Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun

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His voice was as warm as the blankets on the bed and Ofelia wondered why her mother hadn’t fallen in love with a man like the doctor. He reminded her of her late father. Just a little bit.

We see Captain Vidal, Carmen’s new husband, waiting for them at his residence, annoyed that they are fifteen minutes late. He greets Carmen and touches her belly, before inviting her to sit in a wheelchair, in spite of her insistence that she can walk. Ofelia gets out of the car and greets Vidal with the wrong hand. He notes this and calls to Mercedes, a servant, telling her to bring the luggage in. Vidal placed bronze markers on the map. Mercedes didn’t take her eyes off his gloved fingers. That’s what she was: the eyes and ears of the rabbits they hunted, as silent and invisible as a mouse. Carmen had closed her eyes. At least when she was dreaming she saw more than this world, didn’t she? Ofelia wondered, pressing her cheek against her mother’s chest. So close, their bodies fusing into one, as they had been before she was born. Ofelia could hear the tide of her mother’s breath, the soft thumping of her heart beating so regularly, like a metronome against bone. Capitán,” the younger one said as Vidal scrutinized them wordlessly, “this is my father.” He gestured to the older man. “He is an honorable man.”Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun is an elegiac love letter to fairy tales and a worthy companion piece that also stands strongly on its own. The novel is beautiful, poetic, and mournful in its pleas to the reader to fight for what is good and right and to open their eyes to the world around them…not just the world we’re used to seeing or the one that can be explained away by practical means, but the real world where fairies fly and witches cast spells and trees whisper stories about long-lost princesses to those who know how to listen. She smiled at Ofelia. There were secrets in her smile, but Ofelia liked her. She liked her very much. I have a task for you, Cintolo,” said the Faun, “and you won’t be allowed to fail. I want numerous sculptures of the king and queen—as numerous as the uncurling fronds of ferns—to grow from the soil in the Upper Kingdom. Can you make them?”

It sounds as if the walls are speaking, doesn’t it?” Her mother hadn’t held Ofelia like this since she had learned she was pregnant. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m giving you a surprise.”The magical sequences in the film are often awe-inspiring, but have an unsettling and uncanny quality to them as well. For instance, when Ofelia must go into the tree to retrieve the golden key from the toad's belly, she must climb through mud which is teeming with beetles and insects. Furthermore, when she feeds the magic stones to the toad, its stomach erupts from its mouth in a terrifying and viscerally unsettling display. The fairy tale elements of Pan's Labyrinthhave a rather disturbing quality; they are not the charming images of Walt Disney, but the eruptive and unsettling images of more classical mythology and fables. Meanwhile, in the non-fantastical world, Vidal and his soldiers capture some rebels. In the process of keeping the rebels captives, Vidal realizes that Dr. Ferreiro is helping the rebels, and kills him. Carmen and Vidal find the mandrake root under the bed and dismiss it as fanciful child's play. When Carmen throws the root in the fire, she gives birth and dies in the process.