Considering PAN’S LABYRINTH

(after Crimson Peak I felt inspired to revisit one of Guillermo delToro's more successful films)

A story of politics, coming of age, fantasy, horror, and history, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a difficult film to pigeon hole. It slips the bonds between genre convention and expectation with the deftness of true invention. DelTorro uses the pieces of genres as building blocks, picking and choosing between drama, fantasy and horror, using each to his own purpose.

At its center is a truly horrific human fiend* (as opposed to the supernatural or inhuman fiend found in other examples of horror). He is a Captain in the fascist Spanish army who is hunting a last remnant of socialist rebels in the mountains of rural Spain. He is perhaps more terrifying than a slasher film’s villain because rather than being indiscriminate and bloodthirsty, he is principled and methodical. Killing is a tool in his structured program of power and dominance. And to that end we know from the beginning who is at risk and why. Our heroine is a young girl who is coming into the Captain’s care because he has married her mother. This girl is a free spirit, and a loose end in the Captain’s plans. We sense his hostility to her from the start. The girl is befriended by a servant in the house who is also a spy for the rebels. We have our heroines and our villain. We know broadly what must happen and why. This inertia creates the tension of horror.  

But the film is also a fantasy. The little girl keeps slipping between this world and a fantastical realm where she is the embodiment of a lost princess and must complete a series of challenges to regain her place in a sort of fairy kingdom. The imagery in the fantasy sections of the film add to the horrific tone of the film. There is a genuinely nightmarish child-eating monster, a vomiting toad, and even the child’s guide and seeming advocate has an edge of menace about him.  All of the fantasy environments are dark and crypt-like. The tone of the film is constantly foreboding in both the realistic and the fantasy sequences.
  

The thing that unifies the fantasy and realistic sequences is that in both sections there is reason to what happens, an over arching plan. In the fairy realm the story of the princess's journey and return drives the events. In "reality" it is the Captain's sense of moral superiority and power that drives the plot forward. He imposes the rules of the story and applies the consequences when they are breached. Ultimately though reality is shown to be the most horrific, even if there are no child eating nightmare monsters. In the fantasy realm there can be redemption but reality is arbitrary and chaotic. The rules are invented and applied by brutes and only persist until one brute overcomes another.

*genre terminology suggested in lectures by Dr. Wes Gehring