Pan's Labyrinth: In the world of a little girl’s imagination

Imagination is one of the greatest gift human beings ever received. It is through imagination that we dare to dream, to create ideas that did not exist before, to think beyond ourselves and actually make things happen. Imagination can also be a brilliant defence mechanism or a way of escaping from our mundane lives when it becomes too much for us to handle. Especially for children, imagination is a great boon of keeping yourself entertained and possibly having an alternate world to go to when the difficulties of the current one seem overwhelming.

Ofelia is a young girl living with her pregnant mother in the fascist Spain of 1944. Her mother has remarried a tyrannical army officer and Ofelia must accompany her mother to her stepfather’s post in the middle of the forest where Ofelia’s mother will give birth to his son. Ofelia was always obsessed with fairy tales and when she comes across a fairy at the encampment, Ofelia is ever willing to follow her into the forest and through a labyrinth. After reaching the centre of the maze, she meets an old faun who tells her that she is the lost princess of a faraway land who has escaped into the human world and must complete three tasks to prove her royalty and return to her father, the king. Ofelia agrees to complete the tasks unaware of her mother’s troubled pregnancy and the impending war between the army commanded by her ruthless stepfather and the rebels who oppose him.

Pan’s Labyrinth was directed by Guillermo del Toro and released in the year 2006. Crafted with a style that brings about a balance between the real and the imagined, this drama-fantasy film has plenty of positive points and a livid script which can be quite confusing. The film lies in a grey patch between the realistic human world with the ongoing Second World War and the imagined world of the protagonist, Ofelia. Because of the dates and actual human timeline added to the plot, it becomes difficult to figure out if the magic and fairy tales told in the story are meant to be real or imagined by the protagonist. At the same time, with the magical events in the film that cannot be explained by rational thinking the audience can’t help but believe that the magical events are actually meant to be real and not just a figment of Ofelia’s imagination; an example of this would be Ofelia escaping from a locked room using a magic chalk given to her by the faun.

The film’s plot was intended by the director to be up to the explanation of the audience. By that definition, it gives the viewer plenty of opportunity to use their own imagination and rational thinking to decide their own understanding of the film.