Pan's Labyrinth Character Analysis

During the gruesome and bloody Spanish Civil War, tens of thousands of innocent civilians and refugees died, but even more shocking, close to 200,000 people were deliberately executed (Hochschild). In the 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia is a young girl living in Spain after the war who, along with her pregnant mother, joins the family of Captain Vidal. He is the sadistic leader of a Fascist regime and Ofelia’s new abusive step-father. A lover of fairy tales, Ofelia fantasizes that she is secretly a princess who must complete three tasks in order to escape her current reality and return to her true home in the underworld. During the movie, she is faced with the harsh realities of war and death, which are mirrored in the creatures she faces during her mystical endeavors. Director Guillermo del Toro along with cinematographer Guillermo Navaro and editor Bernet Vilaplana perfectly personify the cruelness she experiences almost an hour into the film with Ofelia’s encounter of the horrifying Pale Man, an eyeless creature with an

The camera cuts to the creature placing eyeballs into the slits in his palms. Next, he is shown raising his hands to his face mimicking the placement of where his eyes are currently missing.. The camera flashes to Ofelia again, continuing to ignore the fairies’ warnings. As she continually waves them away, the out of focus Pale Man begins shambles towards her ominously in the background. Because this is the longest shot of the sequence, it builds the suspense as Ofelia remains unaware of the impending danger. The next few shots are of the the fairies attacking the creature to protect Ofelia and the Pale Man grabbing two of them in his hands. The next few shots are of the creature eating the two captured fairies. The final two shots are of Ofelia turning to run in fear and the Pale Man licking blood off of his