Pan's Labyrinth

This movie is amazing. It has phenomenal acting, a deep story, and widespread subtle and meaningful symbolism. The two parallel stories connect deeply with each other. Ofelia, the main character, faces trials that ultimately see how independent she is by testing her disobedience for what is right. Disobedience and following the rules or instructions is a major theme in the movie. I want to point out all the symbols in the movie, because there are a lot of important morals and observations hidden in the fabric of the show.

However, there are so many. We will cover some of the big ones, though!

Captain Vidal

Captain Vidal is the model of obedience. He is epitome of unthinking followers, of being a part of a social machine rather than an individual. He expects obedience and unquestioningly follows the fascist ideology so much that it is not even brought up in the movie, his mind, or by his henchmen. As the doctor said to him,

"To obey, just like that, for the sake of obeying, without questioning? That's something only people like you can do, Captain."

This line and the fact that the Captain is the bad guy implies that following the rules without being an individual is a bad thing, that thinking for yourself is far more important than making others happy and structured.

The Pale Man AKA The Hand-Eyed Monster

The Pale Man symbolizes decadence, of the dangers of disobeying too much, of being capitalistic. Before his ey- erm... hands, he has a magnificent table displaying the most luscious feast I've ever seen on film. The Pale Man is the opposite of Captain Vidal. His body reflects this, he cannot see something unless he wants it. His sight is his greed. He points his hands at what he wants to grab, what he wants is what he sees.

Ofelia encounters the Pale Man when she strays too far from the fairies' and Faun's directions. Yes, disobedience is good, but when you stray too far to the point of greed and selfishness, you encounter destructive capitalism and decadence in the form of the Pale Man. She eats two plump perfect grapes, and the Pale Man awakes, presumably to punish whoever took anything of his. Her hunger results in two fairies being eaten and almost herself too. I find it interesting the fairies warned Ofelia a lot more when she went for the grapes than the other little door, as if they knew this was a disobedience control test all along.

The Labyrinth

Why a labyrinth? Why is that word in the title? What's the point?

The labyrinth represents Ofelia's journey through the story, her progression to becoming a princess. We must define labyrinth first, however, because a popular misconception is that it is a maze. It is not. A labyrinth is linear, there are no branches, you can only go one way but you never know where you will end up, how long it will be, when the turn is. A labyrinth will get you somewhere but you have no information about how. That is Ofelia's journey.

It looks straight. She follows the Faun's directions, gets the stuff, does the quests, and poof she's a princess at home all lovey-dovey. Nope. It's got twists and turns and it is incredibly misleading about where she is heading or where she is, and if she doesn't stay on the right, the only, path, she will hit a wall and get stuck or hurt or blocked.

Her journey is a test of independence through thinking for herself, of disobedience, of stubbornness. If she doesn't follow exactly the right path despite the misleading walls of the Faun's directions, she will not prove herself the princess that she is and be stuck in the cruel real world of Fascist Spain.



There are so many more symbols, and their meanings are all debateable and varied and deep. Pan's Labyrinth is a great movie for educational discussions and I think it was a good choice and recommend it for next year.

p.s. 650+ words. Happy now Ms. Wood?