Pan’s Labyrinth 9781844576418, 9781838713577, 9781844577453

Table of contents :
Cover
Series Page
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Horror(s) of War
2 Vidal and Amnesia
3 Ofelia and Memory
4 The End …
Coda: Phone Interview with Guillermo del Toro
Notes
Credits
Bibliography

Citation preview

BFI Film Classics The BFI Film Classics is a series of books that introduces, interprets and celebrates landmarks of world cinema. Each volume offers an argument for the film’s ‘classic’ status, together with discussion of its production and reception history, its place within a genre or national cinema, an account of its technical and aesthetic importance and, in many cases, the author’s personal response to the film. For a full list of titles available in the series, please visit our website: www.bloomsbury.com/bfi. ‘Magnificently concentrated examples of flowing freeform critical poetry.’ Uncut ‘A formidable body of work collectively generating some fascinating insights into the evolution of cinema.’ Times Higher Education Supplement ‘The series is a landmark in film criticism.’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video ‘Possibly the most bountiful book series in the history of film criticism.’ Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Comment

Editorial Advisory Board Geoff Andrew, British Film Institute Edward Buscombe William Germano, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Lalitha Gopalan, University of Texas at Austin Lee Grieveson, University College London Nick James, Editor, Sight & Sound

Laura Mulvey, Birkbeck College, University of London Alastair Phillips, University of Warwick Dana Polan, New York University B. Ruby Rich, University of California, Santa Cruz Amy Villarejo, Cornell University

I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned.1 (Arthur Machen)

Pan’s Labyrinth Mar Diestro-Dópido

THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain by Palgrave in 2013 Reprinted by Bloomsbury in 2018 on behalf of the British Film Institute 21 Stephen Street, London W1T 1LN www.bfi.org.uk

The BFI is the lead organisation for film in the UK and the distributor of Lottery funds for film. Our mission is to ensure that film is central to our cultural life, in particular by supporting and nurturing the next generation of filmmakers and audiences. We serve a public role which covers the cultural, creative and economic aspects of film in the UK. Copyright © Mar Diestro-Dópido, 2013 Mar Diestro-Dópido has asserted his/her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. 6 constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Santiago Caruso Text design: ketchup/SE14 Images from Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006), © Estudios Picasso/Tequila Gang/Esperanto Filmoj; The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973), Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográficas; Cronos (Guillermo del Toro, 1992), © Iguana Producciones; The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001), El Deseo/Tequila Gang/Sogepaq/Canal+ España; Vacas (Julio Medem, 1992), © Sogetel; ‘Los fusilamientos del 3 de mayo’/‘The Shootings of May Third’ (Francisco Goya, 1808); La Caza (Carlos Saura, 1966), Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográficas; Ana y los lobos (Carlos Saura, 1972), Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográficas; Cría cuervos (Carlos Saura, 1975), © Elías Querejeta; ‘Saturno devorando a un hijo’/‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ (Francisco Goya, 1819–23).

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN:

PB: ePDF:

978-1-8445-7641-8 978-1-8445-7745-3

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Contents Acknowledgments

6

Introduction

7

1 The Horror(s) of War

25

2 Vidal and Amnesia

40

3 Ofelia and Memory

54

4 The End …

72

Coda: Phone Interview with Guillermo del Toro

79

Notes

87

Credits

92

Bibliography

101

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Acknowledgments I’d like to thank the following for all their invaluable help: The BFI Publishing/Palgrave Macmillan team – the advisory panel and the readers, Rebecca Barden, Jenna Steventon and, in particular, Sophia Contento for her help with the images. Guillermo del Toro for making himself available, and for making a film that still moves me every single time I see it. My colleagues at Sight & Sound for their genuine engagement and support right from day one. A delayed gracias to LuisJa for all those shared teenage sessions listening to Radio 3’s horror classics. A huge thank you to Professor Maria Delgado, for her unremitting encouragement. And above all to Kieron Corless and the fluffy compañera, for always being there … This book is dedicated to my parents and my sister Olga. My parents because they went through it all always looking forward; but also for turning a blind eye whenever my sister and I sneaked behind their armchairs to watch películas de miedo at night … And to the forthcoming Nerea, who was conceived at the book’s inception and who is due to make her appearance on its publication.

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Introduction The real and the imagined The opening sequence in Mexican director Guillermo del Toro’s universally acclaimed 2006 cult feature, El laberinto del fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth2 (henceforth referred to as GdT and Pan respectively), is a cunning foretaste of the commingling of real and fantasy worlds that will characterise the film. Accompanied by the tune of the lullaby that will haunt the film throughout, an intertitle tells us that the story is set in Spain in 1944, five years after the end of the Civil War, during the so-called Peace Years. A few Republican insurgents – known in Spain as the maquis – remain hidden in woods, still trying to fight back against the forcibly established fascist government. We see thirteenyear-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) lying on the floor drawing her last breath, but both the sound and the blood streaming from her nose are going backwards, indicating that this tale will not follow the normal rules of time or reality. The camera then zooms into her eye, revealing what she will remember as her true identity and the world she truly belongs to; the Underworld Realm, a place, it transpires, she has constructed for herself. A male voiceover intones the fairytale staple ‘A long, long time ago’ and introduces Princess Moanna, who, lured by the upper world, escaped from the Underworld Realm and was blinded by the sunlight, causing her to forget who she really was. It is no coincidence that the fairytale is introduced verbally, whereas the actual historical setting is introduced via a text written on the screen. From the start, textual history is imprinted on the ancient oral tradition of folklore, myths and fairytales, presented in equal terms on the basis that, like two sides of the same coin, they constitute the two halves of one character’s psyche, in this case Ofelia’s. Yet oral tradition is superior to text in the permanence that it acquires through its flexibility and capacity to transform, a prerequisite for survival in Pan.

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For this is as much Princess Moanna’s story as it is Ofelia’s. A pan of some ruins ensues, and we are told that, although the princess died in the upper world after suffering from ‘cold, sickness and pain’, her spirit lived on; for that reason, her father, the king (Federico Luppi), opened portals around the world to enable her to find her way back and recover her immortality. It is at this point that the princess and Ofelia are fused visually; when the narrator tells us that the spirit of Princess Moanna lives on, the camera cuts to the inside of the car in which Ofelia is travelling with her mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) to the military outpost of Carmen’s new husband, the vicious Captain Vidal (Sergi López), a mill from where he and his men are hunting the remaining maquis. At the end of the film, the fairytale triumphs, as ultimately Princess Moanna prevails in both worlds. Even though she recovers her memory and is able to get back to the Underworld Realm, her presence in the mortal world has left a series of signs, which are only visible ‘to those who know where to look’. For everything in Pan depends on the principle that seeing is believing – or, in GdT’s words, ‘the eyes are the beginning of it all’3 – his most recent production company, established in 2011, is called Mirada, which GdT translates on its website as ‘a point of view, a possibility to look into things differently’.4 It is this kind of mirada,

Carmen and Ofelia in the car

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a kaleidoscopic way of looking at GdT’s Pan, that this book is also attempting. Just as there are two realities present in Pan, there are two sides to GdT’s film-making. On the one hand there is Hollywood studio fare such as Mimic (1997), a traumatic experience with Miramax; Blade II (2002), a Grand Guignol sequel which turned out to be more popular than the original; and Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II (2008), both heralded as arguably the best comic-book adaptations ever.5 These films alternate with what GdT refers to as his ‘personal’ projects: Cronos (1993), and the first two instalments of what should ultimately be a trilogy on the Civil War: El espinazo del diablo/ The Devil’s Backbone (2001), the film GdT considers his most autobiographical, and which established him as an international auteur; and Pan, which GdT describes as a sister film, a companion piece to Devil. The third instalment’s provisional title is 3993. In many ways Pan is a culmination, corralling all of GdT’s thematic preoccupations: family, children, horror, violence, the solitary hero/heroine and, above all, ‘the permeability of the membrane between reality and fantasy’.6 The latter trait, together with the melodrama and violence, GdT regards as the most Mexican element not only in Pan but also throughout his oeuvre. Written, Car arriving at the mill

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directed and produced by GdT, Pan’s inception came about in 2003 when the director annotated some ideas and drawings, in a by-now famous leatherbound notebook that he has been religiously carrying around since 1982. Yet the original synopsis for the film differed greatly from the version we now know. Set during the Spanish Civil War, initially the plot focused on the fascist captain and his pregnant wife, who, dissatisfied in her marriage, fell in love with the world opened up to her by a Faun she met at a nearby labyrinth. When she gave birth the Faun told her that, in order to enter his world, she had to kill the baby, which she duly did. But it transpires she was betrayed by both worlds and, instead of passing through to the Faun’s universe, she remained locked in the centre of the labyrinth.7 However, once GdT started writing the story, he soon realised it would be more interesting to see this world through the eyes of a pre-pubescent girl instead. He explains, I always start with a long period of research – fiction, non-fiction, travelling, etc., so I started making notes on fairytales, and when I went back and read books on myth, fairytale lore and analysis, it seemed much more interesting to base the story on a girl who’s about to become a woman – a staple in fairytales. Everybody around her is telling her how she should behave. Her mother is saying, ‘You have to leave all that behind, the world is a horrible, disappointing place, you have to believe me and you have to obey your father.’ And I thought, this is the last moment when, as a kid, your spirit is still free, and if you give up that freedom then you become just another boring adult. And even more so when your father is a fascist. Because for a fascist, a central virtue is obedience, and I thought the young girl would be a more interesting figure of disobedience than the adult – she has even fewer social tools and so is able to resist from a genuine spiritual place.8

As such, Ofelia will confront her stepfather’s cruelty, and that of the times, through her imagination and the fairytales she loves – a world as real to her as the iron grip of Franco’s fascist Spain is to everyone

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else. In the forest near the family’s home, she meets the Faun (Doug Jones), the guardian of an ancient stone labyrinth, who tells her she is the long-lost Princess Moanna. In order to return to her kingdom, and regain her immortality, she will have to undertake three dangerous tasks that will mean confronting the Giant Toad and the child-eating Pale Man (Doug Jones, whose referent in the real world is Vidal) – these tasks will be revealed in the blank pages of the Book of Crossroads with which the Faun entrusts her. The Giant Toad; the Pale Man

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Mirroring Ofelia’s duality, each character in Pan either lives a divided reality or constructs their own version of reality, none more clearly so than Captain Vidal, whose own twisted sensibility is based on fascist ideologies of unity and cleanliness, as fictional in their own way as the world Ofelia imagines. Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) is divided between the world she inhabits during the day as Vidal’s housekeeper, and her own involvement with the maquis hidden in the woods, led by her brother Pedro (Roger Casamajor). Dr Ferreiro (Álex Angulo) works for Vidal but clandestinely passes medicines to the maquis. Finally, Ofelia’s mother Carmen is perfectly aware of the cruelty of her new husband (it is hinted that he killed her first husband) but resigns herself to subjugation by him; when Ofelia asks her why she had to remarry, her answer is a defeated, ‘When you are older, you’ll understand that it hasn’t been easy for me either.’ GdT has acknowledged many times that the philosophy that has had the most influence on his work is the Jungian, almost psycho-magical conception of the world. I believe we see the world, and create the world we live in, in a specific sphere of consciousness. You’re attuned to a certain wave, and my wave is in all the movies I make.9

The aforementioned duality corresponds to Jung’s concept of the Shadow as comprised of the hidden aspects of the self, and the myths drawn upon in Pan could also be read as a reflection of Jungian archetypes; their symbols and interpretations may vary in form from culture to culture, but are essentially the same in their core content – hence their capacity for cross-cultural transmission, a shared characteristic with fairytales. As such, some of the archetypes Jung identifies10 can also be recognised in Pan. Ofelia is the Child, or the true self in its purest form, symbolising rebirth and salvation. The Faun could be the figure of the Wise Old Man (the collective unconscious), an authority figure who dispenses guidance and wisdom, but can also be the more unreliable Trickster; and Mercedes,

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Carmen, Dr Ferreiro and, to some extent, the Faun, all ring variations (both negative and positive) on the Great Mother, the nurturer. These universal archetypes are engaged to symbolise basic notions about nature and history, the two pillars on which Pan is built. Pan’s impact Pan’s unprecedented international success with both critics and public alike, and not least the sizeable cohort of fantastic and cultcinema enthusiasts for whom the film clearly touched a nerve, seems even more astonishing bearing in mind it is a non-English-language, subtitled film which, although at first glance might pass for a children’s film, in fact has an adult ‘R’ rating, mainly for graphic violence. In terms of box office, Pan is the fourth highest foreign-title grosser and the most successful Spanish-language film of all time in the US;11 it is cited in the Guinness World Records as the most commercially successful Mexican film ever;12 and it has taken $83.2 million (£52.4 million) worldwide and $37.6 million (£23.6 million) at the US box office.13 The film’s success is also reflected in a total of seventy-six awards, including three Oscars, nine Mexican Ariels and seven Spanish Goyas. It’s even being adapted into a musical.14 It is interesting to speculate why Pan has enjoyed such colossal success. I would argue that, similarly to David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001) – a comparison I’ll explore in detail later – the main question addressed in both films is The Matrix-like one of which is more real, the reality we see, or the reality we experience in our minds? This not only situates Pan in relation to Surrealism and the representation of the subconscious, but also to the perception of life as a dream, an ancient precept expressed in various religions and systems of thought.15 Perhaps one of the most influential works on this subject is Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s 1635 philosophical drama La vida es sueño/Life Is a Dream, a masterpiece of baroque theatre, which like Pan explores the notion of free will and also constructs its narrative on dualities such as freedom/destiny,

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civilisation/barbarism and human/beast. In addition, by showing the subconscious as it erupts into, and becomes indistinguishable from, reality, Pan also seems to speak profoundly to our times, endlessly mediated and seamlessly shifting from the real, to the virtual world of the internet, to enhanced realities such as 3D and CGI. In this context, Ofelia’s projection of her own version of reality is perhaps more relevant than ever. It’s difficult to believe in light of its worldwide success, but Pan almost didn’t make it to the screen. A Spanish-Mexican coproduction calculated as 78 per cent Spanish, 22 per cent Mexican according to the Spanish Ministry of Culture,16 its $15 million budget was put together by GdT’s own Tequila Gang, Alfonso Cuarón’s Esperanto Filmoj, and backed up by Spanish Picasso Studios (an arm of TV channel Tele5 which, as Paul Julian Smith notes, was the most successful audiovisual producer in Spain at the time).17 The financing fell through several times, and the project was rejected by every single major and independent in the US, with the exception of Bob Berney at Picturehouse. GdT has declared that, ‘the production and the shooting of Pan was very, very hard, a very difficult experience. After Mimic, Pan was the toughest shoot I’ve ever had.’18 Much of Pan’s pleasure lies in its ambiguity and openness to multiple interpretations, which, like the Book of Crossroads that the Faun gives Ofelia, open up an exciting interpretive space for viewers to write the film anew, as evidenced by the varied and engaged literature about it online. Pan emphasises plurality both formally and in its content; the latter by stripping the genre conventions of the fairytale, rite of passage and historical narrative – roughly the main three genres in the film – down to their basic elements, and blending them with references to art, comics, novels, literature, and thus opening up new meanings. Literature in particular has been a massive influence on GdT, not least Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, but also, as he points out, ‘the cruelty of Horacio Quiroga, and the fascination that Borges has with myth, parable and fable’.19

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The constant presence of horror (either in the real violence of Vidal, or the monsters that mirror him in the imagined world) recall other films which deal with a young girl’s experience of terror; most obviously coming-of-age classic tales such as Alice in Wonderland (various dates), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984) and Matthew Bright’s Freeway (1996), the last two reworkings of the Red Riding Hood story20 (in Pan the equation is wolf/Vidal and woodsmen/maquis), and the more mythological Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986), in which a teenager has to save her baby half-brother from the hands of a Goblin King (played by David Bowie) in the centre of a labyrinth. Physically, Ofelia’s black hair, white skin and red lips recall both Snow White and the young girl protagonist of Cronos; the latter could easily be Ofelia as an eight-year-old. Ofelia’s natural intensity brings to mind Ana Torrent in both El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and Cría cuervos/Raise Ravens (1976), although the more obvious connections are to British artist Arthur Rackham’s fairytale art, a nod to Sir John Tenniel’s Victorian illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice (one difference being that Ofelia’s pinafore dress is green, like the in-between world of the labyrinth and the woods, Ana Torrent in El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive, offering food to the ‘monster’

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suggesting primeval depth and knowledge of nature), and to Oz’s Dorothy, in the red shoes Ofelia sports at the end of the film, signalling that she’s home. A long, long time ago … Born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, on 9 October 1964, GdT was raised mainly by his grandmother, a devout Catholic who literally exorcised him with holy water twice when he was growing up.21 In Ofelia wearing the pinafore dress her mother has made for her; Ofelia’s red shoes

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similar fashion to the main child character in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (1984), GdT started filming in Super8 with his father’s camera, principally battles among his toys, figurines from Planet of the Apes (1974) and Universal Studios.22 He soon developed a passion for horror, especially Mario Bava, George A. Romero and the classic Hammer films of the 1960s, which fed a burgeoning imagination that marked him out as a true maverick. After attending a Jesuit boys’ school – like one of his heroes Luis Buñuel – he studied screenwriting with Mexican director Jaime Humberto Hermosillo at the University of Guadalajara, with whom GdT worked on his first professional film project, as producer of Hermosillo’s romantic comedy, Doña Herlinda y su hijo/Doña Herlinda and Her Son (1985), starring GDT’s mother. GdT soon followed suit and similarly recruited his mother to play the main roles in some of his short films shot in 16mm and 35mm, such as Doña Lupe (1985)23 and Geometría (1987). In the latter, as he explains, she suffered a brutal death at the hands of a zombie who tore her eye out and bit her neck … . Before that she acted in an even more bizarre short called Matilde. It was about a woman who has a psycho-sexual obsession with a crack in the wall of her bedroom, out of which emerges a gigantic blind foetus which strangles her.24

Both these early films also illustrate GdT’s passion for special effects and make-up design, which led him to the US to study with the legendary Dick Smith – he of The Exorcist (1973), Altered States (1980), Scanners (1981) and The Hunger (1983) fame. He started his own production company Necropia in 1986, which he ran for about ten years, until he was able to make his directorial debut with Cronos in 1993. An imaginative spin on the vampire myth, it won him seven Silver Ariel Awards in Mexico, including Best Direction, Best Screenplay and Best First Work, and was also awarded at Cannes. Cronos has become a cult film thanks to its brilliant

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melding of fantastic genres (horror, fairytale, vampire story), which are given a unique political slant, one of GdT’s most recognisable trademarks. Despite its international success, Cronos did not help GdT get another film underway in Mexico. In fact, he soon left his home country because of a real-life drama in which his father was abducted for seventy-two days, his kidnappers demanding a ransom for his release because, as GdT explains, they laboured under ‘the regrettable misapprehension that we, film directors, get a large cut of a film’s profits, which is unfortunately not true’.25 Currently settled in Los Angeles, he has lived in Madrid (where he made Devil and Pan), Budapest (where he made Hellboy) and New Zealand (where he worked for two years on the pre-production of The Hobbit [2012–]). He is always accompanied by his wife and two daughters, an itinerant life which has prompted GdT to describe them as a ‘circus family’.26 As well as being a novelist, scriptwriter and director, GdT is also a highly regarded producer, particularly with respect to his involvement in the resurgence of Spanish horror during the last decade; he produced the massively successful The Orphanage (2007) and Julia’s Eyes (2010), as well as other projects in Mexico, Argentina and the US. Deep into the hole GdT’s work is full of instantly recognisable images – the vampire Jesús Gris (Ron Perlman) licking blood off the floor and peeling his skin off in Cronos, the ghost of a dead child in Devil, the genuinely disturbing Pale Man in Pan. These are often drawn from classic mythology, literature, art, popular culture and folklore, and contrast with the horror of a specific historical reality; that skilfully achieved juxtaposition and tension make the images simultaneously repulsive and alluring. Whenever possible, special effects are created with oldschool prosthetics rather than digital technology. Pan is no exception. As such, the Underworld Realm filmed is a real miniature version made out of plaster, and every bit of the set was constructed the way

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Cronos: Jesús Gris/Vampire licking the blood from the floor in a public toilet; the ghost of the dead kid in El espinazo del diablo/The Devil’s Backbone; the miniature set for the Underworld Realm

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GdT envisioned it from scratch; the camera was able to travel through a physical reality, granting the director greater control. This process is even more important with the creatures, human or otherwise. The detailed, meticulous work that went into creating both the Pale Man and the Faun, for example, enables actor Doug Jones to breathe vivid life into them. The Faun’s head; the entrance to the labyrinth with Faun’s fallopian-shaped head

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GdT has stated many times that Pan, far from being the story of a girl dying, is instead the story of a girl who gives birth to herself as she wants to be. For this reason, Pan’s visual schema is carefully coded. Ofelia’s imagined world, shot in fluent camera takes, is depicted in warm, uterine colours – ochre, red, crimson – and curvilinear shapes, and furnished with paintings, mosaics, chequered floors – a textured, sensually inviting, organic world. Allusions to female reproductive organs feature in practically every take, most obviously with the actual head of the Faun, its shape emulating that of a goat with horns, but also the female fallopian tubes and ovaries. Such uterine symbolism is also to be found at the head of the bed in Carmen’s room, on top of the arch that accesses the labyrinth and, most clearly, at the entrance to the fig tree that – Alice in Wonderland-style – leads Ofelia to the Giant Toad she has to kill as her first task, its shape like that of an open vagina (at the Cannes debut, on seeing one of the promotional One of the film’s promotional posters

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posters featuring the image, one observer commented that the film should have been called A Womb with a View).27 With this latter image, GdT’s assertion that Ofelia is reborn when entering the labyrinth is given literal meaning. Entering the womb-shaped tree marks the beginning of Ofelia’s initiation, her return to her own natural origins, hence linking the womb to the centre of the labyrinth (its entrance presided over by the fallopian head of the Faun), traditionally a privileged space present in many ancient cults symbolising the individual’s search for the true self. The dehumanised reality created by the fascists is such that, for GdT, the only option is a return to ancient myths and primal emotions and fears, as with the origins of Romanticism and the Gothic. He writes, In the eighteenth century, Romanticism – and with it, the Gothic tale – surged as a reaction against the suffocating dogmas of enlightenment. Empiricism weighed heavily upon our souls so that, as the age of reason went to sleep, it produced monsters. Reason and science were enthroned, then the Gothic Romance exploded full of emotion and thrills. ‘The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain’, said Lord Byron, enunciating a basic Romantic idea and, perhaps, hoping that goblins, ghosts and demons provided some necessary release for a puritanical society.28 The Faun coming out of the darkness

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In contrast to Ofelia’s world, the reality of this microcosm of a Spain under the fascist yoke is predominantly blue and grey, represented in angular, phallic lines and still camera takes, with bare walls and decoration reduced to a minimum. The middle world of the labyrinth in which Ofelia meets the Faun is a natural green, like her own clothes and the forest that shelters the maquis. In the most threatening moments in both the real world and in the labyrinth, focused light surrounded by shadow nods to baroque tenebrism, and such key figures as Caravaggio, Francisco Ribalta and Rembrandt, as well as the Spanish School, headed up by Zurbarán and Ribera; this chiaroscuro effect makes the figures seem as if they were generated by the darkness itself. Rounding out Pan’s rich, carefully orchestrated sensorial experience is a complex sound design: Most of the time I am the voice of the creatures in my movies. I get very involved in the sound design and certainly the sound mix. I am obsessed with it, because sound is literally half of the film. And sound is invisible, but it is the one element of film that actually physically touches the audience; the waves touch the flesh of the audience. I try to design sound elements; for example, the house has a voice; then, the sounds of the forest with the creaks of the wood create not only a sensation, but also a rhyme – the creaking of the woods and the creaking of the house – so you can use sound expressively and as part of the way you help the audience find the melody of the film, the tune, so to speak. Sound is music without musical instruments, so I try to compose with sound. I try to make images and sound work in a symphonic way.29

From the menacing squeak of Vidal’s leather boots and gloves, to the constant creaking of the mill’s walls and the woods – which Ofelia interprets as proof of the magical world – to the sound of machines in Cronos and the water noises announcing the ghost in Devil – GdT’s soundscapes help conjure an immersive three-dimensionality. This book too aims to immerse itself fully in the world that GdT has so minutely orchestrated, by providing a nuanced

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understanding of the film’s cultural and historical contexts, and by exploring its groundbreaking interrelation of mythology and fascist politics with reference not only to the specificities of post-Civil War Spain, but also to a broader historical perspective. What it won’t do is attempt to identify and interpret every single reference in the film, and it certainly doesn’t lay claim to being a definitive reading. For this would be futile, as Pan is defined by an uncontainable plurality that expands on contact with the viewer; or in GdT’s own words, ‘Pan is a game of interpretation where the reward for repeated viewings is not the addition, but the multiplication of meanings.’30

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1 The Horror(s) of War The Spanish War(s) Although the triangle formed by Ofelia, Vidal and the maquis constitutes the indisputable base for conflict in Pan, war itself is the unnamed puppeteer in the film, as it conditions every character’s actions and reactions. Even though the Civil War had in theory ended in 1939, the embers were still not completely extinguished five years into the so-called Peace Years, the period in which Pan is set. Then as now, the war haunts the collective memory of Spain like the ghost that Dr Casares defines in Devil, What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.31

Described by historian Stephen Schwartz as ‘the twentieth century’s most poignant and passionate historical conflict’,32 the Spanish Civil War took place between 1936 and 1939. Its trigger was the uprising of a section of the army against the democratically elected Second Spanish Republic (1931–9). It concluded with the victory of the rebels led by General Francisco Franco, who established a thirty-six-year-long dictatorship, with the help initially of North African troops, and later of Hitler and Mussolini.33 Although figures are still disputed, the consequences of this extremely bloody fratricidal war include: 450,000 exiled, mainly to Argentina, Mexico, France and the USSR; 35,000 children evacuated; 500,000 killed during the war, to which number should be added those murdered during the ensuing dictatorship, and who died owing to hunger and illness, etc.34

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It is worth noting that the debates that had been escalating in the media about disinterring victims of the war, particularly since the election of the Socialist Party (PSOE) in 2004, culminated one year after the filming of Pan in the passing of the Law of Historical Memory by the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. This law overturned the previous Pact of Forgetting, otherwise known as the Pact of Silence – itself passed two years after Franco’s death in order to safeguard the peaceful transition to democracy, by preventing the past being used as a political weapon. As novelist Javier Cercas notes, that did not mean that people had forgotten; on the contrary, after Franco’s death there was an explosion of cultural artefacts offering revisionist takes on the conflict (novels, films, TV programmes), and it was a subject of much discussion. Yet many preferred silence, until this was finally banished by the Law of Historical Memory, legalising the exhumation of bodies from unmarked mass graves of those killed in the struggle against the ‘Victorious’ during and after the conflict, resurrecting their memory in extensive media coverage and public debate. From around 2000 onwards, Spanish horror films in particular refer heavily to this unearthing of the undead past which haunts the collective imaginary, including Los Otros/The Others (2001), The Orphanage, Blancanieves/Snowwhite (2012), GdT’s own Devil’s Backbone and even Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver (2006). In Pan the memory of those erased by Francoist retellings of history is reawakened in the shape of the insurgents – the ‘creatures’ hidden in the forest – who carry on fighting against the newly imposed dictatorship. The region recreated in Pan is supposed to be in the north of Spain, more precisely Galicia, as evidenced by the accents of Mercedes and the women working in the kitchen.35 Galicia was not only Franco’s birthplace but is also one of the earliest inhabited regions of Spain. The stone carvings scattered about its landscape date back to the Paleolithic era, and in the Spanish imaginary, superstition and magic still very much abound in its thick forests. As well as being near the border with France (Galicia actually borders with Portugal, but the latter was also in

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the throes of a dictatorship at this point), this dense, foggy and mountainous area was strategically important for the maquis, since it is where the first Spanish guerrilla movement with a military staff committee was established in 1942,36 leading to the creation of the Federation of Guerrillas from Galicia-León, which served as a model to other groups throughout the country. The regime’s response was to send Civil Guards (i.e. Franco’s rural police force) and even army personnel (such as Captain Vidal) to combat these guerrillas. Nevertheless, the maquis in the forests resisted the regime for some time after the Civil War and, although none remained by 1952, myths and legends about them persisted for decades.37 GdT’s film can thus be situated within a larger Spanish tradition that regards the forests of the north of Spain as spaces inhabited by ‘hidden’ creatures, in cult films such as José Luis Cuerda’s El Bosque Animado/The Living Forest (1987, also set just after the war) or, closer to Pan in its focus on memory and identity, Julio Médem’s Vacas/Cows (1992), in which the ancient history of the Basque forests is the natural link between two key wars in Spanish history: the Carlist War and the Civil War, witnessed through the eyes of a cow. The remnants of the insurgents’ ‘underworld kingdom’ are present in the still visible trenches scattered around the Spanish landscape, their ghosts reawakened as their bodies are exhumed. The maquis in the forest

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Despite being set in Galicia, Pan was actually filmed in the Natural Park of Aguas Vertientes y de la Garganta, El Espinar, Segovia, which is part of the Sierra del Guadarrama in central Spain (covering an area of Castilla and Madrid), a mountain range that extends for eighty kilometres. The history of this area of Spain can be traced back to the Roman Empire, and its position as natural barrier means many armed conflicts in the peninsula have Vacas/Cows

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taken place here, from the battles between Christians and Muslims, to the War of Independence with France, 1808–14, depicted by Goya in his famous painting ‘Los fusilamientos del 3 de mayo’/‘The Shootings of May Third’ (1808). More relevant for our purposes is the fact that, despite being the site of massive resistance to Francoist troops during the war,38 it is also home to the biggest extant monument to fascist Spain, El Valle de los Caídos, or Valley of the Fallen, built to commemorate those who perished on the Nationalist side as well as to house Franco’s tomb. Many key films have been shot in this area, including two by Carlos Saura: his debut feature, La caza/The Hunt (1966), a powerful allegory about the Civil War, and Ana y los lobos/Ana and the Wolves (1973), a metaphorical exploration of Spain’s post-war isolation and ideological and sexual repression. Pan’s depiction of fascist Spain falls firmly within this tradition of films dealing metaphorically with the war and its aftermath, and, most importantly, feeds into important current historical debates around collective memory and the manipulation of the past. Both Pan and Devil are testament to the powerful grip the Civil War has exerted not just on a Spanish but on an international cinema audience. Schwartz explains why.

Goya’s ‘Los fusilamientos del 3 de mayo’/‘The Shootings of May Third’ (1808)

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The Spanish civil war is often described as ‘the last idealists’ war’, when it would be better called the last authentic social revolution. Because of the deep emotion, symbolism, myths, parables, and allegories the war evoked and created, it became the first ‘proto-cinematic war’, in which dramatic images generated in newspapers, newsreels, and the work of individual photographers and poster artists were clearly destined to become the raw material for a distinctive cinematic genre.39

The multiplicity of films and TV on the subject in Spain – comedies, documentaries, sitcoms, animation – attempt on the whole to counter the one-sided history, permeated by myth, which Franco’s intelligentsia constructed of Spain. Internationally, the range of titles about the conflict is also vast: Hollywood classics such as For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and The Fallen Sparrow (1943); films dealing with the war’s aftermath and exile such as Behold a Pale Horse (1964) and La Guerre est finie/The War Is Over (1966, written by Spanish ex-Communist Jorge Semprun); films focusing on collaboration between Francoism and Nazism such as The Angel Wore Red (1960); and British director Ken Loach’s own idealised version of the conflict Land and Freedom (1995). Schwartz sees these foreign perspectives on the war, their tendency to approach it through Anglo-American historiography, as problematic: La Caza/The Hunt; promotional poster for Ana y los lobos/Ana and the Wolves

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[there was] a gap between the war as experienced or observed by foreigners, who saw in it mainly a contest between external fascist and democratic powers, and as lived by the Spanish peoples themselves, who viewed it as a profound social transformation. This became a repetitive pattern of twentieth century intellectual dissonance.40

It’s a flaw he finds particularly problematic in Land and Freedom, which he considers to be ‘no less a fantasy, outside Spanish reality, than Pan’s Labyrinth – but the latter at least embodies a Hispanic consciousness absent from Loach’s work’.41 In fact, Pan falls somewhere between these two poles; the film represents GdT’s (fictional and foreign) idea of the war and its aftermath, but the problem Schwartz identifies is somewhat mitigated by the profound, longstanding historical connections between Mexico (and Latin America at large) and Spain. The Mexican connection GdT’s own interest in the conflict partly centres on the exiles who fled Spain because of the war. Almost half a million people escaped to France – and a smaller number to the north of Africa – during the first stages of the war, owing to their proximity, but the abysmal conditions in the French refugee camps (where many died of starvation and sickness)42 prompted a great number to return to Spain, or repatriate elsewhere.43 Mexico welcomed around 15 per cent of the overall total exiles from Spain during and immediately after the war.44 The Mexican Revolution (1910–20) was so similar to the reform plans of the Second Spanish Republic, that the dramaturge Ramón María del Valle-Inclán famously declared ‘Spain is not here, it’s in America. Mexico is where the purest essence of Spain resides.’45 Unsurprisingly, a significant number of Spanish Republican politicians joined this migration to Mexico, whose president, Lázaro Cárdenas, was a staunch supporter of the Republican cause. This made integration into Mexican society relatively straightforward,46 reversing a transatlantic movement that had taken place before the

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war, when Mexican intellectuals had spent time in Spain during the Republic.47 Many of the exiles who fled to Mexico were also intellectuals who had been heavily involved in Spain’s Second Republic. Exiled politician Máximo Múñoz breaks them down as follows: Six university presidents; 45 university professors of philosophy, humanities and history; 36 natural scientists and physicists; 55 law professors; 70 of medicine; 12 from pharmacy; 151 institute professors and teachers, a multitude of writers, poets, sculptors, actors, professional soldiers, illustrious marine engineers, architects … .48

For a young GdT growing up in Mexico the cultural impact of this influx was unavoidable, as his interest in the Spanish Civil War testifies: When I was a young man, Mexican art and particularly cinema were greatly influenced by emigrants, refugees from the Spanish Civil War. There were directors, writers, actors, theatre producers, theatre directors from Spain. They were all constantly at the forefront of the movies I was watching, and I became friends with one of them, Emilio García Riera, who was a film historian in Mexico and who used to tell me stories about his mother coming to Mexico; she was a Republican teacher. He would tell me how in his opinion the world had accepted Franco, to the point where back then he was just a joke on Saturday Night Live, a punchline for Chevy Chase. He thought it was really sad, and that it was the last just war of the 20th century. In my opinion it’s difficult to say if a war is just, because in all wars, if you dig deep enough, atrocities abound on both sides.49

The most significant of these exiles in terms of cinema was Spanish Surrealist director Luis Buñuel, who made a parallel career in Mexico, and whose influence on his work GdT puts on a par with that of Hitchcock and the painter Francisco de Goya.50 ‘I remember when and where I first saw every Buñuel film.’51 GdT’s description of

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Buñuel’s Mexican film Nazarín (1959), in which ‘he shows you that the government is moronic, the police are useless, the army is useless, and the church equally useless’,52 could also be applied to his own take on those institutions throughout his work, especially in Pan. In particular the Catholic Church is shown to be as hypocritical and abusive as fascism. One of the guests at the lavish dinner party that Vidal has organised for local dignitaries is the village priest. When one of the other guests raises concerns about the captain’s decision to restrict food rations (so the villagers do not have any spare to send to the maquis), the priest loads his plate with another generous serving and sanctimoniously opines: ‘God has already saved their souls. What happens to their bodies hardly matters to Him.’ The indelible links that Franco’s regime cemented with the Catholic Church – together with its violent rejection of Communism – was arguably the reason why it ended up being accepted as a sort of ‘benign dictatorship’ in certain quarters internationally. Franco’s unique yoking of myth and religion to rewrite the history of the Victorious is expressed most powerfully in his definition of the war and the so-called cleansing of Spain that accompanied it as a crusade, casting himself as the medieval figure El Cid, a Castilian military leader and one of the original builders of the Spanish empire who Priest helping himself to another serving

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fought against the Moors. In Pan the figure of Vidal is further linked to the dictator by way of his father, whom we learn, served as a general in Morocco, from where Franco notoriously launched this ‘crusade’, marking the beginning of the Civil War. Religion features a good deal in GdT’s films. He is a selfprofessed lapsed Catholic, who has declared that he sensed God’s absence most strongly in the morgue of a municipal Mexican hospital, where he came across a pile of discarded foetuses (the image of the unborn baby is a recurring figure in the film-maker’s work). In Pan, Catholic doctrine and beliefs are questioned throughout. In Christian iconography, for example, Satan is often reminiscent of the Faun. The Holy Trinity at the end of the film is comprised of two women and a man. One of the monsters that Ofelia has to face up to, the child-eating Pale Man, has eyes encrusted in the stigmata of his palms. At the latter’s table, Ofelia gives into temptation and eats two grapes, for which she is punished by being denied entry into her own version of paradise. Ofelia could be read as a Christ figure at the end, as she – albeit unknowingly – sacrifices herself for her newborn brother. Ultimately however, both religion and fascism are exposed as vehicles of authority and repression, since they both demand a certain degree of unquestioning obedience. Just prior to his execution by Trinity of thrones after Ofelia’s resurrection

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Vidal, Dr Ferreiro taunts him by saying: ‘To obey – just like that – for obedience’s sake … without questioning … . That’s something only people like you do.’ The war and the past Franco’s systematic destruction of the Republican regime inevitably bears echoes of Spain’s brutal subjugation of the ancient civilisations of the Americas in 1492, similarly undertaken in the name of the Catholic Church. The Conquistadors not only appropriated the material wealth of the indigenous peoples during the conquest of Latin America, but also their spiritual heritage. The result, as philosopher Alejandro Tomasini Bassols notes is that, although Mexico is one of the most Catholic countries in the world, religion is also markedly influenced by indigenous rites, in the same way that the Spanish spoken there is influenced by the indigenous languages. This is what Tomasini Bassols refers to as the ‘forced juxtaposition of the religions’,53 but it is also testament to the plurality of civilisations that constitute Mexican culture. In this sense, Pan’s narrative itself references an ancient past, through the layering of myths and preChristian symbols that throw into sharp relief the myopia of the fascist worldview. For instance, the fantasy world adopts circular shapes, most clearly in the design of the labyrinth but also in the three circular windows in Ofelia’s bathroom, borrowing from a Celtic tradition dear to GdT. ‘While most people link the Celtic with Ireland or the UK, it actually came through the north of Spain first’,54 the region where the film is ostensibly set. That circularity can also be seen in the film’s narrative structure, whose ending returns to the beginning as Ofelia dies (just like another cult film from the noughties, Richard Kelly’s 2001 debut feature Donnie Darko). It is through the juxtaposition of the heroic individualism and leader cult of the fascist order with certain ancient cultures, myths and beliefs that form part of our collective unconscious, the latter ordained by nature rather than prescribed by a given system (be it fascism, religion or capitalism), that GdT essentially transmutes the

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Ofelia reading the Book of Crossroads in the bathroom and the three circular windows; carved stones inside the labyrinth; circular pattern carved on the entrance to the labyrinth

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cruelty of Franco’s regime into a universal symbol for evil traversing national boundaries, much as (as Adriana J. Bergero rightly notes)55 the way Devil refers to the Argentine dictatorship and its disappeared through the figure of Dr Casares (as played by Argentine actor Federico Luppi; Casares was also the name of the Spanish Prime Minister (Santiago Casares Quiroga) when the Civil War broke out). More importantly, by referencing pre-capitalist myths, GdT not only calls to mind the Romantics’ return to nature in order to rediscover the roots of a society dehumanised by – in their case – the mechanisation of industrialisation, but also opens up a space where fascism can be equated with the current capitalist order. GdT’s longabiding critique of capitalism presents it as yet another means of repression, an illusion of freedom. This is the central idea of ‘The Antifascist Aesthetics of Pan’s Labyrinth’, an article by Kam Hei Tsuei, for whom the importance of Pan lies in the fact that del Toro’s aesthetic brings to the surface a startling absence in Hollywood film: the lack of movies that use ancient or pre-capitalist mythology to animate stories about modern capitalist social relations. In general, the Hollywood aesthetic does the opposite: it superimposes present-day capitalist social relations onto all history as if capitalism has no pre-history – as if it has always existed exactly the way it is today.56

GdT’s vision runs counter to classic Hollywood war films where the West’s fight against a pre-capitalist state of things (read a savage and dangerous ‘Other’) underpins an equation of capitalism with democracy and freedom. This vision of Pan is shared by scholar Allison Mackey, who sees the film as an allegorical exploration of the post-9/11 crisis in democracy through the lens of Franco’s Spain.57 Even greater claims are made by children’s literature scholar Jack Zipes, who believes it is to del Toro’s credit that his fairytale film, like his other films Cronos and Devil, ‘endeavours to deflate and pierce the spectacle of society’.58 Zipes also picks up on the power of GdT’s co-option of the fairytale, which enables him

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to see life as it is … he is concerned about how we use our eyes to attain clear vision and recognition. Paradoxically, it is the fairy tale – and in this case, the fairy-tale film – that offers a corrective and more ‘realistic’ vision of the world, in contrast to the diversionary and myopic manner in which many people see reality.59

Historians such as Paul Preston consider the Spanish Civil War to be the first act of World War II60 – for Cercas, ‘in the end, it is the same war’. Set in 1944, Pan directly references the imminent Allied invasion of Normandy when the maquis read about it in a newspaper, as well as in the children’s shoes piled up in a corner of the Pale Man’s dining room and the presence of International Brigades among the maquis – Dr Ferreiro has to amputate a Frenchman’s leg. Franco not only sent volunteers to fight with the German army in the Soviet Union from 1941–3, but Spain also functioned as a testing ground for German weapons. In Pan, the most notorious of the German attacks – the bombing of the village of Guernica in the Basque Country, whose atrocity is famously captured in Picasso’s 1937 painting – is recalled at the beginning of the film, as the camera pans over ruins. Those opposing the Franco regime hoped that once Germany and Italy were defeated, the Allies would turn Ruins reminiscent of Guernica

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their attention to Spain and help get rid of Franco, which of course never happened. In 1945, an exhausted Europe set its eyes on peace and economic recovery, and anyway shared a common arch-enemy with Franco, the looming spectre of Communism. Fascism in Spain was left to its own devices for another thirty-six years, and the dictator eventually died peacefully in his bed in 1975.

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2 Vidal and Amnesia One of Pan’s most striking and unusual traits is the juxtaposition of a fairytale with the raw cruelty and horror of fascism in postwar Spain, which is braided with other similarly structuring contrasts: between reality and fiction, feminine and masculine, innocence and adulthood, material and spiritual, our world and the underworld, and good and evil; all of which are primarily conveyed through the figures of Ofelia and Vidal. These juxtapositions reflect GdT’s desire to recover some essence of fairytales, i.e. their true power, which resides in their being beautiful and brutal at the same time. As GdT explains, La Belle et la Bête [1946] is the most perfect cinematic fable ever told. After Méliès, only Cocteau has understood that perfect simplicity is required to tell a fairytale – and that nothing but the power of pure cinema is needed to create awe and wonder.61

GdT accesses the true horror that traditionally lurks beneath the magic of a fairytale to reveal the darker parts of the human psyche, incarnated here by Vidal. This darkness is something that GdT regards as being lost in most contemporary fairytales: ‘We’ve got used to Disney’s lighter versions. In Cinderella the stepsisters have their toes amputated so they can fit the shoes, and after the dance ball, they had their eyes pecked out by seagulls.’62 In Pan, horror, violence and cruelty are in fact the elements that link reality and fantasy, making it all the more disturbing and moving. In keeping with the simplicity of the fairytale, the characters in Pan are archetypes defined primarily by their actions, as their names suggest. Vidal derives from the Latin ‘vital’ or ‘that which gives life’,

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since the captain has not only impregnated Carmen but, in an ironic inversion, he also has the power, granted by the fascist deathcult, to take away life. In this regard, the character of Vidal stands opposed to the elements of pre-Christian and pre-Celtic folklore and mythology in the film, which are represented by the Faun and the labyrinth (and the other ‘creatures’ that subsist in the forest in closer contact with the natural world, i.e. the maquis). Pan draws on archetypal myths of evil and destruction and positions them in relation to fascism. As scholar José Arroyo notes, it is probably the first time ever that cinema has linked Franco’s regime so clearly to fascism,63 but GdT also intends Vidal to stand as a universal representative of (male) authoritarian systems. Thus Vidal’s mythical mirror image (and that of his men, the ruling classes and the Church) in Ofelia’s world is the figure of the Ogre, represented by the Giant Toad and the Pale Man. I will look at the monsters in Pan in more detail in the chapter dedicated to Ofelia – since they are, after all, inhabitants of her world – but it is worth noting here that one of the most disturbing aspects of the child-eating Pale Man’s appearance is that his eyes lie on a plate on the table in front of him. By all accounts GdT drew inspiration for this from an image he once saw of the statue of Saint Vidal in uniform

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Lucy,64 with her eyes on a platter and blood pouring out of her sockets. However, in order to see, the Pale Man has to place his eyes into holes in the palms of his hands. This not only parodies Christian stigmata but, as Keith Otley notes, it also recalls American artist Herbert Bayer’s 1932 photomontage entitled ‘Lonely Metropolitan’65 (1932).66 Although Bayer’s composition seems to be suggesting a window into the unconscious, in Pan having eyes in the palms of the hands could equally be interpreted as a symbol of Vidal’s (and by extension, Franco’s) surveillance and control through the ruling fist. Of course, it also suggests restricted vision, in the fullest sense of the term; Vidal is incapable of seeing anything beyond his own narrow worldview, rendering him incapable of accessing the spiritual world that Ofelia so movingly represents. Family ties A preoccupation with family and in particular father–son relationships permeates GdT’s work, most obviously so in Pan The Pale Man with his eyes in the palms of his hands

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through the figure of Vidal. A fascist to his core, Vidal’s delusional fantasies centre on the notion of a mythical Spain ‘cleansed’ of insurgents. The Franco regime’s attachment to ancestry, patriarchy and religious repression was primarily expressed through the family unit (in particular, the bourgeois family). In Pan, Vidal’s association with the concept of family is twofold, represented by his relation to his father as well as to his own family. The father On the one hand Vidal’s problematic relationship with his dead father determines his own relationship with reality. Despite Vidal’s unequivocal rejection of magic and fiction, his life is ruled as much by fantasy, stories and myths as Ofelia’s: by the idea of a ‘pure’ Spain, and of his father’s courageous, noble death while helping to bring it about. As such, Vidal’s symbol is the watch he inherited from his father, a successful general who, just before dying in battle, ‘smashed his watch on a rock so that his son would know the exact hour and minute of his death. So he would know how a brave man dies.’ Vidal now carries this watch with him at all times, cleaning and fixing it obsessively (see figure over). The watch links Vidal (and fascism) to the Greek Cronos (its Roman equivalent Saturn), the god of time and harvest – he’s been granted the power of destruction and death (like that of the implacable passing time on his watch), as well as being keeper of the only key to the dispensary where food is stored. Hence, order in Pan is not solely identified with fascism and religion (i.e. the social realm), but more importantly, with time and ritual (the personal realm). Vidal’s insistent, narcissistic grooming – shaving, polishing his boots, strutting around in a spotless uniform – is of a piece with his meticulous cleaning of his father’s watch and his desire to ‘cleanse’ the woods of insurgents; all of which coalesce into the excessive display of masculinity and urge to control associated with fascism. The fact that Vidal lacks any spirituality or inner life causes him to fill the void with empty rituals and

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conventional behaviour, controlled every second by the ticking of the watch. It is therefore significant that Vidal’s routine is always accompanied by the copla (or popular song), ‘Soy un pobre presidiario’/‘I am a poor prisoner.’67 Sung by the well-known cantaor, Angelillo (a Republican who left Spain to go into exile), it was a massive hit at the time, its ubiquity also referenced in Luis García Berlanga’s Civil War-themed comedy La vaquilla/The Heifer (1985). Vidal, as per the song’s title, is deep down a prisoner, not Vidal’s watch being cleaned; Vidal polishing his boots

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only of the regime but also of his dysfunctional relationship with his father’s memory. For GdT fascism is fundamentally ‘a paternal obsession; it’s a wholly phallic pursuit and essentially a boys’ game’.68 Hence, Vidal is both the epitome of the oppressiveness of fascist patriarchy, and the victim of that oppression. His obsession with following in his father’s footsteps and living up to his memory is as pathological as his determination to exterminate all the insurgents, and puts him in the same company as such prototypically evil film characters as Star Wars’ (1977) Darth Vader (David Prowse). Vidal’s turbulent psyche is beautifully reflected in the mise en scène; his quarters, situated in the mill’s former engine-room, are dominated by giant wheels that inevitably recall the pocket watch’s mechanism. The character’s extraordinarily powerful physical and metaphorical presence – a tribute as much as anything to Sergi López’s cold, genuinely menacing performance – is crucial to counteract Ofelia’s lavishly presented world and the power of her imagination, thereby reinforcing the idea that the real monsters in Pan are not fantastic creatures, but all too human. In fact, it is Vidal’s exaltation of death that makes him somehow immortal, judging by the way he fearlessly launches himself into the crossfire of a heated battle when the maquis attack the dispensary. Violence in Pan is presented not as spectacle, but instead stripped of visual gloss and flourish, which only serves to reinforce its impact. The violence perpetrated by the fascists is by and large mechanical and random, informed by GdT’s desire to remind the viewer that ‘out of the approximately 500,000 people who died in the Spanish Civil War, approximately 250,000 of them were either summarily executed or killed in cold blood, outside battle engagements’.69 Vidal’s absolute disdain for and brutality towards opponents to the regime demonstrate his blind faith in the cause; such rigid conformity breeds his most threatening trait, a chilling emotional detachment. GdT explored this mindset much earlier in his career, in one of his contributions to the Mexican TV series Hora

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Marcada (1986–90, a sort of Mexican Tales from the Crypt). Coproduced by GdT himself, the series ran from 1986 to 1990, and included episodes by directors such as Juan Mora Catlett, Alfonso Cuarón and Joaquín Silva. GdT’s own directorial contribution, the last of five episodes, called ‘Hamburguesas’ (1989), was a parable on the perils of blind faith in the consumer society, where capitalism is portrayed as a regimented system. When a faceless employee (his face is covered, as are the rest of the staff’s, by a giant smiley mask) in a fast-food chain fails to serve one of the customers properly, he is shot in the face in cold blood. The brutality and randomness of this execution is like a preecho of the most violent scene in Pan, when Vidal is called out one night to determine if a father and son caught poaching rabbit in the vicinity are maquis. After a quick glance over their belongings, Vidal takes a bottle from one of their bags and hits the son repeatedly in the face with it in front of his father, who he then dispatches with a gun at point-blank range. Right after, upon randomly opening another of their bags, the captain finds the rabbits; impassively, he berates his Sergi López as Vidal

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Poachers facing Vidal and his men; Vidal hitting the son’s face with a bottle; Vidal shooting the father point blank

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men for wasting his time, and keeps the rabbits for lunch the next day. That the bottle doesn’t break when Vidal is bashing it into the poacher’s face relates to a street brawl in Mexico GdT was involved in – while he was on the ground being beaten with a chain, the friend with him was repeatedly hit with a bottle; although in a lot of pain, GdT couldn’t help but notice that the bottle didn’t break, despite the force being used.70 The family Vidal’s authoritarianism infects his relations with his wife and Ofelia, as he treats them with the same detached cruelty and repression as he does his men or the enemy. It is this location of horror within the family unit, and within the mill’s decrepit construction, that situates Pan in the realm of the Gothic; the transformation of the heimliche/homely (the familiar, the father figure, the family unit, the house) into the unheimliche/unhomely. Once Vidal has impregnated Carmen, he must control her completely. To this end, he selfishly insists that she and Ofelia relocate from the city to his own isolated outpost, to the detriment of the heavily pregnant Carmen’s health. From this vantage point, Vidal corners and hunts the last remnants of rebel opposition to Franco’s imposed, illegal dictatorship. Fascism’s destruction of society is also represented through the mill, reconfigured as a bleak military outpost whose purpose now is to destroy the very community it once nurtured. No longer able to fend for themselves, the villagers become dependent on Vidal’s regime of rationing to survive, lending him the sense of being a father figure, and a saviour; when handing out the scant bread to the villagers, one of Vidal’s men repeatedly shouts: ‘This is our daily bread in Franco’s Spain, kept safe in this mill. The Reds lie because in a united Spain there’s not a single home without fire or bread.’ In the Catholic version of the Lord’s Prayer this sentence is ‘give us this day our daily bread’, hence equating Franco (and Vidal) with God. The emphasis on family divisions in Pan also underlines the fratricidal element of any civil war, and this one in particular. Its literal

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tearing apart of the Spanish ‘family’ prompted writer and philosopher of the Generation of ’98, Miguel de Unamuno, to describe the conflict as the ‘Incivil War’.71 It is this ‘incivility’, the sheer irrationality and destructiveness of war itself, which GdT portrays in all its anti-natural grotesquerie in Pan, bringing to mind the Spanish term esperpento. Coined by a contemporary to Unamuno, Ramón del Valle-Inclán – albeit with precedents in Goya and one of the key writers of the Spanish Golden Age, Francisco de Quevedo – this term is particularly useful when trying to grasp the juxtaposition of the nightmarish cruelty of the world that Ofelia inhabits in actuality and the monstrous equivalent that she creates in her imagination in order to confront it. Esperpento is like a form of grotesque that depicts the distortion of reality during a war or under corrupt, authoritarian political systems. In these warped conditions, objects and animals are endowed with human traits (as in traditional fairytales), while human characters are presented as puppets. In Pan, the Pale Man was originally conceived as a wooden puppet, and Vidal and his cronies (and to some extent the villagers) are all controlled and brutalised by the regime. The term was first coined in Valle-Inclán’s play Luces de Bohemia/Bohemian Lights (published in 1920, it wasn’t actually staged in Spain until 1970), where it serves to bitterly denounce Military giving bread to peasants

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corrupt Spanish society at the beginning of the twentieth century. Valle-Inclán would again apply the notion of esperpento in Tirano Banderas (1926), which focuses on the way mythical historical figures are appropriated by dictators to justify their despotic ambitions. In Bohemian Lights, Valle-Inclán uses a set of convex mirrors located in one of Madrid’s central streets to further distort and reflect reality. This idea of holding a deforming mirror up to reality is also prevalent in Pan, even more so in the published Spanish version of the script, where the opening sequence describes how the camera tracks into Ofelia’s eye as she is dying to find a black mirror inside. Although the black mirror did not make it into Pan, mirrors are indeed useful for Ofelia, helping her identify the moon mark on her left shoulder, confirming that she is Princess Moanna – in other words, reflecting the duality of material and spiritual, the balance that Ofelia must find within. No surprise that in the case of Vidal, mirrors reflect an inner turmoil. When the captain performs his shaving and cleaning ritual for a second time, he suddenly stops and pretends to slash his reflection’s throat; it is as if for a second his sadism turns against himself, revealing a pathologically damaged individual. The next time Vidal looks at himself in the mirror, towards the end of the film, will be when he sews his mouth up after Vidal, the esperpento, sewing up his wound

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being grotesquely disfigured by Mercedes. His wound recalls the distorted smile of the Joker; in fact, fantasy starts ‘contaminating’ (a GdT term) reality, as Vidal grows increasingly closer in appearance to the monsters confronting Ofelia in her fantasy. Thus, Captain Vidal’s true nature surfaces – he has become the incarnation of esperpento itself. Vidal’s three denials Of course, conversely, Vidal’s abuse of power only points up his lack of it. His dependence on fictions to impart meaning to his life – the master-narrative of fascist Spain, the mythologisation of his father – means he must reject fiction altogether, as this would expose his lack of control over his own existence, his raison d’être. Note in this regard his three public denials (a perversion of Peter’s denial in the Bible) at the dinner he has organised for local dignitaries. The first one occurs when, in a discussion about the insurgents, one of the guests says to Vidal, ‘We know that you are not here by choice.’ The captain defiantly responds: ‘You’re wrong about that. I chose to be here because I want my son to be born in a new, clean Spain.’ Later on, when one of the female guests asks Carmen how she and Vidal met, he brusquely cuts her response off mid-flow, pulls away from the

Vidal’s dinner

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hand she has proffered and humiliates her by saying: ‘Please forgive my wife. She hasn’t been exposed to the world. She thinks these silly stories are interesting to others.’ This also indicates Vidal’s rejection of feminine qualities, i.e. the emotions, nature, fantasy. The only hint of his sexuality – directed at Mercedes – is informed by possession and control. The manner in which he promptly decides to sleep in his office, away from Carmen and Ofelia, when the doctor tells him that Carmen needs rest, indicates a desire to free himself from any kind of female contamination. When Dr Ferreiro questions Vidal’s absolute conviction that the baby is going to be a boy, Vidal scornfully retorts: ‘Don’t fuck with me.’ But Vidal’s misogyny turns out to be his Achilles’ heel, paving the way for his ultimate downfall – the loss of his life and his heir. The third denial occurs right after Vidal has demonstrated his power over the community by asserting that he will restrict ration cards to one per family, despite a guest’s concerns that it is not enough. When the captain is asked about the existence of his father’s watch, unsurprisingly he denies it with a ‘Nonsense, he didn’t own a watch.’ Owning up to the story publicly would be tantamount to admitting he lives in the shadow of his father. Hence, Vidal is presented as little more than a puppet by virtue of his supine attitude towards authority, his lack of emotions, and his rejection of any possible reality outside his own carefully regimented existence. This blindness is contrasted with Ofelia’s plurality of vision, as yet unbound by social restraints. As such, it is Ofelia’s magical gifts and freedom of spirit that pose the greatest threat for Vidal, for they represent unexplained forces completely out of his control. Vidal’s dependence on his watch – which as Kristine Kotecki notes, is broken like that of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland72 – recalls somehow the beetle locked into the gold mechanism that infects Jesús Gris in Cronos, an antique dealer played by Federico Luppi (also in Devil and here Princess Moanna’s real father) who finds himself with the sudden ‘gift’ of eternal life at the price of having to drink blood. But while the beetle grants eternal life, Vidal actively seeks it, in his

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obsession with re-enacting his father’s death and being remembered as a hero in the history books; for Vidal’s desire to be immortal is every bit as strong as Ofelia’s – an immortal hero whose memory will live on in the son who will bear his name, and who will perpetuate the myth of a new ‘clean’ Spain. Except that, in the end, Vidal dies as he lived, powerless, and his history will be written for him – when he hands his son to the maquis, he prepares for his execution by issuing instructions on what his heir should be told about his father. But Mercedes cuts him short with ‘No, he won’t even know your name.’

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3 Ofelia and Memory The key force in Pan is embodied by a trinity of women who represent femininity at three different stages of life: Ofelia is a girl on the cusp of adolescence, Mercedes, the housekeeper, is Ofelia’s young adult representation, and Carmen is the mother figure. Although the female rite of passage is a staple in traditional fairytales, the role of women/young girls in most mainstream films tends to be that of a victim to be rescued and saved by the male, as part of the hero’s transformation from a boy into a man (SpiderMan (2002), Harry Potter (2001–) and most famously, Star Wars). Yet in Pan, which portrays her transformation from girl to woman, and from innocence to self-knowledge, Ofelia’s heroism clearly references strong female figures such as the protagonists in Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and more recently, Brave (2012). After all, the power that Ofelia is given above all else is the chance to choose (otherwise closed off in Franco’s Spain, especially for women) – the labyrinth symbolising her psychological self as well as her awakening sexuality. Trapped within the patriarchal, phallocentric ideology of Vidal and Franco’s fascism, female characters in Pan are constructed in terms of what Barbara Creed has famously termed ‘the monstrous feminine’73 – the male fear of woman as castrator, who must therefore be controlled. In Pan, women either challenge the orthodoxy (Ofelia and Mercedes) or assume their powerless position as dictated by social expectations (Carmen and the old servants), such as passive breeders and carers – Franco’s professed idea of the perfect woman. This definition of woman as secondary within the New Nation (i.e. Spain under Franco’s dictatorship) had already been clearly established in 1934 in the Sección Femenina/Feminine Section, the female wing of the Spanish nationalist fascist Falange founded by José Antonio Primo

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de Rivera (executed by the Republicans during the war).74 Overseen by his sister, Pilar Primo de Rivera, this section existed until 1977.75 The servitude of women under the dictatorship is the very reason why Mercedes is able to smuggle food, medicine and information to the maquis without Vidal noticing, because to him, a woman is not only a second-class citizen, but virtually invisible. Challenging this warped social order and discovering her own identity and moral values in the process constitutes Ofelia’s rite of passage. For this is the story of how she, by virtue of her immense willpower, is able first of all to alter her reality, and through that, change the outcome of her family’s history – the outcome of the war. In order to return to her real identity (Princess Moanna), she must first recover her ‘sight’. Ofelia’s ability to see beyond her oppressive reality and to discover the fantastic takes place in broad daylight, and is triggered by her first encounter with a stick insect, or fairy, who leads her to an ancient stone carving of a Faun’s face whose missing eye she then replaces. On arrival at the camp, she meets Captain Vidal, her new ‘father’ as her mother insists she must refer to him, who by way of greeting proffers his hand. Ofelia puts forward her left hand, a gesture the captain promptly – and forcefully – corrects. As GdT explains, this is a direct reference to Dickens’s David Copperfield (when Copperfield meets his stepfather, the latter tells David, ‘Why, that’s the Wrong hand, Davy!’). Unimpressed, Ofelia moves away from the car to follow the same stick insect. Sight restored, she is now ready to be taken to the labyrinth and to meet the Faun. Despite the dismissals of fantasy by her mother, Vidal and Mercedes (the latter no longer believes in fairies and warns Ofelia about the Faun), an encounter between Ofelia and the fantastic world ensues – a testament to her self-determination which famously inspired singer-songwriter Björk to write her stirring single ‘Pneumonia’.76 The first example of Ofelia’s power to change her perception of things takes place when she is sleeping beside her mother. Ofelia is woken by the buzzing wings of the stick insect.

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Although frightened, she soon recognises it and asks if it is a fairy. She shows it an illustration of a fairy in her book, and straight away the insect transforms itself into one under her gaze. The design of the fairies (who are essentially the Faun’s helpers) is lifted from a scene in GdT’s film Hellboy, where three fairies are seen pickled in a jar.77 This transformation from ordinary to fantastic creature under pressure of her will – a determination that recalls Raise Ravens’ Ana Stone carving missing one eye; stone carving with stick insect

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conjuring the ghost of her mother – is key to understanding the rest of the film. Ofelia’s conviction and courage will also transform her into the young woman she chooses to be, since she does not use fantasy to evade the cruelty and violence of reality, but rather to confront them. The second example of the power of her will and her gaze is when the Faun gives her the Book of Crossroads and tells her she can read her own future in it. It is only when Ofelia looks at and touches the blank pages that the book starts writing itself and Ofelia offering Vidal her left hand; stick insect transformed into a fairy

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outlines the three tasks she has to perform. However, her future is far from rosy; when she opens the book a second time, the pages are suddenly covered in blood, referencing several things: Ofelia’s mother’s later death, the blood spilt by a cruel dictator and his followers, the fairies that will sacrifice themselves for her, and of course Ofelia’s menses, as the distinctive shape drawn by the blood in the blank pages is that of a uterus.78 Ana in Cría cuervos/Raise Ravens with the ghost of her mother in the background; Book of Crossroads as Ofelia’s hands reveal its content

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The underworld Ofelia’s new-found ability to see beyond the surface of things – a childhood capacity largely lost to adults, but shared by the other children in GdT’s more personal films, such as Cronos and Devil – is based on her own unrelenting faith in the power of fiction and fairytales, underlining the primal human need for stories in order to make sense of our world, whether they be myths, folklore, history or religion, all of which are present in various forms in Pan. Ofelia’s own faith in fiction is shared by the film itself; when Carmen tells her daughter off for holding on to her fairytale books, arguing that she is no longer a little girl, the unborn baby starts kicking until Carmen feels sick. Later, an angry captain discovers that Ofelia has been keeping a mandrake root bathed in (by now) sour milk under her mother’s bed (given to Ofelia by the Faun to help Carmen recover), but as soon as her mother throws the mandrake into the fire – where it screams like a banshee – Carmen becomes ill and eventually dies. Nevertheless, Carmen is aware of the positive power of fairytales, and asks Ofelia to tell her unborn brother one in order to calm him down. In arguably the most beautifully executed scene of the film, Ofelia’s tale is illustrated in a single, seemingly unedited Bleeding mark on book

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take. As Ofelia places her head over her mother’s belly, the camera actually enters it to show us the foetus floating in amniotic fluids, the warm shades of red contrasting sharply with the greys and blues of reality. The black-rose protagonist of Ofelia’s story, which blossoms every night on top of an enormous mountain in a very sad country, would make whoever plucked it immortal. She continues, ‘But no one dared go near it because its thorns were full of poison. Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death, and pain, Foetus floating in the womb; the rose on top of the mountain

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but never about the promise of eternal life.’ As we see the stick insect flying around the rose and back into Ofelia’s room, we are told that ‘every day, the rose wilted, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone …’ – at which point, the camera cuts to the captain as he obsessively cleans his father’s pocket watch – ‘forgotten and lost at the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone, until the end of time’ – just as the memory of a Spain free from the thorns of fascism languishes forgotten by its people, immobilised by pain and fear. One of Pan’s principal assets, clearly separating it from typical mainstream fare, is its unapologetic ambiguity, most markedly apparent in the figure of the Faun, Ofelia’s ‘most humble servant’ and her seemingly caring guide, but one as untrustworthy and slippery as Alice’s Cheshire Cat. For, as Bergero rightly notes,79 the Faun is by definition a liminal figure in Pan, since he represents Ofelia at a crossroads, as well as her position as challenger of both systems, the real and the fantastic. After all, what brought Princess Moanna to the upper world in the first place was her disobedience to her father. Played by GdT’s usual collaborator, Doug Jones, with outstanding bodily expressiveness, the Faun gets progressively younger during the film, mirroring the regressive stream of Ofelia’s blood in the opening scene, as well as indicating the film’s shift from the present to a more primal past suspended in time. Both trickster and guide, it is actually the Faun who incarnates Vidal’s monstrous equivalents – the Giant Toad and the Pale Man – to test Ofelia, proven by the fact that the three fairies (in theory gnawed to death by the Pale Man) are shown alive at the end. On the other hand, as GdT explains, the Faun’s rejuvenation also suggests that he is benefiting from Ofelia’s rite. As Mercedes tells Ofelia, ‘My grandma always warned me to beware of Fauns.’ Even so, this creature is not as dangerous as the film’s international title suggests. Using the name Pan – the Roman equivalent of the Faun, but in fact a completely different mythological entity – was a commercial decision made by the sales agent based purely on the

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best-sounding title for the film, one with which GdT has never felt comfortable.80 The Faun’s accompaniment of Ofelia from the world of the living to the world of the dead (where she meets her deceased father and mother) echoes the Greek mythological figure Charon, the boatman who carries the souls of the dead across the river to Hades; while the feminine of his name, Fauna, highlights even further his association with nature. Part tree, part goat and part human, his appearance draws heavily from Rackham’s oneiric drawings of fairytales. In contrast to Vidal’s minutely organised, controlled world, which does not allow any space for creativity – or indeed fiction – and which blocks out the natural world in preference to a mechanised one, Ofelia’s empowerment is drawn from her own relation to nature. In fact, Ofelia soon discovers that she was not born of man, but instead conceived by the moon – as the mark on her shoulder reveals – considered in many different cultures (Mayan, Greek, Roman, Islam, Chinese) to be a symbol of femininity, love and nonviolence. Some of the attributes associated with the moon are intuition, the cycles (menses in Greek means moon), fertility, transition, transformation and renewal, mystery and, above all in Pan, time. The phases of the moon are the natural cyclical rhythms Ofelia discovers the moon mark on her left shoulder

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that Ofelia must cleave to in order to perform her three tasks, as opposed to the clockwatching linear time of Vidal. It is precisely Ofelia’s immersion in nature that triggers her discovery of the world of the maquis, necessarily an under-world whose existence is also (as is the world that she imagines) a rejection of fascism. In order to reinforce the actively resistant femininity that Pan sides with, this discovery is provoked by the figure of Mercedes. It is no coincidence that Ofelia finds out about Mercedes’ involvement with the maquis when she returns from discovering her own hidden world, and that both these worlds belong to the mysterious, uncontrollable realm of the forest – whenever either world reveals itself in the woods, we see shiny particles of pollen that look like magic dust floating in the air. Although it did not make it into the film, it is interesting to note that the subterranean Underworld Realm is called Bethmoora in the Spanish version, in reference to a fabled city in the eponymous 1910 story by Irish writer Lord Dunsany included in the collection A Dreamer’s Tales. Dunsany is a favourite not only of GdT, but also of Lovecraft and of J. R. R. Tolkien; Lovecraft himself also referred to this fantastic world in his 1930 short story, The Whisperer in Darkness; and Bethmoora is also mentioned in Hellboy II as the kingdom of the elves. As discussed earlier, Pan was filmed in central Spain and makes reference to the French border, but the story is set in Galicia. That region also serves as the origin for Princess Moanna’s name, derived from the small village of Moaña located very near the Portuguese border – which also happens to be the place where Captain Nemo got his gold supply in Jules Verne’s 1870 science-fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.81 As previously noted, Galicia was strategically important for the maquis, but more important still are the findings of historian Aurora Marco on female guerrillas in this region. Marco discovered that women played a fundamental role as intermediaries and fighters – informing of potential attacks, and smuggling arms and medicines, just like Mercedes in the film.82 So

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although Mercedes’ name indicates a merciful nature, she is also capable of great strength and violence. As Margaret R. Yocom observes, the kitchen is both the place where women work and the site of resistance;83 the paring knife that Mercedes always carries around and which she uses to attack Vidal ultimately saves her life. In this regard, it is worth noting how Pan’s structure is based on traditional fairytales’ ‘rule of three’: Ofelia has three tasks; she has to choose between three doors; there are three fairies, three women, three circles in her bathroom, three realities (Ofelia’s, Vidal’s, the maquis’), etc. This rule also applies to the fight against Vidal’s patriarchal control and oppression, which in the film takes place on three fronts generally ascribed to women: the family and household, via Ofelia, Mercedes and Dr Ferreiro (essentially female in the sense of also being a carer); nature, represented by the maquis hidden in the woods (Pedro, Mercedes’ brother and his men depend on her and the doctor for survival); and magic, via Ofelia’s fantasy world – the most threatening to Vidal. All of them represent for Vidal the unknown ‘Other’. In her disobedience and rebellion, Ofelia most closely parallels the housekeeper Mercedes – GdT has said that, when he was casting the film, he wanted Ofelia to look more like Mercedes than her own Three doors

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mother. It is only through defying convention and the established order that Ofelia can develop herself as an individual. She rebels as much against Vidal as she does against her mother’s submissive attitude. Carmen dies not only because she chooses not to believe in fairytales – i.e. the possibility of another world – but also because she believes Captain Vidal represents her and Ofelia’s only chance. Vidal makes it clear from the beginning where his loyalties and interests lie when he tells the doctor: ‘If you need to save anyone, save the kid.’ Carmen is reduced to a vessel carrying the captain’s son. In this sense, she is not dissimilar to Willa (Shelley Winters) in Charles Laughton’s 1955 thriller, The Night of the Hunter. Both women are shown as submissive to genuinely evil, cruel men, thereby putting their children at risk. Carmen’s death is doubly significant in that she dies conforming to the Francoist ideal of mother and carer, whereas her antagonist, Mercedes, a fighter and childless, lives on. This notion of female as little more than breeder is also rejected by Ofelia; when Mercedes tells her that ‘having a baby is complicated’, she swiftly answers: ‘Then I’ll never have one.’ Carmen’s submissiveness is established from the beginning when, despite being perfectly able to walk, she resigns herself to the wheelchair foisted on her by Vidal. Carmen is the widow of Vidal’s tailor (a job that implies creativity, as well as being a recurring one in fairytales), highlighting her lower social status. Although Carmen constantly tells her daughter to stop believing in fairies, she does give her a dress to wear at the important dinner Vidal has organised to make her ‘look like a princess’ for the captain. Needless to say, Ofelia destroys the dress as soon as she embarks on her first task. This and other acts of rebellion – missing the dinner, refusing to call the captain ‘father’ – serve as a corrective to her mother’s passivity towards Vidal, a sort of prince (albeit resolutely evil) whom Carmen has pragmatically, even desperately, chosen to save them both from starving. Sent to bed without dinner, Ofelia relishes her triumph over Vidal with a sneer when her mother admonishes her with the words ‘You’ve disappointed me, Ofelia. And your father, too (…) Him more than me.’

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Ofelia’s defiant spirit and trust in her own instincts twice save her from the monstrous Vidal surrogates in the fantasy world (the Toad and the Pale Man) she has to confront in order to successfully complete her tasks. Although Pan is defined by the careful visual balancing of horror and fantastic elements, all Ofelia’s tasks are both informed by and grounded in a historical reality, a fact that differentiates her from her fairytale counterparts, particularly Alice and Dorothy, whose real worlds are only briefly present. In fact, in a neat inversion, it is the real world that is most unavoidably the stuff of nightmares in Pan, where there is no possibility of physical escape for Ofelia. Ofelia’s magic world exists constantly in relation to the historical present, and for each fantasy scene there is a repercussion in the real world. For example, in the forest a colossal fig tree is slowly dying because a Giant Toad has occupied its roots, imbibing all its nutrients. In a scene closer to Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001) than more traditional Western fairytales, Ofelia, in order to save the tree, has to place three magic stones in the toad’s mouth so she can retrieve the golden key that lies in its belly – a clear link to Vidal’s storeroom key, that Mercedes needs to get vital supplies for the maquis. The Toad symbolises the Francoist regime that was sucking the life out of Spain, literally starving insurgents in the post-war hunger years. Vidal’s and Ofelia’s Ofelia smiling complacently in the bathtub

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keys are one and the same, so much so that GdT apparently asked his sound engineer to give them the exact same sound.84 The reality of the hunger years also leaks through to the underworld, figured by a dining room that mirrors Captain Vidal’s dinner party. This underworld version is inhabited by the threatening Pale Man of the empty eye sockets, who also has wrinkled skin hanging from every part of his body. The room is decorated with paintings of him killing and feeding on children. Ofelia must use her Ofelia with the key; the Pale Man’s dinner table

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recently acquired key to find a dagger hidden behind one of three little doors on the wall, while the monster, whose eyes rest on a plate in front of him, sits at the table silent and unmoving. Ignoring the help of the three fairies accompanying her, Ofelia chooses the correct door by following her instincts. But just before she leaves, she is tempted by the food laid out on the table, eating two grapes. This wakes the Pale Man up, and he devours two of the fairies frantically trying to distract him, in an image that famously recalls one of Goya’s Pinturas negras/Black Paintings, the iconic ‘Saturno devorando a un hijo’/‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ (1819–23) – but also George A. Romero’s zombies in Day of the Dead (1985).85 It is never specified whether the supernatural occurrences in Pan are actual magic or simply take place in Ofelia’s head.86 However, her failure to resist temptation triggers tragic consequences and marks the point at which the dynamic between the two worlds shifts gear. From this moment on, Ofelia’s direction of travel – from real world to the realm of magic, from hopelessness to hope – starts turning back on itself. Her mother dies and the Faun abandons her. When the latter angrily tells her that ‘We made a mistake! You failed! You can never return. (…) Your spirit shall forever remain amongst the humans!’, all hope vanishes, and she is left to confront the real

The Pale Man eating a fairy

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world and Vidal on her own. Her main task now is no longer depicted in the Book of Crossroads but is a purely real one – she has to keep herself and her brother safe from Captain Vidal. In order to do so, Ofelia introduces magic into the real world. Given another opportunity by the Faun, she is able to enter the captain’s room by drawing a door on the wall with her magic chalk (mirroring her visit to the Pale Man). After putting her mother’s remaining tranquilliser in Vidal’s drink, she runs away with her baby brother. Later, at the end of the film, when Ofelia carries the baby to the entrance of the labyrinth with Vidal in hot pursuit, her ultimate act of disobedience – also an act of selfless generosity – is what saves her spirit and the life of the newborn. When the Faun – here closer to the menacing, horned bestiality of the mythical minotaur residing at the centre of the Cretan labyrinth – asks her to draw a couple of drops of blood from the baby in order to enter the underworld, Ofelia refuses, inverting the ‘test of faith’: Abraham’s willing sacrifice of his only son to God in the Old Testament. And in order for Ofelia to reach the centre of the labyrinth before the pursuing Vidal, its walls split apart, just as the Red Sea parted for Moses. But this is also the moment where the brutal reality of Vidal and the magic world of Ofelia literally clash. When the captain appears just as Ofelia is talking to the Faun, the camera makes a sudden turn Goya’s ‘Saturno devorando a un hijo’/‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ (1819–23)

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Ofelia and the Faun; Vidal looking at Ofelia; Ofelia from Vidal’s perspective, without the Faun

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and shows us Vidal’s perspective on the scene. Of course, Vidal is unable to see the Faun, only Ofelia standing with her back to him. Circling back to the beginning of the film, Vidal turns her round, takes the baby and shoots her in the stomach; her small, fragile body falls on the stone and a stream of her blood – the blood of an innocent – drips on the entrance to the labyrinth, opening it up. The shocking impact of this scene lies precisely in the sudden absence of magic; we see Ofelia as she really is, vulnerable and defenceless, a thirteen-year-old child incapable of inflicting harm – and a stark reminder of the hundreds of thousands of children who fall victim to adult wrongdoing, particularly during war. GdT has roundly declared that ‘Fascism is above all a form of perversion of innocence, and thus of childhood. For me, Fascism represents in some ways the death of the soul.’87 Pan connects with a long tradition of films about children that populate Spanish cinema and GdT’s own work; in his personal films particularly, children counterpoint the violence and absurdities of the adult world. They are powerless witnesses to the Spanish Civil War and its consequences in films such as Montxo Armendáriz’s Secretos del Corazón/Secrets of the Heart (1997), José Luis Cuerda’s La Lengua de las mariposas/Butterfly’s Tongue (1999), Agustí Villaronga’s Pa negre/Black Bread (2010) and Tras el Cristal/In a Glass Cage (1987), and Imanol Uribe’s El viaje de Carol/Carol’s Journey (2002). But the tables are turned in one of the most iconic horror films ever made in Spain, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s disturbing ¿Quién puede matar a un niño?/Who Can Kill a Child? (1976, a year after Franco’s death). After an opening featuring horrific real images of child casualties in numerous wars, the film switches to a remote paradisiacal island in Spain – the typical tourist haven promoted by Franco – where a group of children take revenge for all the violence inflicted upon them by killing the adults. Violence begets violence or, as the famous Spanish saying has it, raise ravens and they’ll peck out your eyes. In contrast, Ofelia’s own nonviolent sense of justice is what ultimately gives her brother (a symbol of the future of Spain) the hope and opportunity that the Spanish Republic never had.

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4 The End … Much has been written about Pan’s ambiguous open ending, where both Ofelia and Vidal perish; Ofelia at the hands of Vidal, and Vidal at the hands of the militia. It’s a complete subversion of the conventional happy ending in traditional fairytales. The difference of course is that, whereas Vidal dies unheroically and will be forgotten by history, Ofelia lives on in her spiritual form by dint of the things that fascism can never control – her mind, imagination and willpower. In this way, she is reborn in the Underworld Realm the way she wishes herself to be, in an ending that has been read as Ofelia’s self-sacrifice and ‘resurrection’ as a Jesus Christ figure. Yet, unlike Jesus Christ, Ofelia’s salvation is based on her challenging the very destiny that has been decided for her, and refusing to sacrifice her newborn brother. Read this way, the protagonist’s dual identity as Ofelia and Princess Moanna is comparable to David Lynch’s heroine, Diane/Betty (Naomi Watts), in Mulholland Dr., another example of a fairytale for adults that connects with the element of horror

Vidal shooting Ofelia

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in magic. In both films, the female protagonists are able to access a parallel world of their choosing, which they have created in response to their grim, oppressive reality. What’s more, both Pan and Mulholland Dr. can be read as the death dreams of their protagonists; both begin and end with their respective deaths, and the codas follow them into their chosen versions of paradise. From the opening scene in Pan, time is shown going backwards in order to explain how Ofelia ended up where she is, completing a full circle; for the end is once more the beginning, or rather, the end is only another beginning. Just as importantly, Diane/Betty believes as fervently in the Hollywood Dream as Ofelia does in her books; both films contemplate our relation to fiction by emphasising their own status as fictional constructs. But where Mulholland Dr.’s self-reflection is located in the City of Dreams and within film history, the historical context of Pan adds another layer of fictionalisation that questions the idea of history itself. Another history In the same way that Ofelia writes her own story in the blank pages of her Book of Crossroads, Pan’s open ending also encourages Ofelia’s dead body illuminated by the ochre light of the Underworld Realm

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plurality of vision; that is to say, a truly democratic perspective, that underlines the degree of fiction and subjectivity in any story, including historical accounts. This idea is reinforced by the fact that Pan ends with the voiceover, as opposed to a written text, a reversal of what happened at the start. Oral tradition prevails, as do its innate permeability and malleability. This of course is the exact opposite of the rewriting of history perpetrated by Franco’s regime. For a long time in Spain, there was only one version of history, that extolled by the state. For Franco, the maxim that history is written by the victors became an obsession, which fed his mythologising of the Victoria itself over the red lowlife in the so-called War of Liberation, or the Spanish Crusade, as it came to be known. The extent of Franco’s distortion of history is thoroughly exposed in El mito de la cruzada de Franco/The Myth of Franco’s Crusade by Herbert R. Southworth. This task was carried out and legitimised by a class of intellectuals, who published about the subject [the Civil War] during Francoism, and who were subjugated under the ideological apparatus of the autocratic system. Rigid control over the mass media hampered any kind of public dissent. … A legion of historians, professors, academics tried to propagate during the regime an atmosphere of confusion in order to provide historical legitimacy to a State that had imposed itself manu militari [with weapons] and which violated the rights and freedom of its citizens.88

The past was therefore denied to those who fought against the regime, and the passing of the Pact of Silence of 1977, though necessary to ensure the peaceful transition to democracy, proved a high price to pay for stability, since it pardoned all political crimes, producing what Madeline Davis refers to as an ‘institutionalised amnesia’.89 Although neither side was free of guilt, it meant that the longstanding exaltation of Nationalist victims was not countered by any memorialisation of Republican deaths. In Cercas’s words,

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the past is a form, a dimension of the present. The present without the past is not fully present. We cannot understand what is happening now without understanding what happened then. If you don’t know where you come from you don’t know where you are going to, and if history is written by the victors, then that version should be challenged and reinterpreted.90

This state of things began to shift with the passing of the Law of Historical Memory in 2007. Although some exhumations had been taking place prior to this, the law’s passing was marked by the emblematic exhumation of a mass grave the following year at the Granada location of Viznar, where it was hoped to find the remains of the poet Federico García Lorca,91 executed by the Nationalists at the beginning of the war. His remains are yet to be found. The undying past Metaphorically, Ofelia’s death implies the death of the Republic, as William O. Deaver Jr rightly notes; if Ofelia is thirteen years’ old in 1944, she was born with the Second Republic, in 1931.92 Since Ofelia perishes in the world above and needs to seek the salvation of her spirit in the world below – essentially the world of the dead – then her character can also be interpreted as representing all those whose deaths have been locked in silence. Viewed this way, perhaps Pan’s most important function is as a powerful corrective to what has been erased from an oppressed community’s memory. This corrective to Spanish history – although mainly built around themes of obedience and memory – is just as much about resistance. Resistance to Vidal by Ofelia, Mercedes, the maquis, Dr Ferreiro; to the Victorious version of history; to the idea of Spain (and the world) and religion/spirituality as non-plural; and, as Jennifer Orme93 argues, to the idea of the film itself being categorised and given a definitive meaning, or a closed ending. For Pan’s myriad influences reinforce the film’s rejection of a unique version of truth, an imposed masternarrative incarnated by Vidal, and as such, any reductive or ‘final’ reading of the film is rendered obsolete – in a way, fascist.

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Yet, as shown in both Devil and Pan, this cannot be accomplished without reinstating the power – recovering the memory – of the collective. In Pan, this can only be achieved by also gaining the freedom to realise yourself as an individual. For Cercas, ‘The collective is a dimension of the individual [since] you cannot understand yourself without understanding the collective in which you are inscribed.’94 In Pan, the surrogate family is destroyed and restored in the imaginary as a spiritual referent, whereas it is only the community – another form of family – that can survive the fascists in the real world. Cutting straight from Ofelia’s death to Mercedes and the maquis as they shoot Vidal symbolically in the right eye and hold his baby son, not only imbues Ofelia’s death with a poignancy in the real world, but her sacrifice is shown as equivalent to that of Mercedes and the maquis; they have all been selflessly endangering themselves (and sacrificing their lives) for the sake of a Spain free from the claws of fascism. And by eliding their sacrifices, we understand it is not down to an individual to save the world (be it Vidal, Franco or Jesus Christ), but rather the responsibility of the community, an idea that is reiterated throughout the film and GdT’s work in general, but especially so in both Devil and Pan. For, as Allison Mackey notes, ‘at The maquis and Mercedes with the baby

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the heart of each of these films [Devil, Pan], there is a real sense of urgency about the need to imagine an alternative democracy based on critical citizenship and collective political struggle’.95 The future of the country is not only literally placed in the hands of the community, but most importantly, it is denied to Vidal, to fascism, and to Franco, by a literal reversal of the Pact of Forgetting when Mercedes tells the captain that his son and heir ‘won’t even know your name’. This line clearly alludes to the fact that around 30,000 children of ‘Reds’ killed or imprisoned were adopted by Franco supporters. With no knowledge of their past, they became the other disappeared, living for years under identities far removed from their real ones. Known as the ‘niños robados’ or ‘stolen children,’96 their fate marks one of the darkest episodes of Francoism, only coming to light relatively recently.97 Fiction in Pan, and particularly fairytales, is set against the horrors inflicted by Franco’s imposed fantasy. As such, it is used to overturn the dictator’s one-sided mythologising, recovering memory in order to rewrite history incorporating the perspectives of the vanquished; to give those suffocated, disappeared and destroyed by the regime a voice and the (unapologetically) happy ending they never had. Whereas Vidal will be forgotten despite the fictional

Stick insect/fairy by flower: the trace of Princess Moanna

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history he appropriated, Ofelia achieves true immortality by being remembered forever. In light of the ongoing exhumation of mass graves all over Spain, the narrator’s closing sentence, which states that Ofelia ‘left behind small traces of her time on Earth, visible only to those who know where to look’, acquires an almost unbearably poignant historical resonance. The spiritual and material traces left by the conflict will undoubtedly haunt Spain for many years to come.

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Coda: Phone Interview with Guillermo del Toro, 21 March 2013, 3pm, UK (8am, LA) Mar Diestro-Dópido: Can you tell me how and when you came up with the idea for Pan’s Labyrinth? Guillermo del Toro: I love two ‘weird fiction’ writers above most others; the first one is Algernon Blackwood and the other is Arthur Machen. They both speak about the pre-Celtic mythologies and pagan entities and how close they still are to us even in our ‘modern’ world. I was very attracted to that idea, and I started thinking about the fact that in the north of Spain there is a huge Celtic footprint, where the Celtic culture left its mark. And it’s interesting I don’t see that much of this in Spanish cinema, the Celtic heritage in the north of Spain. So I thought it would be great to do a period piece set there, that can play with Celtic mythology but that’s happening in Spain, and that’s the way it started. It was an idea I had around 2003, and I immediately started working on the story. MDD: You have male protagonists in all of your other films, why a female this time? GDT: I had already done Devil with a boy protagonist, and the more I started shaping Pan’s Labyrinth, the more I felt it was a companion piece to Devil. I felt in Devil I had already made a film with boys, and in Pan I felt the Faun was too strong a masculine figure. It made more sense to use him in contrast with the girl, because the universe of a girl growing up is even more pressured than a boy’s; you have all the pressures of gender and society. Society has a far stricter concept of what a girl should become than a boy, of what she can and cannot do. MDD: How did you come up with the idea of contrasting that female fairytale world with this very particular historical period just after the Spanish Civil War? GDT: First of all, war is a very masculine occupation – a boy’s game. And, as I was doing my research, it was always my intention that the stepfather be a sort of military guy who came from a wealthy family; somebody that was spoiled, a rich boy – as they say in Spanish, a señorito. The maids in the kitchen call him a señorito. When I was writing the biography of the guy, I put down that his father was a general, with a good family name, Vidal, and that he came from old money, and as I was doing that, I started investigating what was happening in the period of the so-called Peace Years after the war. I came across the fact that the military police were suffocating the last remnants of the rebels in the north, even after the war had supposedly ended; there were entire police operations that are barely mentioned in history books. They were not historically important but they did happen, and to me they

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Guillermo del Toro

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became important – I thought, I want to tell a story of which there is no trace. I don’t want to talk about a big story of the war, but a very small story about the heroes and the villains. And both the heroes and the villains – no matter who wins a skirmish or two – will disappear in the flow of history. MDD: You’ve also related the film to World War II, the War on Terror and even capitalism in interviews. GDT: What was very interesting about the time period in which Pan takes place is that the Spanish Resistance were very active. They collaborated with the Allies. To give you an example of this collaboration, they blocked the mining of wolfram, which is a metal that Hitler used to fabricate Panther tanks with, and some of the biggest suppliers of wolfram were in Spain. So by the Resistance blocking that, they were helping to prevent the Panther tanks from being built. I was also referencing the idea that the Civil War was used as a testing ground for German weapons, it was a practice theatre for World War II. And after all this sacrifice, the Allies forgot the Resistance and supported Franco basically; they forged a truce. They didn’t go and take Franco down, instead they formed a strategic alliance in order to stop Communism. It’s an incredibly sad fact. So there is a very strong connection with World War II. MDD: Does the juxtaposition of the fairytale and the war augment or diminish the latter’s horrors? GDT: Enhance, in my opinion, because, much like in a painting, it is contrast that delineates form. The values of dark and light become clearer when they are together. I also think that the essence of art is juxtaposition. To paint a landscape is boring, but if you paint a beautiful landscape and in the bottom righthand corner there is a corpse, a dead person, then I’m interested. I actually fought very hard, both as a writer and as a director, to not use the fantasy as any kind of escape in the movie. The fantasy elements until the very end are pretty horrible. The Faun is ambiguous, is not beautiful, is creepy. The Giant Toad is disgusting and the trials Ofelia goes through are unpleasant as well. The Pale Man is absolutely horrifying. What I didn’t want to do is show fantasy = good, reality = bad; I wanted to juxtapose violence in both worlds, in both contexts. So, the fantasy has a lot of violence as well; the one thing I wanted to shock the audience with is the realisation that you can have a fantasy movie in which you have real violence. Because in the Brothers Grimm fairy stories, to give an example, Cinderella’s sisters amputate their own toes so their feet can fit in the red glass slippers. You can have a wolf eating a child, and then they cut the wolf open and take the child out. It’s grime and dirt and blood and shocking images, and I thought no one is doing this; no one is really looking at the true sense of horror in fairytales. Because it is very important for the storyteller or the narrator or the artist, whatever you want to call him or her, to do things that are incredibly powerful. Maybe nobody is interested in it, or perhaps there are a lot of people interested in it, but if I find it powerful, and it provokes in me a unique sensation, a flavour, I try to do it. I also think that, in depicting brutality, you must be fearless,

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otherwise you cannot then depict beauty and not feel that the balance is not rigged. It was very important to see Vidal be brutal in a methodical, cold and detached way. He is a goodlooking, well-groomed sociopath. I find that the worst people in the world today are almost always immaculately coiffed and groomed. MDD: But the violence in the film could easily put a lot of people off, and yet it doesn’t seem to, and feels so completely integrated in the film. GDT: In every movie there is a moment that I call the walk-out scene, where the people who are not into the movie mentally or physically leave. That moment in Pan is the first moment of violence with the bottle. If you are not into the movie at this point, then you get up and you leave. Every movie I make I try to put a moment in where I basically break the rules, break my deal with the audience, say, ‘Look, I’m going to go this way, do you wanna follow?’ And a lot of people don’t. To this day, if people say to me ‘I didn’t like Pan’, one of the problems they always talk about is the violence. They say, ‘You could’ve done a beautiful film without the violence’, and I reply, ‘But it wouldn’t have been my film.’ I was travelling with Pan on the Academy Award circuit, and I went to a little town where there were a lot of Academy voters. They had just seen the movie, and a guy got up and said, ‘You know, you hurt your chance to win because it is so violent, gratuitously violent.’ And I said, ‘It isn’t. To me it is essential to what the film is trying to do, and if I don’t become more popular for it, I don’t care.’ André Gide said that it is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. MDD: And yet, Pan has been hugely successful both for horror fans and for those who don’t like that genre. Why do you think that is? GDT: I personally love Devil just as much. Those two are my favourites. But I think that what happens with Pan is twofold: first off, it is far more sophisticated as a production and has more elements to showcase. Secondly, the fairytale resonates much more amply thematically than the Gothic ghost story. Pan really connects on a very intimate level with the feeling of what it is to be a child, and how that childhood is essentially destroyed at some point. It’s an essential experience that we all go through to some degree. Both movies carry a huge sense of loss, and at the same time, a huge sense of hope and fragility. In other words, it’s at the same time beautiful and very sad. I think that is really the primal combination of most fairytales. MDD: You tend to focus on the family in all your films, particularly in Cronos, Devil and Pan. Why do you situate the story in a family? GDT: It’s actually in all the movies I’ve made. It’s very present in Hellboy, very present in Cronos for sure, and it’s present in a very oblique way in Blade II, in the story of the vampire father and the sister and the brother. In Devil’s Backbone you can make the argument that the entire orphanage is a claustrophobic family structure. I think the family is the source of all horror. I think it’s also the source of a lot of joy and love, but even today as a father I’m constantly in a state of horror over the fate of my

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daughters. And I constantly see myself making the same mistakes as my father, or watching them make the mistakes I made as a kid. And, if you are born in any Latin family, that structure can be very suffocating spiritually. MDD: What do you bring to Pan as a Mexican? GDT: Me! It’s the entire thing – if you watch Devil, that’s the way I look at the world, the way I accept magic in a completely natural way and I don’t have to make apologies for it – all that’s entirely Mexican. And the sense of a big melodrama and violence, that’s also Mexican. But more than anything, the acceptance of how permeable the membrane is between reality and fantasy, that comes entirely from my culture. Devil is as much European as it is Mexican – the landscapes and the way they interact with the people are very Juan Rulfo-esque though. MDD: What governs the way you construct narrative? GDT: I try to write and structure my movies in a way that I can control the storytelling and I’m achieving what I want. I knew that with the character of the captain, you’d need to see one act of violence, just one, early on – and then, for the longest time, he doesn’t lash out again, but the audience is now warned: this guy is a coiled spring, a bomb with a short fuse. My instructions to Sergi López were always look great, always look elegant, always look like a gentleman. I never told him you have to be evil, never ever. But I knew you needed to see this guy commit an act of violence, completely unflinchingly and shockingly, without even losing his poise one bit. So you see the captain doesn’t even care when he does something like that, and people find that shocking. And I say, yes, but that’s the way that, as a Mexican, I’ve seen policemen beat people completely methodically. They are not angry; they just do it because that’s what they do. And by the way, the relationship between the fantasy, religion and violence in Pan is also Mexican [laughs]; the Holy Trinity. MDD: Could you talk a bit about why Vidal is so contorted with self-loathing? GDT: Many of my movies are about fathers and sons. I’m very interested in the subject because I have a particularly baroque relationship with my father. I really think that he is a huge presence in my life even at the age of forty-eight. But it became much less so as an adult, although I realise that some people never get over it. And fascism is essentially a paternal obsession; it’s a wholly phallic pursuit. It is essentially a boys’ game. So it was very interesting for me that you have this guy living in the shadow of his father, who was a great general who died in the midst of battle, a glorious battle according to what people say. And he is a mediocre captain, in the middle of chasing mediocre resistance up in the north of Spain after the war; after the war. He is a middleman; that’s why you see him so excited when he is in battle, when he says this is the only good way to die. He’s like a kid, he’s so happy to be in the middle of bullets, because he is a guy who’s interested in being remembered. And the worst people I’ve ever met are people who are only interested in being remembered.

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MDD: Of course, opposed to that masculine, martial world is Ofelia. A lot has been written about the ending, because that’s when these two worlds face each other most directly. But at that point, Ofelia goes back to a world ruled by another male figure, the king, which some have interpreted as a restoration of patriarchy. GDT: To me the beauty of the ending is the moment she realises that her choices were good. I think that you have three thrones; one for the mother, the father and the daughter. And the baby is there too; it’s the possibility of hope – the baby in her mother’s arms represents that. For me, as I said before, the family can be the source of horror or of love. It’s not just the father, it’s the completion of a benign family that her choices, which were hard choices, have made happen. It’s essentially the reward for disobedience. It would be a patriarchal structure if you see a boy go to heaven because he did what everyone said he should do. If you see a boy that obeys every rule, helps every patriarchal figure, and then gets to heaven – that’s definitely the patriarchal fable. But if you see a girl that is essentially opposing the status quo time and again, and yet refusing to cause pain unto others, that’s a different tale altogether. Think about why the baby is gifted in both worlds, not just one. The fleshand-blood baby is given to the guerrillas, which means they hold hope, they hold rebirth in their arms; and in the world below, Ofelia now has the chance to be reborn, to start anew. It is also important that her parents are sitting on thrones because I wanted to avoid physical contact. I wanted to avoid her being embraced and hugged and cheered. I needed her to be ‘in heaven’ but somewhat able to stand alone. This allowed for a smooth transition back. That comes from Andersen’s The Little Matchstick Girl. MDD: Why is the king of the underworld the only character that doesn’t have a name? GDT: Because to me he is her father, and she talks about her father disappearing in the war, and being a tailor, and I sort of imply that maybe the captain killed the father. I leave that for the audience to construct, I want to allow them the space. If we went into the photo album of the family, you would see that the guy is the father; that he is her lost father. So I don’t name him because it’s simply a revelation at the end for me. It’s the story of shadowy fathers, spectres – the captain’s, Ofelia’s, and the king at the end. Fascism is, in a way, all about that, isn’t it? The shadow of the father. MDD: You use fairytale as a genre, but the influences are Celtic and pre-Celtic. Why the need to go further back in time to more primal folklore and myths of humanity, whose different versions can be found all around the globe? GDT: Fairytales need to be constructed around some sort of ethical or moral theme. What people call ‘the moral of the story’. The movie is about two or three things; disobedience, choice and memory. Thematically, I was essentially building a story about a man that wanted to be remembered, and a princess, and a country that had forgotten who they were. The essential conundrum of the princess is that she does not remember that she is one. And the pre-Celtic and pagan ancient myths remind

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us who we are. It’s the same thing every year when the Thames in London goes low tide and you can find Roman relics in the mud. You can find Roman relics under every Edwardian and Victorian house in London, because ultimately Britain is built on a savage, pagan past. So in that way I love the idea of a primal myth that shakes everyone into remembering who they really are. MDD: Is that somehow related to the way in which the Faun gets younger as the film progresses? GDT: The reason I did that is because I wanted to create an element of danger in the Faun. I wanted to show – not just talk about, but actually show – that he is gaining something out of the process. Because I wanted to make him more and more ambiguous, I wanted to keep him dangerous. The younger the Faun gets, the more dangerous he seems. When he is the old Faun at the beginning, he’s this sort of awkward, funny, spastic creature. And then, as the movie progresses, he becomes a sort of rock-star figure, he’s swaggering. He becomes almost beautiful. When Doug Jones showed up in the young Faun make-up, I used to tell him ‘Give me a little more Bowie or a little more Mick Jagger.’ I wanted the Faun to be at his most attractive when he proposes the worst possible task, when he says to Ofelia ‘Give me a drop of the blood of your brother.’ If the creature making that proposal is an ugly creature, old, of course she’s going to say no. But if the creature making that proposal is beautiful, if the creature that gave you a second chance is a creature that is manipulating you into owing him something, then it’s interesting. I think that you can only find out if you’d sell out when somebody is trying to buy you. When people say ‘I would never sell out’, I only take them seriously if they have already had someone try to buy them. Most of us go through life without anyone trying to buy us. MDD: Why Pan instead of Faun in the English title, when, in fact, they are two different creatures? GDT: Entirely different. I’ve never felt at ease with that. But when we were launching the film in Cannes we gave it to the sales agents Wild Bunch, and they said The Faun’s Labyrinth sounds horrible. So I proposed about five titles, and one of them was Pan’s Labyrinth. I’m not at ease with it because he’s not Pan. Pan is really a different entity, in mythology Pan is an entirely different creature. The Faun is the trickster and he plays with Ofelia’s emotions in an attempt to get her to a true decision at the end. He pushes her, pushes the buttons of fear, gratitude, loyalty, to see if they will taint her in the very last test. In my own mind, he is the Toad, the Pale Man and every other antagonistic occurrence. That is why all the fairies – including the ones that were eaten – are there at the end with him. MDD: Pan seems to me like your richest, most multilayered and multifaceted film. GDT: One of my favourite schools of painting is the Symbolist school. Rops, Schwabe, Redon, etc., because you can actually operate deeper under the guise of a thematic or genre-based image. A Mexican Symbolist named Julio Ruelas has a fantastic painting called ‘Piedad’/‘The Profane Pieta’ and, at first glance, it looks like a pretty

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piece done by a loyal Catholic; but, as you look closer, you see that the Christ on the cross has an erection, that the spirit of death has taken him, and that his mother lies at the base of the cross with one breast exposed, with a snake biting into it. Symbols are lovingly inlaid to add to a second or third reading, and even to change radically if you combine them. Symbols have that capacity; they are not ciphers that remain immutable. That is why I was talking to you about juxtaposition, because 1+1 in art doesn’t equal 2. Symbols are not additive; they are factors in a multiplication! Symbols bounce off each other. I have layered Devil, Cronos and Pan very carefully. Cronos took me about eight years, Devil took me more than that and Pan was a very intense three or four years. If you watch the movie carefully, everything is related to each other – gender roles, maternity, pagan mythology, Catholic mythology, symbolism; everywhere there is something more. My hope is that it all remains invisible to most people. One of the things that we did that no one has ever asked me about, and which is very, very underground, is that I wanted to show the female figures that Ofelia relates to as possibilities of her future. She can choose to be the mother, the obedient one, or she can choose to be the housekeeper and be disobedient and committed. But she chooses a third option; she chooses entirely her own option. And the thing that we did that was very underground is that when I was casting the movie, I wanted the girl to look more like the housekeeper than her mother. So when you are watching the movie, you find it an easier fit between the housekeeper and Ofelia than between Ofelia and the mother. So in a very implicit way I’m showing you which of the two females I like more. MDD: And I guess they also represent the options that women had at the time? GDT: Yes, but what I like is that Ofelia chooses a third possibility, all of her own, and she does not buy into either of those options. And the theme of obedience is also present in the doctor, the father and the mother. Sometimes it is addressed in a rather frontal way. The thing is, in my own experience, every week, every day, I find that when you are obeying, I generally think you are doing the wrong thing. If you find there are two options, one difficult and one easy, 99 per cent of the time the hard choice is the good choice in my opinion.

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Notes 1 Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan, novella published in 1890. Online version available at http://www. gutenberg.org/files/389/389-h/389h.htm. 2 All translations supplied by the author and indicated in footnotes. And all internet links cited were working at the time of writing. 3 Pan’s Labyrinth, DVD Extras (released by Optimum). 4 Available at http://mirada.com/ about/. 5 Jonathan Romney, ‘Guillermo del Toro: The Monster Man’, Independent, 19 November 2006, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/films/features/ guillermo-del-toro-the-monster-man424957.html. 6 Part of a phone interview with the author on 21 March 2013 included as a coda at the end of this book. 7 Interview with the author. 8 Interview with the author. 9 Romney, ‘Guillermo del Toro’. 10 Anthony Storr (ed.), The Essential Jung: Selected Writings. Introduced by Anthony Storr (London: Fontana Press, 1998, original publication, 1983). 11 Box Office Mojo, available at http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/ chart/?id=foreign.htm. 12 Guinness World Records, available at http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/ records-12000/highest-box-office-filmgross-for-a-mexican-film/. 13 Box Office Mojo. 14 ‘El laberinto del fauno se convertirá en musical’, Cinemanía, 7 December 2012, available at http://cinemania.es/

noticias-de-cine/el-laberinto-del-faunose-convertira-en-musical. 15 Argimiro Ruano, ‘Filosofía de la Eternidad. Idea y sentimiento de lo eterno en cerebros históricos’, Revista Transdisciplinaria Kalathos Metro-Inter, UPR-Mayagüez, 11 May 2010, available at http://kalathos.metro.inter.edu/Num_7/ Argimiro%20Ruan1%20Eternidad%20 Documental.pdf. 16 Paul Julian Smith, ‘El laberinto del fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006): Spanish Horror’, in Maria M. Delgado and Robin Fiddian (eds), Spanish Cinema 1973–2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 145–6. 17 Smith, ‘El laberinto del fauno’, p. 146. 18 Interview with the author. 19 Interview with the author. 20 Jonathan Rosenbaum blog, available at http://www.jonathanrosenbaum. com/?p=14279. 21 Romney, ‘Guillermo del Toro’. 22 Steve Earles, The Golden Labyrinth: The Unique Films of Guillermo del Toro (Hereford: Noir Publishing, 2009), p. 9. 23 Doña Lupe short, available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=c43izfo9ZAc. 24 Quoted in The Devil’s Backbone DVD commentary. 25 (Translation) Rafael Ruiz, ‘He visto un ovni, y de chiquilín oí un fantasma’, El País, 3 August 2008, available at http://elpais.com/diario/2008/08/03/ eps/1217744807_850215.html. 26 (Translation) Ruiz, ‘He visto un ovni, y de chiquilín oí un fantasma’.

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27 Mark Kermode, ‘Girl Interrupted’, Sight & Sound vol. 16 no. 2, December 2006, pp. 20–4, available at http:// old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/issue/ 200612. 28 Part of the introduction GdT has written to a Penguin book on horror to be published in autumn 2013. Sent by email to the author by GdT. 29 Interview with the author. 30 Quoted on Pan’s DVD. 31 Doctor Casares, quoted on The Devil’s Backbone DVD. 32 Stephen Schwartz, ‘The Paradoxes of Film and the Recovery of Historical Memory: Vicente Aranda’s Works on the Spanish Civil War’, Film History: An International Journal vol. 20 no. 4, 2008, p. 501. 33 For more information, see Historia Siglo 20 Website at http://www. historiasiglo20.org/HE/14b-1.htm and José Miguel Campo Rizo, La ayuda de Mussolini a Franco en la Guerra civil española, Cuadernos de Historia 105 (Madrid: Arco/Libros, S.L., 2009), p. 10. 34 (Translation) Quoted at Institute Cervantes Virtual, available at http:// www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/ el-exilio-cultural-de-la-guerra-civil19361939—0/html/ff9eb780-82b1-11dfacc7-002185ce6064_62.html#I_1_. 35 Interview with the author. 36 (Translation) Montse Dopico, ‘Maquis gallegos, pioneros de la resistencia antifranquista’, El Mundo, 10 April 2011, available at http://www.elmundo.es/ elmundo/2011/04/10/galicia/ 1302457086.html. 37 (Translation) Professor Secundino Serrano, author of Maquis, historia de la

Guerra Antifranquista, quoted at http://www.uce.es/DEVERDAD/ ARCHIVO_2001/15_01/31_maquis.html. 38 For a detailed visual account of the defence of Guadarrama during the war, see Foro Social de la Sierra del Guadarrama at http://www. forosocialsierra.org/Memoriagraficadela guerraenlaSierradeGuadarrama.htm. 39 Schwartz, ‘The Paradoxes of Film and the Recovery of Historical Memory’, p. 501. 40 Schwartz, ‘The Paradoxes of Film and the Recovery of Historical Memory’, p. 502. 41 Schwartz, ‘The Paradoxes of Film and the Recovery of Historical Memory’, p. 502. 42 For a personal account of the French camps, see exile Nemesio Raposo’s testimony originally published in Historia y Vida no. 23, February, 1970 reproduced in H.B.H.A.C. at http://www. sbhac.net/Republica/Introduccion/ Derrota/Campos/Campos.htm. 43 For more information, see Exiliados Republicanos Españoles at http://www. exiliadosrepublicanos.info/es/ historia-exilio. 44 For more information on the cultural exile to Mexico, see Instituto Cervantes Virtual. 45 (Translation) Ascensión H. de León-Portilla (ed.), España desde México: vida y testimonio de transterrados (Madrid: Algaba ediciones, 1978–2003), pp. 105–6. 46 For more information, see Instituto Cervantes Virtual. 47 De León-Portilla, España desde Mexico, pp. 104–5.

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48 (Translation) Instituto Cervantes Virtual. 49 Interview with the author. 50 Jason Wood, The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp. 3–4. 51 Quoted in Mark Monahan, ‘Guillermo del Toro on Luis Buñuel’s Nazarín (1959)’, Telegraph, 13 September 2004, available at http://www.telegraph. co.uk/culture/3623878/Guillermo-delToro-on-Luis-Bunuels-Nazarin1959.html. 52 Monahan, ‘Guillermo del Toro on Luis Buñuel’s Nazarín (1959)’. 53 (Translation) Alejandro Tomasini Bassols, ‘Aspectos de la Vida Espiritual en México’, in En Voz Alta (México: ISSSTE, 2010), p. 206. Available as La religión en México: 1960–2010 at http://www.filosoficas.unam.mx/ ~tomasini/ENSAYOS/Religion.pdf. 54 DVD extras. 55 (Translation) Adriana J. Bergero, ‘Espectros, escalofríos y discursividad herida en El espinazo del Diablo. El gótico como cuerpo-geografía cognitivaemocional de quiebre. No todos los espectros permanecen abandonados’, MLN vol. 125 no. 2, March 2010 (Hispanic issue), p. 436. 56 Kam Hei Tsuei, ‘The Antifascist Aesthetics of Pan’s Labyrinth’, Journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy online, 10 March 2011, available at http://sdonline.org/47/ the-antifascist-aesthetics-of-pan’slabyrinth/. 57 Allison Mackey, ‘Make It Public! Border Pedagogy and the Transcultural Politics of Hope in Contemporary

Cinematic Representations of Children’, College Literature vol. 37 no. 2, Spring 2010, p. 179. 58 Jack Zipes, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno)’, Journal of American Folklore vol. 121 no. 480, Spring 2008, p. 240. 59 Zipes, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno)’, p. 236. 60 David Archibald, The War That Won’t Die: The Spanish Civil War in Cinema (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012), p. 8. 61 GdT top ten entry for ‘The Greatest Films Poll’, Sight & Sound, available at http://explore.bfi.org.uk/ sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter/962. 62 (Translation) Quoted in Carmen Sánchez Dávila, ‘Guillermo del Toro es un “freak” por naturaleza’, Filmweb, 1 April 2007, available at http://www. filmeweb.net/magazine.asp?id=535. 63 José Arroyo, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, Sight & Sound vol. 16 no. 12, December 2006, pp. 66–8. 64 Image available at http:// congregacionobispoaloishudal.blogspot. co.uk/2011/12/santa-lucia-virgen-ymartir-13-de.html. 65 Image can be accessed at http://www.bridgemanart.com/asset/ 195609/Bayer-Herbert-1900-85/LonelyMetropolitan-1932-silverprint. 66 Keith Oatley, Uncanny, PsycCRITIQUES vol. 53 no. 5, 2008, [np]. 67 Song available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= mc2BBhZoq5o. 68 Interview with the author. 69 DVD extras. 70 DVD extras.

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71 (Translation) Quoted in Carlos Feal, Miguel de Unamuno: El resentimiento trágico de la vida. Notas sobre la revolución y la Guerra civil españolas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991), p. 51, cited in Julio Aroistegui and François Godicheau, Guerra Civil: mito y memoria (Madrid: Marcial Pons, Historia [u.a.], 2006), pp. 138–9. 72 Kristine Kotecki, ‘Approximating the Hypertextual, Replicating the Metafictional: Textual and Sociopolitical Authority in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth’, Marvels & Tales vol. 24 no. 2, 2010, p. 244. 73 Barbara Creed, The MonstrousFeminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge, 1993, reprinted 1994), pp. 1–7. 74 Tereixa Constenla, ‘Con un pequeño gemido, basta’, El País, 10 May 2009, available at http://elpais.com/ diario/2009/05/10/cultura/1241906403_ 850215.html. 75 For a list of the tasks assigned to women by Pilar Primo de Rivera, see Mujer y Falange in Consejo de las mujeres del municipio de Madrid at http://www.consejomujeresmadrid.org/ Upload/DOC161_mujer-falange.pdf and http://www.consejomujeresmadrid.org/ Upload/DOC194_mision.gif, a page of the Sección Femenina which explains among other things that, ‘the woman’s mission is to serve (…) God’s first idea was “the man”. He thought of the woman afterwards’ (translation). 76 Michael Paoletta, ‘Björk in Collaborative Mood on New Album’, Reuters/Billboard, 4 May 2007, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/

2007/05/07/people-bjork-dcidUSN0448737720070507. 77 DVD extras. 78 For a detailed account of this subject, see Richard Lindsay, ‘Menstruation as Heroine’s Journey in Pan’s Labyrinth’, Journal of Religion and Film vol. 16 no. 1, Article 1, 2012. 79 Bergero, ‘Espectros, escalofríos y discursividad herida en El espinazo del Diablo’, p. 437. 80 Interview with the author. 81 See website on the area, available at http://www.rodeiramar2a.com/es/ entorno/peninsula-del-morrazodisfrute-de-nuestro-hotel-en-lapeninsula-del-morrazo/moana/. 82 Diana Mandiá, ‘Un libro repasa la historia de más de 200 guerrilleras’, El País, 15 December 2011, available at http://elpais.com/diario/2011/12/15/ galicia/1323947897_850215.html. 83 Margaret R. Yocom, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth/ El laberinto del fauno’, Marvels & Tales vol. 22 no. 2, 2008, p. 347. 84 DVD extras. 85 DVD extras. 86 Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Eve Matrix, Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2010), p. 63. 87 Film production notes. 88 (Translation) Secundino Serrano Fernández, Wenceslao Álvarez Oblanca, ‘Epílogo para una guerra incivil’, León: Revista de la Diputación Provincial vol. 27 no. 67, 1987, p. 121. 89 Madeleine Davis, ‘Is Spain Recovering Its Memory? Breaking the Pacto del Olvido’, Human Rights Quarterly vol. 27 no. 3, August 2005.

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90 Interview with Javier Cercas, broadcast 21 March 2012, RatioNational, ‘The Pact of Forgetting’, available at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/ programs/bigideas/javier-cercas/ 3899456. 91 Edu Sánchez, ‘La exhumación de Lorca desentierra viejos bulos sobre el poeta de Granada’, Soitu.es Actualidad, 24 September 2008, available at http://www.soitu.es/soitu/2008/09/23/ actualidad/1222154802_505682.html. 92 William O. Deaver Jr, ‘El laberinto del fauno: una alegoría para la España democrática’, Romance Notes vol. 49 no. 2, 2009, p. 161. 93 Jennifer Orme, ‘Narrative Desire and Disobedience in Pan’s Labyrinth’, Marvels & Tales vol. 24 no. 2, 2010, p. 224.

94 Interview with Javier Cercas. 95 Mackey, ‘Make It Public!’, p. 181. 96 For more information, see María José Esteso Poves, Niños robados, de la represión franquista al negocio (Madrid: Diagonal, 2012) or the RTVE reportage on the subject, available at http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/ informe-semanal/informe-semanalninos-robados-del-franquismoreclaman-memoria/356136/. 97 For an example, see Jesús Duva, ‘Médicos, monjas y padres traficaban con bebés comprados en Marruecos’, El País, 8 May 2013, available at http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/ 2013/05/08/actualidad/1368046202_ 986942.html.

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Credits El laberinto del fauno/ Pan’s Labyrinth Spain/Mexico/USA 2006 Directed by Guillermo del Toro Produced by Guillermo del Toro Bertha Navarro Alfonso Cuarón Frida Torresblanco Álvaro Augustín Written by Guillermo del Toro Director of Photography Guillermo Navarro Edited by Bernat Vilaplana Production Designer Eugenio Caballero Music by Javier Navarrete ©Estudios Picasso, Tequila Gang and Esperanto Filmoj Production Companies Telecinco presents an Estudios Picasso, Tequila Gang and Esperanto Filmoj production in association with CaféFX, Inc. with the participation of ICAA. Produced in association with Sententia Entertainment. a film by Guillermo del Toro

Executive Producers Belén Atienza Elena Manrique Co-executive Producer Edmundo Gil Associate Producer CaféFX, Inc. Line Producer Víctor Albarrán Unit Production Manager Leire Aurrecoechea 1st Assistant Producer Javier Mateos Morillo 2nd Assistant Producer Luis María Reyes Production Secretary Vivien Quetglas Production Assistants Cristina Campos Silvia Alonso Fernanda Plana Ana Izquierdo Marc de Blas Production Trainee Marcos Rambal Orueta Filming Assistants Inés Manrique Juan Fernández Isasi Hector Ubon Ignacio Guijarro Álvaro Diez Mariano Gallego Juan Antonio Pérez Israel Herranz Alonso

Location Assistants Beatriz Pita Luis Botella María Torrella Nicolas Soto Barbara Allegue Alberto Tome Ignacio Rodríguez Asier Andueza Marta Berraondo José Miguel Real Paco Calzado Barbara Yacobi Estudios Picasso Business Manager Luca A. Giammatteo Production Accountant Jaime Gómez Auditors Elena García Espinel Carlos Ayesa 1st Assistant Accountant Olga Blázquez Assistant Accountants Marilo Cruz Yuri Montero Héctor Montoliu 1st Assistant Director Jorge Calvo González 2nd Assistant Directors Alberto Terrón Borja Grandio 3rd Assistant Directors Karin Marzocchini Jorge Vega Alejandro Gutierrez Gómez

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Trainee Directors Galder Arriaga Amaury Vergara Assistant to Guillermo del Toro Yuri Montero Script Supervisor Carmen Soriano Casting Director Sara Bilbatúa Assistant Casting Macarena Pombo Cristina Perales Extras Casting Penelope ‘A’ Camera 1st Assistant Juan Leiva ‘A’ Camera 2nd Assistant Jon Elizegui ‘B’ Steadicam Operator Jaromir Sedina Additonal Steadicam Bernardo Rosetti ‘B’ Camera 1st Assistant Sergio Delgado ‘C’ Camera Operator Bruce Saintclaire ‘C’ Camera 1st Assistant Rodrigo López ‘D’ Camera Operator David Domínguez ‘D’ Camera 1st Assistant Paco Laso

Camera Assistants Olaf Guembe Antonio Belón Camera Trainee Alvaro García Video Technicians Isabel Seco Saioa Nadal Still Photography Teresa Isasi Gaffers David Lee Ricardo Rodríguez ‘Cherokee’ Electricians Antonio López Carlos Sacha Roberto de Miguel Enrique Casas Oscar Pérez Daniel Guirles Rigging Gaffer José Luis Torrecilla Rigging Electricians Ramón Muños Ariel García Carlos Andrés Javier Pérez Gorka Esquisabel Key Grips Rick Stribling Edmund Sanz Steadicam Grip Pavel Proisl Grips Fernando ‘Nano’ López Gómez Ramón Muñoz Bravo Carlos López Alonso Antonio Linares Santiago Casado José Manuel Cabello

Digital Effects/Visual Effects CaféFX, Inc. Supervisor: Everett Burrell Producer/Co-supervisor: Edward Irastorza Executive Producer: Vicki Galloway Weimer CG Supervisor: Akira Orikasa Lead CG Artists: Cory Redmond Alex Friderici Lighting Directors/Technicians: Phil Giles Patrice Saenz Leigh van der Byl Debi Lyons Kirk Cadrette Models: Joe Hoback Matte Painter: Robert Stromberg Effects Animators: Dariush Derakhshani Szymon Masiak Technical Animation Supervisor: Domenic DiGiorgio Animation Supervisor: Ron Friedman Animation Co-ordinator: Greg Jonkajtys CG Animators: Todd Widup Kris Costa Jason Thielen Soo Youn Han Niel Lam Sing

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Character Rigging: Scott Krehbiel Tracy Irwin Compositing Supervisor: Mike Bozulich Lead Compositor: Richard Reed Compositors: Michael Kennen Adam Stern Aaron Kupferman Chris Ledoux Aaron Singer Rotoscope Artists: Ruben Rodas Michael Kaelin Melissa Widup Steve Hutchins Chris Pinto Ryan Bozajian Jen Cantwell Tina Wallace VFX Managing Editor: Desi Ortiz VFX Editor: Kale Whorton Set Co-ordinator: Fernanda Plana VFX Co-ordinator: Wendy Hulbert Lead Renderer: Brian Openshaw Assistant Renderer: Bernardo Rodríguez Lead Software Developer/ Programming Co-ordinator: Rob Tesdahl Software Developer: Paul Hudson

Support: Jack Wells Larry Thomas Daniel Torres Albert Soto Lap Lu Accountant: Sharron Sever Fairy/Ballerina: Brittney Bush Script Translation into English: Elizabeth Irastorza Office Staff: Kathi Galloway Vange Ingan Rhonda Thompson Sue Reyes Stick Insects: Cheech Chong (may they rest in peace) Production Executives: Jeff Barnes David Ebner O.D. Welch Special Effects Supervisor Reyes Abades Special Effects Co-ordinator Ángel Alonso

Special Effects Technicians César Abades Oscar Abades Fernando Benito Joaquín Vergara Daniel Rebou Miguel Barragán Juan Aledo García Tómas Urbán Ruiz José Manuel Rodrigo Ortiz Estudios Picasso Post-production Supervisor: Javier Ugarte EPC Post-production Consultant: Joe Fineman Supervisor: Michael Toji Esperanto Filmoj Post-production Mandy Goldberg Assistant Editors Francisco J. Amaro Evan Schiff Set Building Construcciones Escenicas Moya S.L. Set Decorator Pilar Revuelta Set Designer Carlos Giménez Conceptual Designer William Stout Assistant Art Directors Gabriel Liste Carlos Zaragoza Alicia Castro

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Art Department Assistant Boris Fernández Draftsman Carlos Revuelta Set/Storyboard Draftsman Raúl Monge Set Draftsmen Raúl Villares Javier Villariños Set Dresser María Rodríguez On-set Dresser Laura Musso Set Dressing Assistant Philippe Gilbert Mayanobe Fairytale Illustrations Pablo Echeverría ‘Libro de las Encrucijadas’ Illustrations Esther Gilli Property Master Federico del Cerro Production Buyer Iñaki Rubio Set Properties Héctor Gil Patricia Cuevas Assistant Props Builders Juan Antonio Torrijos Anahi Denti Raimundo Rudilla Roberto Torralba Mario Martín Crespo Tania Wahlbeck Manuel Chamorro Arturo Revuelta

Sculptor Nicolás Villar Props Blacksmith Luciano Romero Set Carpenter Angel Cascajares Set Painter Luis Gómez Graphic Designers Sergio Rozas Natalia Montés Set Assistant Ariel Margolis Stagehands Pedro Bobeanu Radu Daniel Cortez Brisca Seydou Dia Aziz Elbaam Tanase Ciprian David Irusta Heroiu Marian Radu Mihai Abdel Sennak Modeller Emilio Ruiz Additional Fiction Caterva Binding Jesús Córtez Construction Manager Ramón Moya Construction Coordinators Pedro de La Fuente José Luis Moya Head Carpenters Antonio Segura Fernández Enrique Alberto Feito Santos

Carpenters Manuel Marín Segura José Antonio Ramos Muñoz José Torralba Cid Carlos Bodega Sanchez Antonio Moya Palomar Emilio Cañuelo Sola Carlos A. Gómez Rodríguez Félix Sampablo García Freddy Guzman Antonio Muñoz Marín Angel Rodriguez Pedroviejo Raúl de La Fuente Torralba Jesús María Antón Rodríguez Ángel Cascajares Heranz Manuel Ángel Marín Moya Blas Diaz Exposito Andrés Martinez Descalzo Manuel Romero Romero Juan José Barriuso Montiel Mariano Buitrago Pérez José Cañuelo Sola Allouche León McGregor Francisco Javier Hernández Head Locksmith José L. Sepulveda González

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Locksmiths Fernando Yubero Gambero Angel Gil Moñino Antonio Corral Calvo Juan José Cabrera Miguel Sepulveda González Pedro A. Hernández Moyano Antonio Pérez Caro Juan Javier Yubero Gambero Plasterers Ildefonso Jara Santos Juan Ramón Gómez Ruiz Luis Aguilar Basilio Gómez Ruiz Amador Jiménez Basilio Gómez Zambrano Pablo Jiménez Galán Germán García Hernández Jesús Pagador Martín Head Painters Jesús López Torralba José García Donado Martín Sanchez Fernández Painters Rudolph James Mercado Luis Gómez Rodríguez Francisco Martínez Sanchez Pedro Calderón Muñoz Manuel García García Pedro Carpio Alejandro Sierra Diez

Sculpting/Construction – Special Props and Fictional ‘Artefacts’ Tomás Gómez Bey Ruth García Álvarez Juan Carlos Ardura David González García Francisco Soto García Rubén García Menéndez Pablo Ginés Miras David Ratón Escarpa Alicia Nicolás Diaz Stanislav Koychev Tanev Iliya Todorov Klinkkov Antonio López Palmero Adrián Iustin Lixandu Jesús Álvarez Serrato Costume Design by Lala Huete Costume Supervisor Delfín Prieto Standby Costumes Asun Arretxe Rocío Redondo Head Seamstress Eva Urquiza Seamstresses Yoli Urquiza Jairo Montero José Luis Aranda Rosa Alvárez Sofía Medem Usue Peña Carla Rivera Key Make-up José Quetglas Key Hairstylist Blanca Sánchez Make-up Artist Mar Paradela

Additional Make-up Elvira Guijarro Martha Marín Assistant Make-up Sandra Tejedor Trainee Make-up Carmen Picazo Special Make-up Effects and Animatronics DDT FX Special Make-up/ Animatronic Effects Supervisors: David Martí Montse Ribe Lead Artists: Arjen Tuiten Arturo Balseiro Mechanical Design: Xavi Bastida Crew: Pablo Perona Pau Loewe Nelly Guimaras José M. Meneses Juan Serrano Merche Arque Lorenzo Tamburini Shohei Terashita Raquel Guirro Aleix Torrecillas Alberto Hortas Dani Vidal

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Conceptual Design Sergio Sandoval Ismael Ferrer Georgina Giotti Collaborators: Carlés Montosa Amalia Mayor Francisco Martín Adolfo Vila Cortés Iberica Taller Maravilla Digital Intermediate Deluxe | EFilm | Toronto Senior Colourist: Chris Wallace Digital Producer: Nick Iannelli DI/VFX Scanning/Recording: Nick Paulozza Trevor Lewis DI Editorial: Dave Muscat Ahmad Ismail Digital Opticals: Chris MacKenzie Motassem Younes Dust Busters: Christine Barclay Mag Sarnowska Chris Alexander Bernadette Couture Laboratory Image Laboratories Barcelona Photographs for Digital Scanning Saioa Nadal Alvaro Navarro

IFilm Scanning Co-ordinator: Laura Maynadé Scanning: Laura Sánchez Music Performed by City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Mario Klemens Piano: Jaroslava Eliaásová First Violin: Bohumil Kotmel Vocals: Lua Music Recordist/Mixer Marc Blanes Music Recording Studio Hudební Studio Barrandov (Prague) Music Mixing Studio Soundtrack (Barcelona) Music Recording Assistant Michael Hradisky Music Producer Javier Ugarte Soundtrack ‘Soy un pobre presidiario’ (I’m a Poor Convict) by Daniel Montorio Fajo, Mauricio Torres, Sáenz, Rafael de León y Arias de Saavedra, Concepción Camps; performed by Angelillo [Angel Sampedro Montero]; licensed by Southern Music Española S.L.; ‘En Los Jardines de Granada’

(In the Gardens of Granada) by Ion Vasilescu; performed by Rafael Medina; licensed by Peermusic Española, S.A.U. Sound Designer Martín Hernández Live Sound Recordist Miguel Polo Boom Operator Alejandro Polo Sound Assistant Fran González Sound Effects Designers Roland Thai Alejandro Quevedo 1st Assistant Dialogue/Sound Editor Sergio Díaz Sound Effects Editor Dana Blanco Foley Artists Carlos Zambrano Dana Blanco Sound Editing Services Ztrackz Studio Technician Fabián Pérez Re-recording Mixer Jaime Bashkt Recordist Michelle Couttol ADR Studio – Spain 103 Todd-AO Estudios, SL Dolby Sound Consultant Carlos Alberto Cuevas

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Military Adviser Fernando Martínez de Baños Dialogue Coaches Rebeca García José Luis Saiz Stunt Co-ordinator Jordi Casares Stunt Performers Angel L. Gómez Fernandez Michael Elvis Linés Julia Bonilla Sabina Emilio Rubio Ivan Baena Justo Usín Guillermo Moreno Fernando Millán Alejandro López Estaci Diego Herberg Canela Ivan Baena Delgado Enrique Salvador José Manuel Cerdán Antonio Arnalte López Juan Francisco García Enrique López Juan Montoya César Solar Álvaro Hernandez Guiomar Alonso Eduardo Moratilla Marcos Lorente Talens Ángel L. Gómez de La Torre Juan J. Rodríguez David Jiménez Cambón Ivan López Nieto Jorge López Nieto Juan José Rodríguez Juan Carlos López Nieto

Set Vehicles Francisco Pueche Vicente Molins Drivers Miguel Sanchez Chema Ruiz Oscar Mora Fernando Hurtado Jorge Olivera Luis Patiño Miguelón Miguel Sanchez Jr Javier Roldán Julián Hernández Guillermo Cuervo Javier Sanchez Matías Pilas Miguel Ángel López Steven Juan Luis Grandes Brian Howard Susana Morales Antonio Calvo Félix Buenache Construction Drivers Manuel Monge Martin José María Cruz García Set Catering Restaurante Casa Nicanor Panadería Quadra Panis Pastelería Filipinas Catering Rafael Catering On-set Nurse Mayte Vilches Legal Counsel for Estudios Picasso: Jacobo Souviron

for Esperanto, Alfonso Cuarón and Frida Torresblanco: Henry Holmes for Tequila Gang, Guillermo del Toro and Bertha Navarro: George Hyman for OMM: José Luis Sanz ‘Making of’ – Spain DVD Extras Producer/Editor: Manuel Romo Camera Operator: Helena Serrano Sound: Guillermo González ‘Making of’ – United States Producer/Editor: Miguel Torresblanco Camera Operator/Assistant Editor: Martín Gómez Assistant Editor: Ariel Roncoli Estudios Picasso Marketing Director Patricia Echevarría Press Co-ordinator Trini Losano Media Liaison David Sánchez Piti Alonso for Esperanto Filmoj Production Assistants: Carlos Matheus Tania Zarak Gabriela Rodriguez

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Special Thanks Himani, thanks Kevin K. and Jon T.!; Alejandro González Iñarritu; Marc Weiss; Cyril Drabinsky Thanks town hall of El Espinar (Segovia), España, Estatal Correos y Telégrafos; Wolford; Litografía-Arte; Iñigo Navarro; Cornejo, wardrobe: Humberto Cornejo; Cherokee Luz; tapestries: Ardura, Mateos; Vista South América (Miami): George Weiner; Viajes Ábaco; Travel Store; DHL Express - Pilar Ortega; Brian Howard – Negel; production services: Honorio Cruz; medical services: Sanigest, Fátima; stationery: Sumosa, Susana; Ángel Martín (Commercial Director) Pepe Alonso (Laboratory Manager); livestock: Richard Ardura (cow), WC Portatil; chemical toilets: Iván; Alcantarillado y Abastecimientos S.L., Cuba de Agua, José Herranz Ramírez; Guardias Forestales Medio Ambiente; Guardias Forestales ayto. El Espinar; La Sierra, Gas-Oil Grupos;

cars, cranes and mobile workshops: Paco; furniture: Decoración Dicas; Sergio Durán Lázaro, Agua y Riego (Cuba); Gregorio Martinez Garrido; Museo Postal y Telegráfico, Sociedad Anónima; Pura López; Hotel AC Avenida de América; work permits: Legiscine; Miguel Ángel San Antonio; Jesús de La Vega; EPC; beer: Mahou; Casa Atrezzo; Julián Mateos; Vazquez Hermanos; GMA Office, S.L.; Carlos Mellado; Servicar; insurance: Aon Gil y Carvajal, Pedro Muñoz; walkie talkies: Tecnitran; water: Montepinos; Pepe Barrios; Alquiler Coches; special transportation: Transpaular S.L.; Proveedores Segovia; cranes: Bermejo; generators: Miguel/ Julián; Hrmnos Sebastián S.L. Retro-TractorRemolque; Manolo/ Fernando; Pedro Abad Dorrego Tractor Desbrozadora; electrical installation: Rimetec, Noelia, Nicolás (Tnte. Alcalde); hardware: Ferreteria El Espinar, Juan Antonio;

extinguishers: Areofeu, S.A., Edgar Velardo; hammer machine: Antonio Torres García, Toñin (contact), Miguel (owner); Roseta Alvarez; Maria José Navarro; Telson; Esperanza, Manolo; User 73; EPK; Material Eléctrico; Kodak; Mensavisión; transportation: Megino – Ángel Megino; Rafael Hostelería – Rafael García Velasco; Procoex – Jacinto García; Eduardo Carpintero; Hertz, Laser Rent a Car; Riesgos Laborales, Laborispc, Jaime Casar/Gema; modular offices: IDM – Verónica Fernández; containers: Construcciónes Benavente S.L. – Rafael y Antonio; security: Panaeuropea de Seguridad Integral S.L.; delegated zone: José Aragoneses Parra, manager: Juan Carlos Bermúdez; Consejo Regulador del Cava; FCO. Javier Palomero, Instalación Pastor Eléctrico; hardware: Ferreteria San Rafael; waterproof clothing: Jotache Prolab, S.L.; plumbing: Fontanero Ayto. – Aurelio

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USA: Creative Style Inc.; ITS TV Media; CaféFX, Inc.; Deluxe | EFilm | Toronto Cameras Ace, Inc. Stock Kodak Cranes and Technocrane Cameras EPC Technocrane Cranes Alaska CAST Sergi López Vidal Maribel Verdú Mercedes Ivana Baquero Ofelia Álex Angulo doctor Ariadna Gil Carmen Doug Jones faun Eusebio Lázaro father Paco Vidal priest Federico Luppi king Manolo Solo Garcés César Vea Serrano Roger Casamajor Pedro Ivan Massagué El Tarta

Gonzalo Uriarte Frances Juanjo Cucalón mayor Lina Mira mayor's wife Mario Zorrilla first aid boss Sebastián Haro Civil Guard captain Mila Espiga doctor’s wife Pepa Pedroche Conchita María Jesús Gatoo Jacinta Ana Sáez Paz Chani Martín Trigo Milo Taboada young man Fernando Albizu engineer Pedro G. Marzo manager José Luis Torrijo Sergeant Bayona Doug Jones pale man Iñigo Garcés young guerrilla Fernando Tielve young guerrilla 2 Chicho Campillo old man Pablo Adán narrator/voice of the faun

Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS MPAA 42674 Spanish theatrical release by Warner Bros. Pictures España on 11 October 2006. Running time: 118 minutes. Classification: 18. Mexican theatrical release by Videocine, S.A. de C.V. on 20 October 2006. Running time: 118 minutes. Classification: 15. US theatrical release by Picturehouse Entertainment on 29 December 2006 (limited) and 19 January 2007 (general). Running time: 112 minutes. Rated: R. UK theatrical release by Optimum Releasing on 24 November 2006. Running time 119 minutes 31 seconds. Classification: 15 Filmed from 11 July 2005 to 15 October 2005 (11 weeks) on location in Madrid and in the hills of Aguas Vertientes and the surrounding community (El Espinar, Segovia) in Spain. Budget estimated at €13,500,000. Credits compiled by Julian Grainger

PA N ’ S L A B Y R I N T H

Bibliography Archibald, David, The War That Won’t Die: The Spanish Civil War in Cinema (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012). Aroistegui, Julio and François Godicheau (eds), Guerra Civil: mito y memoria (Madrid: Marcial Pons, Historia [u.a.], 2006), pp. 138–9. Arroyo, José, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, Sight & Sound vol. 16 no. 12, December 2006, pp. 66–8. Bergero, Adriana J., ‘Espectros, escalofríos y discursividad herida en El espinazo del Diablo. El gótico como cuerpogeografía cognitiva-emocional de quiebre. No todos los espectros permanecen abandonados’, MLN vol. 125 no. 2, March 2010 (Hispanic issue), pp. 433–56. Campo Rizo, José Miguel, La ayuda de Mussolini a Franco en la Guerra civil española, Cuadernos de Historia 105 (Madrid: Arco/Libros, S.L., 2009), p. 10. Cedeño Rojas, Maribel, Saturno, melancolía y El laberinto del fauno de Guillermo del Toro (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, Winter 2010). Constenla, Tereixa, ‘Con un pequeño gemido, basta’, El País, 10 May 2009, available at http://elpais.com/ diario/2009/05/10/cultura/ 1241906403_850215.html. Creed, Barbara, The MonstrousFeminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge, 1993, reprinted 1994), pp. 1–7. Davis, Madeleine, ‘Is Spain Recovering Its Memory? Breaking the Pacto del

Olvido’, Human Rights Quarterly vol. 27 no. 3, August 2005. de León-Portilla, Ascensión H. (ed.), España desde México: vida y testimonio de transterrados (Madrid: Algaba Ediciones, 1978–2003), pp. 104–6. Deaver, William O. Jr, ‘El laberinto del fauno: una alegoría para la España democrática’, Romance Notes vol. 49 no. 2, 2009, pp. 155–65. del Toro, Guillermo (script), El laberinto del Fauno (Madrid: Ocho y Medio, Libros de cine, 2006). Domingo, Alfonso, El canto del búho. La vida en el monte de los guerrilleros antifranquistas (Madrid: OberonMemoria, Grupo ANAYA, 2002). Dopico, Montse, ‘Maquis gallegos, pioneros de la resistencia antifranquista’, El Mundo, 10 April 2011, available at http://www. elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/04/10/ galicia/1302457086.html. Duva, Jesús, ‘Médicos, monjas y padres traficaban con bebés comprados en Marruecos’, El País, 8 May 2013, available at http://sociedad. elpais.com/sociedad/2013/05/08/ actualidad/1368046202_986942. html. Earles, Steve, The Golden Labyrinth: The Unique Films of Guillermo del Toro (Hereford: Noir Publishing, 2009). ‘El laberinto del fauno se convertirá en musical’, Cinemanía, 7 December 2012, available at http://cinemania. es/noticias-de-cine/el-laberinto-delfauno-se-convertira-en-musical.

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Esteso Poves, María José, Niños robados, de la represión franquista al negocio (Madrid: Diagonal, 2012). Feal, Carlos, Miguel de Unamuno: El resentimiento trágico de la vida. Notas sobre la revolución y la Guerra civil españolas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991), p. 51. Greenhill, Pauline and Sidney Eve Matrix, Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2010). Jones, Tanya, Studying Pan’s Labyrinth (Leighton Buzzard: Auteur, 2010). Kam Hei Tsuei, ‘The Antifascist Aesthetics of Pan’s Labyrinth’, Journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy online, 10 March 2011, available at http://sdonline.org/47/theantifascist-aesthetics-of-pan’slabyrinth/. Kermode, Mark, ‘The Guardian/NFT Interview with Guillermo del Toro’, Guardian, 21 November 2006, available at http://www.guardian. co.uk/film/2006/nov/21/ guardianinterviewsatbfi southbank. Kermode, Mark, ‘Girl Interrupted’, Sight & Sound vol. 16 no. 12, December 2006, pp. 20–4, available at http:// old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/ issue/200612. Kotecki, Kristine, ‘Approximating the Hypertextual, Replicating the Metafictional: Textual and Sociopolitical Authority in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth’, Marvels & Tales vol. 24 no. 2, 2010, pp. 235–54.

Lindsay, Richard, ‘Menstruation as Heroine’s Journey in Pan’s Labyrinth’, Journal of Religion and Film vol. 16 no. 1, Article 1, 2012. Machen, Arthur, The Great God Pan, novella published in 1890. Online version available at http://www. gutenberg.org/files/389/389-h/ 389-h.htm. Mackey, Allison, ‘Make It Public! Border Pedagogy and the Transcultural Politics of Hope in Contemporary Cinematic Representations of Children’, College Literature vol. 37 no. 2, Spring 2010, pp. 171–85. Mandiá, Diana, ‘Un libro repasa la historia de más de 200 guerrilleras’, El País, 15 December 2011, available at http://elpais.com/diario/2011/ 12/15/galicia/1323947897_850215. html. Millar Babovic, Sarah (Thesis), Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Spain and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2001, California State University, Long Beach, May 2009, available at http://gradworks.umi.com/1466186. pdf . Monahan, Mark, ‘Guillermo del Toro on Luis Buñuel’s Nazarín (1959)’, Telegraph, 13 September 2004, available at http://www.telegraph. co.uk/culture/3623878/Guillermodel-Toro-on-Luis-Bunuels-Nazarin1959.html. Oatley, Keith, ‘Uncanny’, PsycCRITIQUES vol. 53 no. 5, 2008. Orme, Jennifer, ‘Narrative Desire and Disobedience in Pan’s Labyrinth’, Marvels & Tales vol. 24 no. 2, 2010, pp. 219–34.

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Paoletta, Michael, ‘Björk in Collaborative Mood on New Album’, Reuters/Billboard, 4 May 2007, available at http://www.reuters. com/article/2007/05/07/peoplebjork-dc-idUSN0448737720070507. Romney, Jonathan, ‘Guillermo del Toro: The Monster Man’, Independent, 19 November 2006, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/films/features/ guillermo-del-toro-the-monsterman-424957.html. Rose, James, Studying The Devil’s Backbone (Leighton Buzzard: Auteur, 2009). Ruano, Argimiro, ‘Filosofía de la Eternidad. Idea y sentimiento de lo eterno en cerebros históricos’, Revista Transdisciplinaria Kalathos Metro-Inter, UPR-Mayagüez, May–November 2010, available at http://kalathos.metro. inter.edu/Num_7/Argimiro%20 Ruan1%20Eternidad%20Documental. pdf, pp. 145–6. Ruiz, Rafael, ‘He visto un ovni, y de chiquilín oí un fantasma’, El País, 3 August 2008, available at http://elpais.com/diario/2008/08/ 03/eps/1217744807_850215.html. Sánchez, Edu, ‘La exhumación de Lorca desentierra viejos bulos sobre el poeta de Granada’, Soitu.es Actualidad, 24 September 2008, available at http://www.soitu.es/ soitu/2008/09/23/actualidad/122215 4802_505682.html. Sánchez, Francisco J., ‘A Post-National Spanish Imaginary. A Case-Study: Pan’s Labyrinth’, Comparatist vol. 36, May 2012, pp. 137–46.

Sánchez Dávila, Carmen, ‘Guillermo del Toro es un “freak” por naturaleza’, Filmweb, 1 April 2007, available at http://www.filmeweb.net/magazine. asp?id=535. Schwartz, Stephen, ‘The Paradoxes of Film and the Recovery of Historical Memory: Vicente Aranda’s Works on the Spanish Civil War’, Film History: An International Journal vol. 20 no. 4, 2008, pp. 501–7. Serrano Fernández, Secundino and Wenceslao Álvarez Oblanca, ‘Epílogo para una guerra incivil’, León: Revista de la Diputación Provincial vol. 27 no. 67, 1987, pp. 119–24. Smith, Paul Julian, ‘El laberinto del fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006): Spanish Horror’, in Maria M. Delgado and Robin Fiddian (eds), Spanish Cinema 1973–2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013). Southworth, Herbert R. (Paul Preston, ed.), El mito de la cruzada de Franco (Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2011, original edition 1964). Storr, Anthony (ed.), The Essential Jung: Selected Writings. Introduced by Anthony Storr (London: Fontana Press, 1998, original publication, 1983). Tomasini Bassols, Alejandro, ‘Aspectos de la Vida Espiritual en México’, in En Voz Alta (Mexico: ISSSTE, 2010), p. 206, available as La religión en México: 1960–2010 at http://www. filosoficas.unam.mx/~tomasini/ ENSAYOS/Religion.pdf.

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Wood, Jason, The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema (London: Faber and Faber, 2006). Yocom, Margaret R., ‘Pan’s Labyrinth/El laberinto del fauno’, Marvels & Tales vol. 22 no. 2, 2008, pp. 345–8.

Zipes, Jack, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno)’, Journal of American Folklore vol. 121 no. 480, Spring 2008, pp. 236–40.