Pan’s Labyrinth
Written & Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro’s amazing gift for fantasy, as exhibited in his two previous films, Hellboy and The Devil’s Backbone, reaches new heights in Pan’s Labyrinth, a film in which this brilliant cinematic auteur catapults the horror genre into the realm of mythology.
Set in rural Spain in 1944, with Franco in power after the country’s civil war, the film follows Ofelia (the phenomenal Ivana Baquero), an 11-year-old who enters a fantasy world to escape the harshness of real life with her pregnant, critically ill mother (Ariadna Gil) and her stepfather, a sadistic fascist captain (Sergi López) commissioned to exterminate resistance fighters hiding in the hills. In her fantasy world, Ofelia must complete three challenging tasks—with the promise of immortality. The gripping scenario shifts between Ofelia’s real and fantasy worlds, each of which del Toro has carefully constructed to mirror the other.
“We designed the real and fantasy worlds very specifically so everyone knows immediately where they are. The differences become more distinctive but less distinguishable as the film progresses. It’s like yin and yang: The fantasy world’s feminine, positively uterine, with everything round in shape and a palette of fallopian colors, crimsons and golds in warm light, because, really, Ofelia’s idea of heaven is going back to the womb. The real world has cold colors and harsh light, straight linear borders, nothing round; it’s male and fascist. The design’s deliberately, absolutely symbolic,” explains del Toro.
“Pan’s Labyrinth is the sister of Devil’s Backbone, also about the Spanish Civil War. But it was a gothic romance with a ghost. And it’s a boy’s story. Pan’s Labyrinth is an anti-fascist fairytale and the girl’s story. But they’re both reflections on brutality and innocence.
“Maybe that sounds more logical if I put it into context: I’d just premiered Devil’s Backbone when 9/11 changed everything, turned everything inside out—including my way of thinking. I felt I had to make a movie that structurally echoed Devil’s Backbone: one that would reflect the changes in the world. In Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s the female energy expressed in the creative fantasy of an 11-year-old girl that triumphs. Seen together, I think the films express my belief that really the only monsters are human: not ghosts, not creatures, but people.”
MERIN: That message is clear. But your films, including Pan’s Labyrinth, are peopled with truly terrifying monsters and threatening creatures that you’ve created. Where do these images come from?
DEL TORO: I have a lot in my head; some have been with me from my childhood. Images from personal experiences and, you know, I’m Mexican, and our culture, our mythologies are very rich and complex and so pervasive they can make daily life—which can be unusually harsh—surrealistic in some ways.
And now I collect fairytales and folklore from different cultures, and I’m sure they influence me. For example, the idea of the symmetry of three—that you have a trilogy of ogres, doors or witches or, as Ofelia has, three tasks—is in many cultures’ folklore. Another example: one of Ofelia’s tasks—retrieving a key from the frog who nests beneath a tree, causing the tree to rot—well, the clogging frog and a fabled key are very usual in European lore. Or being put among hidden treasuries where, like Ofelia at the banquet, you’re tempted to but forbidden to take anything—that situation is presented quite often in different ways. Images, the way they’re used in stories, I think are quite universal.
Speaking of drawing, I understand you initiate your work on films by drawing characters and writing their stories in blank notebooks. Do you create these quasi-graphic novels in chronological order, from start to finish? How is what’s on the page transformed into what’s on screen?
I create stories pretty much from start to finish—each one in a new notebook—and the graphic style of each is different, depending on the story. From very early on, I collaborate closely with [cinematographer] Guillermo Navarro, developing and working out details, so everything’s clear before we go into production. We work out the effects, how we’re going to create and shoot environments and make monsters absolutely real—and do it within our budget.
For Pan’s Labyrinth, we built all the sets—even for the real world of the captain’s quarters. And we had to be digitally inventive, too. For example, made the faun’s gestures and movements convincingly realistic, yet fantastic—and avoiding the qualities of Disney.
You’ve described the care taken with visuals, but the sound in the film is amazing—not just Javier Navarrete’s score, but different audio environments for Ofelia’s real and fantasy worlds.
Yes, I’d say the soundscape is even more detailed and specific and equally important as the visual images. In the real world, voices and ambient sounds are natural. There’s no music. But sound in the fantasy world is very manipulated with music and strange voices—some of which are mine—and low-pitch frequencies. I read somewhere that low-pitch frequency resonates in humans on a primal level because it’s reminiscent of volcanic rumblings and other warning sounds from nature that humans have heard and responded to since the birth of the species. They create apprehension.
Creating apprehension’s a huge factor in film genres for which you’re best known. What is it about fear, about the horror genre that fascinates you?
I think the horror genre is underestimated. It’s the place where humans contemplate and confront their deepest fears and, in a way, their own evil instincts—which we all have. And, to that end, it has an important cultural and social function. I see this in graphic novels, too, and that, aside from the art value, is what attracts me to them. And I also think the horror genre is one place that really gives most filmmakers the chance to experiment and the opportunity to express their vision. In fact, it challenges them to their greatest creativity.
