My Final Paper For Intro To Cinema
Benjamin Woodruff
Professor Rich
Intro to Cinema
8/18/2011
Coping With Evil In Pan’s Labyrinth
People are hurt all the time by events in their everyday world. We all have some experience that we wish we could forget, and under certain amounts of stress, we become more susceptible to personality disorders or suffer from depression, anxiety, or episodes of mania. Most people tend to use built in defense mechanisms to deal with harsh realities, such as denial, repression, displacement or rationalization. Fantasy is Ofelia’s natural defensive reaction to the horrible realities of the pre-World War II Spain of Pan’s Labyrinth. Each event in the movie that is part of her fantasy is mirrored by events in reality, showing a direct relation between each pair, and allows Ofelia to cope with the negative psychological effects of her environment by creating circumstances in which she has power to act out her will and change things for the better.
In the film, the first sign of fantasy, or precursor, is the fairy. It is on Ofelia’s book and, later on in their drive, appears crawling out of a stone whose mystical face only Ofelia can see (because she is the only one who ventures off the road enough to see it). It starts out with one form—some kind of insect—and, later on in the film, adopts the beautiful form of a traditional fairy as Ofelia sees them, with a humanistic body and wings. This creature represents Ofelia’s naiveté and innocence, and that of all children, and also shows us how people eventually change themselves or their appearance to meet the requisites of society or at least the groups in which we immediately belong. Many of us can associate with a childhood feeling of alienation as our parents, siblings and/or other influential care-takers and mentors begin to chastise us for the behaviors and actions that we initially find most natural. Ofelia, being a person on the verge of deciding whether or not to become spiritual or remain material, is guided by these fairies in order to fulfill her destiny, which illustrates how children are expected to follow the example of better adapted, older children either in their family or community. This process for Ofelia is one of the central conflicts of the film, and is therefore important to take note of.
The faun and his tasks that are required to be completed by Ofelia before the next full moon are the next set of fantasy events or objects that mirror reality in the film. The faun represents the earth and the persistent nature of the world, excluding man and his corruption and everything else that doesn’t last. Some characteristics of the purely natural world change, as does the faun’s name, but the natural order remains constant: all things operate in a sort of balance, serving their purpose, until, that is, man ruins, destroys or uses them up. The faun is also meant to guide Ofelia, away from her mortal life, towards the spiritual life of her past. He is directly competing with the Captain (as a sort of negative image), whose tertiary goal in the film is to, at first, dominate Ofelia and coerce her to stay out of sight and to conform. Ofelia fails both the Captain and the faun, in different ways, but the faun gives her another chance and the Captain becomes abusive and punishing, only kept at bay by the girl’s mother and later Mercedes. The nanny or maid, Mercedes, is the opposite force in comparison to the girl’s mother, not to be confused with another fantasy element. The tasks can also be shown to mirror events in Ofelia’s reality, such as the frog under the tree and tyranny in Spain, or obtaining a knife from the locked miniature door of the sleeping creature’s dungeon and the raiders/rebels acquiring goods and supplies from the storehouse. These fantasy events are likely Ofelia’s interpretations of the events in reality that she was unable to cope with or understand. Just as man kind has traditionally explained events in their lives using spiritual elements, Ofelia is adapting a story to her reality, giving her the means and rationalization to rebel against the evil that she finds naturally unpleasant.
The fulfillment of Ofelia’s fate, to die at the hands of the evil Captain (who represents the destructive tendency of man and the mortal world) in an act of self sacrifice, shows that she couldn’t quite cope with the evil and would rather die than allow her baby brother to be harmed. While an illusion of the faun to disguise the nature of the final test, Ofelia passes and continues onward in her spiritual journey to join her true father, mother and little brother where she becomes complete and wholly satisfactory. This could be seen as a transition of a child from the unreasonable world that we tend to live in before initiation, to the world we accept as adults and functioning members of society. As children, we refuse to accept the rules and logic of adults, often giving up our rightful place in the insanity, only to later realize that our parents were simply doing the best they could and that we should join them to help make the world better. Ofelia made it through her journey, and was also greeted in the end by the faun and all of the fairies, even the ones who had been devoured by the blind demon.
In the end, it is clear that Ofelia lacked the ability to exist in a world that was evil, and she used her fantasy experiences throughout the movie to help her cope with the fate that she would eventually face. While the fantasy events mirrored certain truths or were representational of events in reality, they were also at times in contrast with some of the real elements. We all project stories and assign meanings to events to help us cope and understand, and perhaps we’ll be able to benefit from them as much as Ofelia by choosing a noble fate, in the end.
