Pan's Labyrinth is a 2006 Spanish film directed by Guillermo del Toro, set in 1944 Spain after the civil war. It follows Ofelia, a young girl who encounters a faun that sets her magical tasks to prove she is the reincarnated Princess Moana. The film contrasts Ofelia's fantastical world with the real world of a fascist army camp led by the ruthless Captain Vidal. Del Toro uses color symbolism to distinguish the two worlds, with blue representing reality and reds/oranges symbolizing Ofelia's adventures. The film examines themes of femininity, toxicity, and obedience versus following one's beliefs.

1. Pan’s Labyrinth is a Spanish film, released in 2006 and directed by Mexican director
Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro is known for these kinds of films, to not shy away from showing
the gore and brutality of real and fantastical worlds and people. They could include villains
such as Nazi’s, as was the case with Pan’s Labyrinth where the main villain is portrayed by
Captain Vidal, a fascist general of the Spanish army. He admitted to being able to lucid
dream as a child; lucid dreaming is the process where a person is aware that they are
dreaming and can control the narrative of their dream. Del Toro said that he was often
guided by a faun in his dreams, like the character in Pan’s Labyrinth. The film itself is set in
1944’s Spain, after the Spanish Civil War and into Franco’s dictatorship. However, the
setting still includes rebels fighting to stay alive while the army tries to rustle them out. With
fascists having won the war, the country is divided in two with widespread poverty and Nazi
like concentration camps.
We are introduced to the main character Ofelia at the start, just after a dark prologue,
mentioning a tale that gives the whole story a potential deeper meaning, who is travelling
with her pregnant mother to go and stay with her step-father in an army base for the birth
of her half-brother. Her step-father is Captain Vidal, who represents the whole idea of
fascismin the film: cold, ruthless and letting no one stand in his way of eliminating the
rebels in the hills to secure Spain’s new government. By the end of the film, it is revealed
that the girl we saw in the very beginning is Ofelia dying after being shot by Vidal, which ties
into the themes of birth, rebirth and that she could be Moana from the tale we are told at
the beginning and whom the Faun referred to her as. The tale of the Blue Rose tells of a
flower that allows anyone who plucks a petal will become immortal but the path to it is full
of poisonous thorns, so no one dares to try and get to it. While that part shows as she tells
this story to her unborn brother, the colouring of the filmgoes dark with a higher contrast
between the two colours, making the red of the sky and blue of the rose stand out more.
The significance with this story is that it could be linked to the whole plot of Pan’s Labyrinth,
since Ofelia is tasked with dangerous quests and once passing them and dies, is reborn with
her parents to live eternally happy. By linking the plot to the story, viewers wonder even
more if everything fantastical is in fact real, or whether it is all part of her imagination based
off the stories and books she reads to cope with and understand what is happening in the
real world.
Regardless of which way the viewers interpret the story, Del Toro uses a method of
colouring the film to distinguish between the fantasy world and the norm. The world of
reality has a low contrast between the colours and is very naturalistic, though does often
have a bit of a blue tint to it. Blue throughout portrays to the viewer that this is the real
world and what everyone is seeing. Captain Vidal is almost always wearing something blue
and the tint to the screen is always more noticeable where he is present. The shots are
static too, not moving around a lot to show the order that Vidal is trying to impose upon
others. Blue is known symbolically for being deep, stable and intelligent, which is what Vidal
strives for. When Ofelia goes to her fantasy worlds go to a high contrast of reds, oranges
and yellows. Being so different to the blue, viewers can easily see the contrast between
these two worlds Ofelia travels between. Red has been used to symbolise adventure and
energy, but also violence and danger. Orange and yellow show happiness and energy that

2. doesn’t exist in the harsh reality of the army camp. Ofelia wears green right up until the end
of the film where she’s reborn. Green usually symbolises nature, healing and safety but in
the case of Pan’s Labyrinth, it is the transversal colour between the two realities. Since
Ofelia is constantly going back and forth between the two worlds, she wears green. The
faun is also green, since it appears in both the real and fantasy worlds. Her mother, Carmen,
wears green at the beginning of the film, but as she becomes more distant with Ofelia and
starts to side with Vidal against the fantastical world, her clothes become blue up until her
death. Only at the end do we see Ofelia in a colour other than green, after she is reborn into
the Labyrinth and dressed in reds, yellows and golds to show she has left the real world
behind. A rose on her dress ties back to the blue rose myth and that Ofelia has been able to
achieve an immortal life in the fantastical underworld as Moana did with her parents.
Another theme that is shown and represented throughout the whole film is the theme of
femininity. Spain has a patriarchal society and its attitudes towards family life. Even in the
21st century, only 50% of women work and men don’t get paternity leave because they are
supposed to be providing for the family. However, in Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro made sure
that the women appear stronger than the men. All the men, including Ofelia’s brother, have
taken life at some point in the filmwhereas all the women give or protect life. Even the
doctor ends up being responsible for a character’s death and Ofelia’s brother’s birth causes
Carmen to die. Especially at the end where Ofelia has the opportunity to sacrifice her baby
brother to live in the labyrinth and chooses not to, even though it meant failing her final
task and ends up being shot and killed by Vidal. This would be quite controversial for the
Spanish audiences but a good way of showing that women can be strong too. Items
representing femininity are present throughout, such as markings on the bed headboards
that look like the shape of a womb and the tree that Ofelia goes into to retrieve the key
from the toad. This also ties in with the theme that Ofelia is rejecting growing up, not
wanting to have to deal with the responsibilities and suffering she can see the adults going
through. But Ofelia also gets something from everything representing femininity in a parallel
with the real and fantasy worlds; a key from the tree the toad was in, the dagger from the
Pale Man’s room and her brother from the bed her mother slept in. However, items that
have the opportunity to be harmful are designed to represent the toxic masculinity Del Toro
tried to push across as the implicit meaning. The dagger and the Pale Man are designed to
resemble the male anatomy, both of which pose a threat to life, being Ofelia or her brother.
This is used to enhance the theme of toxic masculinity and femininity in a juxtaposition
between the representations of each.
Juxtapositions are a constant throughout the filmto accentuate the conflict in the world
Ofelia is fighting to grow up in. One is old vs young where Ofelia is against Vidal, disobeying
him to do what she feels is right even though she’ll have been told to obey adults. She is the
same with the Faun when he shows similarities to Vidal in asking her to sacrifice her baby
brother. As with lots of films, especially in this style there is the theme of good vs evil with
Ofelia being the good and the side of life opposed to Vidal who aims to kill all of the
remaining rebels and the two being in constant conflict throughout the film. With their
conflicting personalities references other juxtapositions of femininity, masculinity and the
innocence of youth vs the supposed maturity of older people. Connected to the

3. contradicting themes of obedience vs disobedience, Ofelia shows that following her own
beliefs of what is right is better than following blindly as with what Vidal seeks. The Faun
expects a Vidal like obedience at the end, to be disobeyed by Ofelia too, suggesting she is a
lot more mature than the other characters think she is.
1. Del Toro, G. (2006) Pan’s Labyrinth
2. Anon (accessed 2018) Color Meaning (http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-
meaning.html)
3. Cohut, M. (2018). Lucid dreaming: Controlling the stories of sleep.Available:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323077.php. Last accessed 12th Jan
2019
4. Notes taken at lectures