The most successful Spanish film in history and winner of three Oscars, El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) is a Spanish-Mexican film about a 13-year-old girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) who is very fond of fairy tales. She moves to the Aragonese Pyrenees (in northeastern Spain) with her mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil), whose health has been weakened by her pregnancy. There, they meet Carmen’s new husband, Vidal (Sergi López), a cruel captain and part of General Franco’s army, who has been promoted thanks to his restless efforts in eliminating the opposing left-wing forces. Ofelia’s father was killed at the beginning of the war, and her relationship to Vidal is rotten from the start. As Carmen’s health gets worse throughout the story, it’s clear that the only thing that interests the captain is that his son be born safe and sound in what he calls a “clean and pure” Spain, “free from left-wing ideals.”
"El laberinto del fauno is a fantastic tale typical of Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who always takes his audiences to the extremes of horror and fantasy"
Ofelia feels lonely with her frail and resigned mother, whose only thought is to please her strict husband. The girl only finds some consolation in Mercedes (Maribel Verdú), a maid who works for the captain’s house and who secretly helps the leftist resistance hidden in the mountains, since her brother is a part of it. Throughout, the characters' accents vary between neutral Castilian and Aragonese, and Maribel Verdú even attended classes to improve her Aragonese accent, in order to play her role as a humble countryside maid. One night, Ofelia discovers the ruins of a labyrinth near her house, where she meets a strange faun who reveals to her that she is actually the princess Moana, the heiress of an underground kingdom who escaped many centuries ago. In order to return to her kingdom, she has to pass three tests before the full moon. The story mixes reality and fantasy, suggesting Ofelia’s need to evade the historical reality before her.
El laberinto del fauno is a fantastic tale typical of Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who always takes his audiences to the extremes of horror and fantasy, in worlds where the line between fiction and reality is very thin. This is the second of three films by him in which facts from the Spanish Civil War are blended with fantasy. The first one was El espinazo del diablo (The Devil’s Backbone) and the third one, 3993, is yet to come. In Pan’s Labyrinth, the narrative is set in 1944, just after the war has concluded with a right-wing victory for Franco’s forces. However, the left kept fighting until its total extinction, establishing groups in mountains or in the woods. It was just a matter of time until they were completely removed.
"El laberinto del fauno has a double ending: either a sad reality or a happy conclusion, according to the faun’s fantasy."
These were tense times, when nobody could be trusted, as we can see in the character of Mercedes, who works for the captain at the same time as she helps her rebel brother; or the doctor, who attends to people from both sides of the conflict. When Ofelia meets the captain for the first time, she uses her left hand and the captain corrects her by saying: “No, it’s the right one.” We can feel the clash between the right and left wings, and also the captain’s repulsion to anything that does not follow his wishes, either politically or personally. El laberinto del fauno conveys to us the terrible reality of war from the point of view of a girl who likes fairy tales, and it has a double ending: either a sad reality or a happy conclusion, according to the faun’s fantasy.
