Mohamad Razeq
Professor Cesar Gallardo
English 113
16 May 2012
The Girl After Her Inside Reality
The film Pan’s Labyrinth is about Francisco Franco taking power as dictator in Spain. It depicts violence and repression from the Francoise regime, as well as by resistance from antifascist guerrillas who hide in the mountains and are aided by village sympathizers. Ofelia ́s stepfather, Vidal, is a cruel captain in Franco’s Civil Guard based at a rural military post. As figure of Fascism, Vidal is in charge of fighting the guerrillas who resist his regime. Ofelia is an orphan whose father died in obscure circumstances during the Spanish Civil War. Carmen, her mother, remarried Vidal who controls her and limits her to being a housewife. She is constantly sick and weak to the point where she cannot leave the bedroom during the last weeks of her pregnancy with Vidal’s child. From the beginning of the story, it is clear that Ofelia does not have a good relationship with her stepfather. Vidal is incapable of noble feelings, and completely uninterested in any type of familial relationship with Ofelia.
The main theme of the story centers on Ofelia’s internal struggle—mirroring the political route that she takes in the story. Ofelia loves to read fairy tales, although her mother disapproves of her reading and encourages her to stop. In the film, Carmen does not seem to be very interested in Ofelia’s interests or her emotional well being, but rather constantly thinking of ways to please Vidal. For instance, she pressures Ofelia to call the vicious captain “father.” Later in the film, it is revealed that Vidal was the reason Ofelia’s mother discouraged her from reading fairy tales. The child does not feel safe. Nothing was ever the same after losing her father and Ofelia is lonelier than ever. She is isolated in a violent world with a weak and needy mother who is constantly sick and a disconnected, nasty stepfather whose only interest is in gaining more power and does not care about her. Ofelia is left with no choice but to escape into her fantasy world in quest for finding a new hope and identity. Mercedes is her only hope in the real world, who takes the role of Ofelia’s biological mother. In her fantasy world, the substitute father figure is the faun, Pan, who assures that he is just a guide that could potentially connect her with her real father, after passing a series of tests and proving that she does what the monster instruct her.
In conclusion, the film is based on Ofelia’s difficult change of circumstances that surrounds the story, allowing for an exploration of a psychological process associated with her inner reality. In this film, fantasy and innocence conflict with reality and cruelty to describe the characters of Ofelia and Vidal, respectively. Around these two characters a double narrative develops to represent a larger historical event that left an indelible mark in the collective subconscious of Spain. As the dysfunctional leader, for decades the Franco regime brutally oppressed and destroyed the entire country from the rest of the world after the Civil War. By isolating their ambitions and liberties, the dictator of France kept his symbolic children in the dark through the enforcement of policies and practices that prevented his people from challenging him. What we can learn from this film is that any enforcement of laws, policies, and practices that do not have roots in the Bible is potentially dangerous and we should be cautious, lest they lead us down a path that ends in destruction.