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Pan's Labyrinth

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Pan's Labyrinth Copyright material – 9781844576418 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.palgrave.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 Laura Mulvey, Birkbeck College, Edward Buscombe University of London William Germano, Cooper Union for Alastair Phillips, University of Warwick the Advancement of Science and Art Dana Polan, New York University Lalitha Gopalan, University of Texas at B. Ruby Rich, University of California, Austin Santa Cruz Lee Grieveson, University College London Amy Villarejo, Cornell University Nick James, Editor, Sight & Sound Copyright material – 9781844576418 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) Copyright material – 9781844576418 Pan’s Labyrinth Mar Diestro-Dópido A BFI book published by Palgrave Macmillan Copyright material – 9781844576418 © Mar Diestro-Dópido 2013 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN on behalf of the BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE 21 Stephen Street, London W1T 1LN www.bfi.org.uk There’s more to discover about film and television through the BFI. Our world-renowned archive, cinemas, festivals, films, publications and learning resources are here to inspire you. Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. Front cover design: Santiago Caruso Series 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). Set by Cambrian Typesetters, Camberley, Surrey Printed in China This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data 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 978–1–84457–641–8 Copyright material – 9781844576418 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 Copyright material – 9781844576418 6 B F I F I L M C L A S S I C S 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. Copyright material – 9781844576418 PA N ’ S L A B Y R I N T H 7 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 thirteen- year-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. Copyright material – 9781844576418 8 B F I F I L M C L A S S I C S 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 Copyright material – 9781844576418 PA N ’ S L A B Y R I N T H 9 a kaleidoscopic way of looking at GdT’s Pan, that this book is also attempting.
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