about right and wrong. You can imagine that the adults in the film once had that same sense of moral clarity, but most of them decided over time that it was a weakness and discarded it. Ofelia is chided, again and again, for believing in impossible things. But what she believes makes her brave, honest, and, in the end, incapable of sacrificing another for her own happiness. There are worse stories to believe.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” is available to rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+.
