Months and months ago, I bought El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth), on a whim, and this week I finally got round to watching it. A plot summary on IMDB describes it well:
“In 1944 fascist Spain, a girl, fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun in the center of the labyrinth. He tells her she’s a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again.“
A lot of reviews I’ve read say that it’s a film about finding comfort and strength in imagination, and one Christian review says, “Ofelia finds no comfort or help from religion, for the clergy in Vidal’s company are clearly corrupt. She turns instead to another source of understanding—the light of imagination.” This may well have been the intention, as the review goes on to describe director Guillermo Del Toro’s disenchantment with Catholicism, but I think religion (the way I understand it) is exactly what Ofelia finds comfort in. Ofelia endures a number of tests and hardships in the physical world, and through the strength of her moral character, she achieves immortality in “the kingdom”. If that doesn’t make you think of “Heaven”, I don’t know what will. To begin with, she is motivated by a desire to escape her present situation, and to be a princess, but at the end, she is willing to sacrifice it all -her physical life and the chance of being an immortal princess- to save her newborn brother, which in fact is the final test, and wins her immortality. The fact that no one else believes in the fairystories she believes in, but she is steadfast regardless, risking her immediate safety on a number of occasions, also seems to be very relevant to religion.
In the end Ofelia dies physically, and it’s rather hazy as to whether her soul actually did live on or if it was all her imagination, which begs the question: if it was all her imagination, if religion is all make-believe, is it better to live in hope of something better in the world to come, with a morally upright character, and sacrifice your life for the good of others, than to… I don’t know. Whatever the opposite is. To believe that the sufferings in this world are all there is to life, and to try and block them out with methods harmful to yourself and others? I think the former is better.
I think sometimes people are too attached to literal interpretations to see beyond them. The film may have literally portrayed the Church as corrupt, but clergy aren’t the be all and end all of religion.
Personally, the film brought all kinds of things to mind, and made me reflect profoundly on the enormous sufferings and sacrifices of individuals in the name of the betterment of the world, and put my own hardships into perspective.
My mind’s a bit of a muddle and I’m going to make even less sense if I keep typing. I hope that made a little bit of sense to someone though.
