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i think its okay to start my analysis

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of guilermo del toros Pan labyrinth

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with a spoiler

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ophelia - the main character...

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she dies at the end

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i feel fine doing that

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because del toro does the exact same thing with his movie

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the first shot of pan`s labyrynth

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is the ending

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and it`s also the first way in which Del toro

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complicates that ending

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but before we get into that

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a few things about fairy-tales

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for most of us the authoritative source

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for fairy-tales is walt disney

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and that`s no accident

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disney set out to claim that authority

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when he made films like snow white, cinderella

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or sleeping beauty

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by adapting folk tales in the public domain

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and copywriting the adaptations

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still, because film was a relatively new media

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capturing tha authority he wanted required Disney

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to remain faithful to the original versions

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of these stories popularized by charles piero

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and brothers grimm

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he made the transition from print to cinema

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as smooth as possible for the audience

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even going so far as to begin his movies with

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the oppenning of a book

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Disney was smart

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his films are now regarded as classics

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and yet, by remaining so faithful to the stories

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19-centure antecedents

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he inherited and furthered their 19th century

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morality

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a conservative, patriarchal value system

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in which the prince always comes to save

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the helpless heroine

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a value system that was antiquated even then

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in this way, disney limited the kinds of things

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a fairy-tale can do

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in Pan`s labyrinth guilermo del toro attempts

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to explode these limitations and he does so

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by recontextualising the stories

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instead of pulling from a single authoritative source

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del toro pulls from a huge number of sources

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giving non-precedence over the others

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and letting them all play against one another

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to create meaning

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the film tells the story of the little girl

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offelia and her mother Carmen

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as they go to live a hyper-fashist captain Vidall

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five years after the spanish civil war

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vidall is trying to snugg out the last remnants

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of rebellion in the mountains awaiting his childs birth

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by carmen

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while Ophelia becomes ensnared in a magical quest

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after a faun tells her she is the lost princess

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of an underground realm

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from here the story spins out into two paralles narratives

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the magical quest and the political drama

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crucially, neither of these narratives becomes reducable

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to the other

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del toro makes a point of this

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by entwaining them in ways, that makes

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any totalizing explanation problematic

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at the end of the film for exampe we get what seems to be

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a nail in the coffin for the magical quest

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vidall approachers ophelia speaking with the faun

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and when the camera cuts to his point of view

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the faun is not there

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it appears to be solid evidence for those who read

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ophelias quest as a coping mechanism for her sad life

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but, if we back up, we can see how del toro

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complicates that reading by remembering

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that vidall has just been drugged with a heavy dose of sleeping medication

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in other stories, drug induced gallucinations

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are used to explain a way why people see supernatural

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but in pans labyrinth it`s the opposite

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del toro uses the device to destabilize our trust

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in captain vidalls point of view