Some random notes on Guillermo del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth which should be expanded at a later date. As the title suggests, it has much to offer for examination of myth and fairy tale transposed, translated, displaced, reinvented.
An attempt to understand the main character, Ofelia, begins with her name. Serpent, immortality, help, innocence. Hamlet, madness, youth, fantasy, romance, hope in a mad world.
Mother and daughter, in utero son and evil step-father, the captain. Set in Spain 1944, remnants of the civil war. Guerrillas in the hills and the captain manning his little kingdom. An insect which turns into a fairy along the model of an illustration in one of Ofelia’s books of fairy tales. Actually, it all begins with a narrator telling the story of an underworld monarch whose daughter escapes to the world of light, whence she immediately loses her memory and any sense of her identity, with strong intimations of Plato’s cave. She dies of exposure and starvation, because her immortality leaves her when she rebels, yet her spirit is destined to return to the underworld and portals are opened around the earth by her father. Ofelia is led to one by a flying insect and told by the housekeeper, Mercedes, that the labyrinth has been there essentially beyond human memory: “Since before the mill.” Ofelia is then led back there one night (as if in a dream; the insect wakes Ofelia who is at first fearful and tries to wake her mother sleeping next to her to no avail; the insect changes form to that of what we traditionally recognize as a fairy – the name Ofelia has been calling it all along – and leads the girl to Pan’s Labyrinth).
There she meets the faun who gives her a book full of blank pages, telling her that she is the Princess Moanna of the underworld (somehow related to the moon; a quarter-moon-shaped mark on her left shoulder verifies her legitimacy as such) and must accomplish three tasks by the next full moon in order to establish both her legitimacy and that her immortality has not been lost, at which time she will be restored as the princess and live eternally under the ground. The book will give her instructions. We are not shown Ofelia returning to her bed or the world of mortals, yet the next scene places her clearly there as if she returned magically (or as if it were all a dream). The mythological/ fairy tale scenes are alternated with the unflinchingly “real” and violent ones in the compound in the war. I won’t give any more away in case anyone here is interested in seeing it firsthand. I would highly recommend it. Note: NOT a family film.
Other items of note: at one point Ofelia wears a dress very reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. The faun also gives her a mandrake root to put under her sick mother’s bed with specific instructions. Once she does this, her mother’s health abruptly shifts for the better. And I’m sure we all know how mandrake is associated with witches, the supernatural, the otherworld.
Dreams, underworld, vision (the Pale Man has eyes in his hands, empty holes in his face), fairy tale, life, myth all is here for the taking.
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2 comments:
Ariana,
I just saw this film on Monday night and I want to go see it a couple more times before it leaves town. In fact I mentioned it in my 121 class and some students who went to see it said some people left after the very gruesome wine bottle incident in the beginning--that's when I knew del Toro must have taken the concept of fairy tale seriously.
I was thinking Plato's Cave, too. And of course the nod to Hamlet and anyone who is familiar with the hero's journey. . .
You're right, it's almost too tempting to talk about this film and spoil it.
I've been doing some research on labyrinths and come to find they are almost a universal motif across cultures and hold very similar meanings in ancient Indian and Greek cultures, that of a portal to the underworld (among other things). The vaginal symbol of yani () represents the door to the Labyrinth, which then in turn would represent the womb, and maybe give us a hint at the symbolism of the moon and the very feminine 'fabric' of the story itself.
I also was stunned at the power of juxtaposing Fantasy and Reality in such stark, unashamed terms.
More on all this later.
w.
P.S. I'm going to link to your post here on my blog, once I figure out how to do that.
P.S.S. Mandrake? I know I read something about this recently, but can't remember where. Mandrake, Fresh Milk, and Blood?
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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