Thoughts on Pan's Labyrinth
by Iris Amara
I've been thinking about Pan's Labyrinth a lot since I saw it last weekend. Something about it left me feeling very unsettled, and I wasn't quite sure exactly what it was. There's the obvious issue of the violence and pain that is shown so brutally throughout the movie, but that's not what was really bothering me. I think I'm starting to understand my reaction now that I've had some time to process the film, although I still have a lot to think about - I'm definitely going to have to see it again.
I've read some reviews of the movie since I saw it, and I've listened to the opinions of several different people. One question that seems to come up frequently is how "real" the fantasy world in the film was. Were Ofelia's encounters with the fairies and the Faun real? Were they in her imagination? Was the entire magical world something she made up? To me, that seems like a moot point. I see the entire film as a sort of fairy tale - within the context of the film, it was all "real". The magical world and the physical world co-exist side-by-side - some people can see both, some can be part of both, some can see only one.
I hated the ending of the film. And I didn't quite understand why, because I really liked the film up until that point. Now that I've had time to reflect on it, I think the thing I hated about the ending was that it felt too true - if that makes any sense. The story really had two endings - in one, Ofelia is reunited with her father the King and rules the Underworld as a princess. In the other, Mercedes is left to deal with the pain of Ofelia's death and to provide a future for her brother. By dying, Ofelia obtains a happy ending for herself, and a sad one for Mercedes. By showing both outcomes, the film left me feeling very torn - am I happy for Ofelia? Am I sad for Mercedes? Can I be both? And...that's exactly what happens when someone dies.
I don't know what happens after we die. I like to believe that it's something good, but I'm very aware of the fact that I'm not basing that on much other than my hope that it's true. So when someone dies, and people say things like "he's gone to a better place" or "she's with God now", I agree with them to a certain extent, but at the same time.....we're left here without them, and it really sucks. I think that putting too much focus on whatever happens to a person after death puts us at risk of minimizing the pain that the people left behind feel. Sometimes we even feel guilty about feeling sad, thinking "he wouldn't have wanted us to cry". But he's not here anymore. Why shouldn't we be sad about that?
The point I'm trying to get to (in a roundabout way) is that to me, Ofelia's story is the story of life and death for all of us. We go through our lives never really sure how much control we have. We try to exert some control over our surroundings, we look for mentors and guides to help us. We're given tasks that we don't understand, challenges that we think we can't handle, questions that we never really find answers to. We do the best we can - sometimes we screw up. Sometimes we get a second chance. And in the end, we die, we leave this life and others carry on without us. In the grand scheme of things, our individual lives are not that important. But to each other, to the people who live their lives alongside us and love us and miss us when we're gone, our lives are vastly important. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile those two views, just like it's hard to reconcile the idea of everlasting life with the fact that the death of someone we love hurts so much. But it's important to acknowledge both views, and to find a balance between them.
I'm going to stop there for now - I don't know if any of this made sense to anyone but me, and I'll probably have more to post later as I continue to mull over this movie. I'd be very interested in hearing anyone else's thoughts on the film...
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