El laberinto del fauno: When Impossible Monsters Triumph Over History

I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”

In the infinite lie of that dream . . . .
Julio Cortázar, “The Night Face-Up”

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of arts and the origins of marvels.
Francisco de Goya

I am responsible only to God and to History.
Francisco Franco


El laberinto del fauno—translated into English as “Pan’s Labyrinth”—has become one of those few films that grows on me with each viewing as I keep uncovering new layers of meaning.

To dismiss this movie as a children’s fable constitutes a refusal to consider the serious issues this tale explores: the nature of reason, of reality, of time, of freedom, of duty, of obsessions, and of the human need to believe that in the future something better awaits us.

Guillermo del Toro’s masterful fantasy, released in 2006, is set in post-civil war Spain, during the viciously repressive aftermath of a brutal conflict in which over half-a-million Spaniards lost their lives and at a time when the rest of the world lived in the gloom of World War II. The heroine of the story is an eleven year old girl named Ofelia—superbly played by Ivana Barquero. Her mother, a widow—played by Ariadna Gil—has remarried; and Ofelia’s new stepfather—played by Sergi López—is the sadistic Captain Vidal: a fascist who believes in the moral superiority of the victors, the Falangist Party, and in the necessity of cleansing Spain of all Republican sympathizers.

Captain Vidal has ordered his family to leave the city and move to an ancient millhouse from where he commands a garrison of soldiers that has been charged with annihilating a small column of socialist rebels resisting Francisco Franco’s reign through guerrilla warfare.

Throughout her short but turbulent life, the heroine has found refuge in fairy tales. In the film’s present, Ofelia’s avid reading of her treasured books has become an especially important sanctuary because she intuitively knows that her stepfather is capable of acts of extreme cruelty.

Shortly after the heroine arrives at the grim millhouse, a fairy lures her into a labyrinth that descends into an underground universe, well below the historical world of Spain. There, a faun—a mythical deity, half man, half goat—informs the girl that she is a long-lost princess, but that if she wishes to return to her kingdom she must successfully complete three tasks that will determine whether or not she has become fully human during the centuries her spirit had been away. If she has become human, she cannot return to her kingdom.

It is precisely at this point that Ofelia’s fantasy world and the historical world of Captain Vidal become destined to collide. Guillermo del Toro, who in addition to directing the film also wrote the script, doesn’t give viewers many opportunities to catch their breath—the pace of his storytelling is relentless and both worlds, those of the labyrinth and of history, are grim and inhabited by terrifying creatures.

Time plays an essential factor for both lead characters, but particularly for Captain Vidal who kills his perceived enemies without much thought or remorse because he is obsessed with his father’s heroic death on the battlefield. Time is so important for Captain Vidal, in fact, that he’s unnaturally attached to the pocket timepiece he inherited from his father. In spite of Captain Vidal’s best efforts to live up to his father’s legacy—who held the rank of general—he fears the clock’s ticking and suspects that he doesn't have enough time left to emerge from under the paternal shadow. The Captain’s frustration at coming up short manifests itself in self-loathing, which he eases through physically torturing and killing his enemies.

With death and destruction as the primary method for resolving existential conflicts, the world of history would easily overwhelm Ofelia’s magical universe if Guillermo del Toro hadn’t resorted to the legacy of two Latin American literary giants: the Argentinians Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.

(The movie director understands, and perfectly, movie-making’s indebtedness to literature: when Ariadna Gil expressed that she was having trouble understanding the mother’s absolute dependence on her cruel husband, Del Toro selected several passages from Dickens’s novels to help the actor come to terms with the role).

From Borges, of course, Del Toro borrows the device of the labyrinth—the leitmotif with which the Argentinian writer is most closely associated. In Borges’s literary construct, the labyrinth is our world, our universe, through which we wander and are constantly obligated to make choices, with every choice altering the course of our lives. The fairy guides Ofelia through the maze, but ultimately the girl will have to make a difficult decision, and although in the labyrinth she can momentarily hide from her nemesis, Captain Vidal, the maze cannot protect the heroine from the confrontation that awaits her at the final intersection where the historical world and the fantasy world at last collide. (It is indicative of Del Toro’s fondness for Borges that the book the faun gives the heroine to help her make decisions is titled “El libro de las encrucijadas”: The Book of the Crossroads.) According to Borges, when we’re confronted with situations similar to that of the girl/princess, the choices we make define us and move us one step closer—for better or for worse—to our destinies.

Borges’s writings often place characters at the center of the universe—as Ofelia eventually is—where time and space ultimately collapse, leaving readers to reflect upon the multiple significances that a character’s decisions have on the resolution of an enigma.

But to rely on Borges’s labyrinth alone could not carry Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy against the massive weight of the historical world that Captain Vidal represents. To make Ofelia’s visions utterly believable, Guillermo del Toro appropriates the obsessions that Julio Cortázar instills in the psyche of his characters. In this Argentine’s stories, a character’s fixations and visions become so compelling that the fantastic events surrounding them are rendered far more believable than everyday reality. In “La noche boca arriba” (The Night Face-Up), the reality of captive of the Aztecs who’s about to be sacrificed is far more credible than the thin dreams of his other self: a modern man who experienced a motorcycle accident; or, as happens in “Las babas del Diablo” (The Devil’s Droolings), it becomes easier to believe that a photographer has unknowingly surprised the devil by taking his picture than it is to believe in the character's insanity.

The difference between the Argentinian writers is that Borges wants his readers to ponder the endless possibilities his stories intelligently pose, while Cortázar enjoys making the reader question which of two worlds is the real one.

Guillermo del Toro, in borrowing from the storytelling legacies of both writers, asks his viewers to enter the labyrinth with Ofelia, judge her choices, and in the end determine which of the outcomes is reality: Is she a human dreaming of being a princess? Or is she a princess, ready to return to her kingdom?

As witnesses to the confrontation at the final crossroads of El laberinto del fauno, Guillermo del Toro, most appropriately, leaves the choice up to us.