Pan's Labyrinth Character Analysis

During the gruesome and bloody Spanish Civil War, tens of thousands of innocent civilians and refugees died, but even more shocking, close to 200,000 people were deliberately executed (Hochschild). In the 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia is a young girl living in Spain after the war who, along with her pregnant mother, joins the family of Captain Vidal. He is the sadistic leader of a Fascist regime and Ofelia’s new abusive step-father. A lover of fairy tales, Ofelia fantasizes that she is secretly a princess who must complete three tasks in order to escape her current reality and return to her true home in the underworld. During the movie, she is faced with the harsh realities of war and death, which are mirrored in the creatures she faces during her mystical endeavors. Director Guillermo del Toro along with cinematographer Guillermo Navaro and editor Bernet Vilaplana perfectly personify the cruelness she experiences almost an hour into the film with Ofelia’s encounter of the horrifying Pale Man, an eyeless creature with an

appetite for young children . The series of shots that showcases this ordeal perfectly symbolizes the idea that greed and the desire for control, especially in the form of war, is a hunger that blindly consumes innocence.
The progression of this nightmare begins with a medium shot of Ofelia observing the stationary Pale Man as she slowly approaches him. The next shot is of Ofelia lingering along the table that the Pale Man is sitting at the head of. She pauses and looks to the feast that the table holds and the camera follows her gaze. The view of a juicy grape is interrupted with a close up of a fairy flying close to Ofelia’s face and making frantic gestures. Ofelia waves the fairy away and glances back towards the unmoving Pale Man. After Ofelia is shown waving a second agitated fairy away, the camera cuts to a close-up of her picking a grape. The fairies continue to fly close to Ofelia and gesturing while she places the grape in her mouth. The camera then smoothly pans past Ofelia and the unmoving Pale Man comes into focus.
The next shot is of the monstrous being beginning to awaken; he first moves his fingers and then begins gasping for air.

The camera cuts to the creature placing eyeballs into the slits in his palms. Next, he is shown raising his hands to his face mimicking the placement of where his eyes are currently missing.. The camera flashes to Ofelia again, continuing to ignore the fairies’ warnings. As she continually waves them away, the out of focus Pale Man begins shambles towards her ominously in the background. Because this is the longest shot of the sequence, it builds the suspense as Ofelia remains unaware of the impending danger. The next few shots are of the the fairies attacking the creature to protect Ofelia and the Pale Man grabbing two of them in his hands. The next few shots are of the creature eating the two captured fairies. The final two shots are of Ofelia turning to run in fear and the Pale Man licking blood off of his

hands.
Through the cinematography of this macabre sequence, the director gives the audience a brutal portrayal of how the hunger of war and greed targets innocent bystanders. Authors Roger Clark and Keith McDonald claim that “one of the most interesting and inventive aspects of the film is the way in which Del Toro uses fairy-tale imagery to interrogate the politics of war and nationhood...”(53). The ruthless nature of war is a role assigned to the Pale Man himself. His opponent and who he views as the guilty party is Ofelia. While the focus of the creature’s rage should be Ofelia for taking his food, he still kills and devours the two fairies who were bystanders simply trying to protect their companion. Yet Ofelia might even be viewed as an innocent victim as well. Her theft from the Pale Man was not of malicious intent; instead it is a product of a young child living in a time of starvation and panic. The Pale Man obviously does not have a desire to consume the food he is in possession of. This begs the question: why does he feel the need to protect it?
The answer lies in the foundation of what creates war, a desire to dominate others for the purpose of greed. The Pale Man holds in his possession what others need to survive, without needing it himself. Acting as a living metaphor, the Pale Man not only personifies war, but also the antagonist of the story. Captain Vidal represents the ideals of Fascism mixed with an unhealthy obsession for control. He is the figurative monster mirrored by the literal one. By using the Pale Man sequence as an allegory for war and the villain’s twisted ideals and actions, the director shows the audience the harsh reality of greed and power through a sequences of fantastical and disturbing shots.