I revisited Pan’s Labyrinth last month, and aside from my frustration that Ivana Baquero clearly doesn’t have the career she deserves, I was filled with warmth at the realization that Ofelia is truly one of my favourite heroines of all time.
Set in 1944 after the Spanish Civil War, eleven-year old Ofelia travels with her pregnant mother to join her stepfather in his rural villa, where he and his men are attempting to rout the last remaining rebels that oppose the fascist regime. Captain Vidal is a cold and cruel man, and Ofelia can’t fathom why her mother ever married him.
But this barely figures into her story (at least to start with). One night she follows a fairy into the labyrinth that lies on the villa grounds, and creeps down a spiraling set of steps where a faun is waiting for her. He has a story to tell, as strange as it is intoxicating: that she’s the reincarnation of a princess who fled from her Underground Kingdom, whose father has opened portals all over the world in the hopes that she might one day be returned to him.
It sounds like the sort of fantasy a lonely little girl would come up with (who among us didn’t imagine ourselves as a lost princess as a child?) but in Ofelia’s case everything points to this story being real. And all she has to do to prove her identity is pass three tests…
Interviews with Guillermo del Toro about Pan’s Labyrinth are always fascinating, and he has plenty to say about the character of Ofelia and how she fits into the film’s central thesis. He’s often pointed out that Ofelia is the only character in the film who never takes a life (even Ofelia’s mother ends up throwing the mandrake root in the fire) and it’s her clear conviction that she does not have the right to harm her baby brother – even with the threat of losing what she so desperately wants – that ultimately saves her.
No one can put it better than the man himself:
If people watch it carefully, the precise wording of the faun's words to the girl is: "You have to pass three tests before the full moon shines in the sky. We have to make sure that your spirit is intact and not become mortal."
That's the real purpose of the tests. It's not if she gets the dagger and she gets the key, those are the mechanics of the test, mechanics which she can then proceed to fault. She can flunk the tests. The mechanics of the test she succeeds in. She believes in herself. She does what she thinks is right. She fucks up here and there but—when the real test come, when she is cornered with no other options but to either kill or give her own life—she chooses to put her own life at risk rather than the kid's.
That's a real test. That's what makes her immortal. That's what makes her that she has not become a mortal. So [in] the movie all the tests are a misdirection.
Gah, I love it. To del Toro, disobedience is a crucial part of life – not for what it might gain you, but for what it reveals about yourself when you refuse to give into the cruelty of the world around you. Ofelia’s world is one of danger and defiance, and her story is one of innocence and integrity winning out over the violence of fascism simply by refusing to partake in it. Even at the cost of her own life, she wins a profound moral victory.
She died so young, but in stark contrast with the dying Vidal being told that his son: “will never even know your name”, we the audience know that Ofelia’s presence will linger, not only in the brother she saved, but in signs as subtle and fragile as a white flower blooming on a tree branch.
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