Introduction: Pan's Labyrinth / El Laberinto del Fauno
 URL of this web page: http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/FA125/PansLabyrinth2006/introPansLabyrinth.htm
Mexico-Spain, 2006; in Spanish, with English subtitles; Run time: 119 min.
MPAA RATED R for graphic violence & some language (see "Parents Guide for El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)")
Director: Guillermo del Toro
  b. 1964, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
Director, Screenwriter, Producer, Special Effects Make-Up Artist, Storyboard Artist, Actor
& more (see IMDb's "Guillermo del Toro")

Faun's Voice Over [English translation of the first spoken lines heard in the film opening]:
A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain,
there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world.
She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine.
One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped.
Once outside, the brightness blinded her
and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from.
Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died.
However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her,
until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning . . . ("Memorable Quotes for El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)").

MLA Style Works Cited bibliographical entry - Option 1 (minimum required information):

Pan's Labyrinth (El Labertino del Fauno). Dir. Guillermo del Toro. PictureHouse - Telecinco - Estudios Picasso Tequila Gang Esperanto Filmo, 2006. New Line Home Entertainment, 2007. DVD.

MLA Style Works Cited bibliographical entry - Option 2 (adding helpful bibliographical information):

Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish: El Laberinto del Fauno). Wr. & Dir. Guillermo del Toro. Perf. Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú,  Doug Jones, Ariadna Gil, Álex Angulo. PictureHouse -Telecinco - Estudios Picasso Tequila Gang Esperanto Filmo, 2006. New Line Home Entertainment, 2007. [New Line 2-Disc Platinum Series] DVD.

Filmography Information
See also Pan's Labyrinth Official Movie Site, Picturehouse, 2008:
http://www.panslabyrinth.com/

Pan's Labyrinth. Spanish: El Laberinto del Fauno  - Film first released: 2006
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Producers: Bertha Navarro, Alfonso Cuarón, Frida Torresblanco, Alvaro Augustin
Screenplay Writer: Guillermo del Toro
Cinematographer/Director of Photography: Guillermo Navarro
Music: Javier Naverrete
Production Design: Eugenio Caballero
Editor: Bernat Vilaplana
 Production Companies: PictureHouse -Telecinco - Estudios Picasso Tequila Gang Esperanto Filmo
DVD: New Line Home Entertainment, 2007.
DVD Version: New Line 2-Disc Platinum Series.

Main Characters & Performers:
Ofelia / Princess Moanna [main character / protagonist] played by Ivana Baquero
Capitán Vidal [Ofelia's Fascist step-father / antagonist] played by Sergi López
Mercedes [Capt. Vidal's housekeeper, Republican sympathizer & Ofelia's friend] played by Maribel Verdú
Carmen Vidal [Ofelia's mother & Captain Vidal's wife] played by Ariadna Gil
The Doctor [physician to both Fascist Capt. Vidal's household and Republican resistance fighters hiding out in nearby forests] played by Álex Angulo
The Faun & the Pale Man [magical creatures/monsters] played by Doug Jones

For more complete filmographical information, see these Works Cited sources:
"Full Cast and Crew for El laberinto del fauno (2006)" (offered by IMDb)
"Full Credits: Pan's Labyrinth" (offered by Pan's Labyrinth Official Movie Site)
Learn more about the film & its director from IMDb: Internet Movie Database:

Laberinto del fauno, El (2006)
URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/

Guillermo del Toro [b. 9 Oct. 1964, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico]
URL: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0868219/

Learn more from IMDb's collection of "External" Film Reviews, which may be accessed by following links provided on this web page:

External Reviews for El Laberinto del fauno (2006)
URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/externalreviews

Film Genre(s), Setting & Synopses

Film GENRE/S per IMDb: "Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, War" ("El laberinto del fauno").

SETTING: Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) is a modern day fairy tale set in a military outpost somewhere outside Madrid in rural Spain, 1944. The Second Spanish Republican government had been overthrown during Spain's 1935-1939 Civil War, resulting in victory of the "Nationalists"  - supported by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and most Roman Catholic clergy -  and in establishment of the right-wing Fascist dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (who remained in power until his death in 1975).  After the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, surviving pro-Republican resistance fighters continued to wage guerilla warfare against the Franco's dictatorship, and used internal sabotage tactics to help anti- fascist Western allied forces win World War II in Europe (1939-1945). By 1944, many pro-Franco military outposts, like that of the fascist Capitán Vidal and his repressive troups in Pan's Labyrinth, had been established across the Spanish countryside and charged with eradicating remaining local enclaves of Republican resistance fighters.

FILM SYNOPSES: In her laudatory Salon.com review of Pan's Labyrinth, Stephanie Zacharek offers this synopsis of the film's first part:

. . . Ofelia (played by a wonderful young Spanish actress named Ivana Baquero) is just on the edge of adolescence -- a time that seems to go on forever while you're living through it, but is really only just the barest sliver of moon in a lifetime. Her [biological] father has died, and as the movie opens, she's traveling through the Spanish countryside with her fragile, pregnant mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), to a remote military outpost where the father of the baby, Carmen's new husband -- and Ofelia's stepfather -- is waiting for them. That stern ramrod of a man is Captain Vidal (Sergi López, . . . ), and when he greets the arriving travelers (they're late), it becomes clear that he's barely interested in Carmen and has even less interest in Ofelia: He's fixated on his unborn child, which he's certain will be a boy.

Although Carmen urges Ofelia to make the best of her new life, she's desperately lonely in her cold surroundings: The captain's huge, dark house -- he has turned an abandoned mill into his military headquarters -- creaks and groans at night as if it were alive; there are ghastly creatures carved into the posts of the bed she shares with her mother. Her only friends are the cherished books she has brought with her and the captain's sympathetic but cautious servant, Mercedes (Maribel Verdú, . . .) who is secretly spiriting food and medicine to the rebel fighters who live in the nearby forest, still hoping to overthrow Franco's oppressive government.

And then a greenish, buzzing insect that Ofelia befriended in the forest just before her arrival reappears to her and transforms, before her eyes, into a tiny flying man. He leads her to an underground lair where a strange faun (Doug Jones), with curly ram's horns and piercing feline eyes, reveals her true identity to her: He [the Faun] believes she [Ofelia] is really Princess Moanna, daughter of the King of the Underworld. But before that's certain, she must perform three dangerous tasks.

New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane, who is a bit less enthusiastic about the film, offers this evaluative synopsis of Pan's Labyrinth:

The Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who made “The Devil’s Backbone,” digs deeper still into his chosen field of the political horror story. The new movie [Pan's Labyrinth] is set in 1944 in a rural Spanish backwater, where Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl of unnerving poise, travels to meet her new stepfather (Sergi López), who commands a military outpost. One question posed by the film is, Who is the monster here? Is it the stepfather [i.e. Capitán Vidal], with his creaking gloves and his savage treatment of local republican troublemakers? Could it be Franco, who has brought the country to this pass? Or is it the creatures—a mixture of animal, vegetable, and alien—that Ofelia meets in a stone labyrinth, and under whose eyes she endures a series of harsh, not to say sadistic, challenges? At times, her adventures are hard to watch, and the whole film works at a pitch of violence that will shock admirers of more placid fantasy. The result is provoking, inventive, and clever to a fault; everything has been planned and thought through with such care that some of the spontaneity has been squeezed from the proceedings. If it lives and breathes, it is largely due to Lopez [i.e. actor Sergi López who plays Capitán Vidal] and to Álex Angulo, who is wonderful in the Chekhovian role of a good doctor. In Spanish.

Works Cited & Recommended Film Reviews/Commentaries

Atkinson, Michael. "Moral Horrors in Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth: The Supernatural Realm Mirrors Man's Inhumanity to Man." Rev. of Pan's Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo del Toro. Film Comment 43.1 (Jan.-Feb. 2007): 50-53. Print.
 [NOTE: This article is available to COCC students as a PDF full text document via COCC Barber Library Academic Search Premier subscription database, accession number 23694262. Last accessed: 13 Apr. 2009.]

"Biography for Guillermo del Toro." IMDb: The Internet Movie Database. IMDb.com-Amazon.com,1990-2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0868219/bio>.

del Toro, Guillermo. "The Power of Myth."  Interview [DVD Special Feature: Disc 2]. Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno). Dir. Guillermo del Toro. New Line Home Entertainment, 2007. [New Line 2-Disc Platinum Series] DVD.

"El laberinto del fauno (2006)." The Internet Movie Database. IMDb.com -Amazon.com,1990-2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/>.

Emerson, Jim. "Pan's Labyrinth (R)." Rev. of Pan's Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo del Toro. Chicago Sun-Times 29 Dec. 2006. rogerebert.com, 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010.  <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articleAID=/
20061228/REVIEWS/61228001>.

"External Reviews for El laberinto del fauno (2006)." IMDb: The Internet Movie Database. IMDb.com-Amazon.com,1990-2009. Web. 13 Apr. 2009. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/externalreviews>.

"Full Cast and Crew for El laberinto del fauno (2006)." The Internet Movie Database. IMDb.com -Amazon.com,1990-2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/fullcredits>.

"Full Credits: Pan's Labyrinth." 2006. Pan's Labyrinth Official Movie Site. Picturehouse, 2008. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.panslabyrinth.com/panslabyrinth_credits.pdf>.

"Guillermo del Toro." IMDb: The Internet Movie Database. IMDb.com-Amazon.com,1990-2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0868219/>.

Lane, Anthony. Rev. of Pan's Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo del Toro. The New Yorker 12 Feb. 2007: 21. Print.

"Memorable Quotes for El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)." IMDb: The Internet Movie Database. IMDb.com-Amazon.com,1990-2009. Web. 13 Apr. 2009. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/quotes>.

Miller, Timothy. "Escaping into the Real: The Fantasy of Pan's Labyrinth." Internet Review of Science Fiction Dec. 2008. IRoSF.com. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10488>.

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno). Dir. Guillermo del Toro. PictureHouse -Telecinco - Estudios Picasso Tequila Gang Esperanto Filmo, 2006. New Line Home Entertainment, 2007. DVD.

Pan's Labyrinth Official Movie Site. Picturehouse, 2008. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.panslabyrinth.com/>.

"Parents Guide for El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)." The Internet Movie Database. IMDb.com -Amazon.com,1990-2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/parentalguide>.

Richstatter, Katje. "Two Dystopian Movies . . . and Their Visions of Hope." Rev. of Pan's Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo del Toro; & Rev. of Children of Men, dir. Alfonso Cuarón. Tikkun 22.2 (Mar./Apr. 2007). Academic Search Premier. Ebsco, 2009. Web.
[NOTE: This article is available to COCC students as an HTML Full text document via COCC Barber Library Academic Search Premier subscription database. Last accessed: 13 Apr. 2009.]

Scott, A. O. "In Gloom of War, a Child's Paradise." Rev. of Pan's Labyrinth (2006), dir. Guillermo del Toro. New York Times 29 Dec. 2006. [Rpt.] NewYorkTimes.com. [NYT Critics' Pick]. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/12/29/movies/29laby.html>.

Smith, Paul Julian. "Pan's Labyrinth (El labertino del fauno)." Rev. of Pan's Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo del Toro. Film Quarterly 60.4 (Summer 2007): 4-9.
[PDF full text document available to COCC students via COCC Barber Library Academic Search Premier subscription database, accession number 25643553. Last accessed: 13 Apr. 2009.]

Travers, Peter. Rev. of Pan's Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo del Toro. Rolling Stone 28 Dec. 2006. [Rpt.] RollingStone.com: Reviews: Movies, 2009.  Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/10345062/review/12987263/pans_labyrinth>.

Zacharek, Stephanie. "Pan's Labyrinth: Guillermo del Toro's Beautiful and Harrowing Fairy Tale Blends Nighttime Monsters with the Everyday Horror of Franco's Spain." Rev. of Pan's Labyrinth (2006), dir. Guillermo del Toro. Salon.com 13 Oct. 2006: Salon Arts & Entertainment: Movies. Web. 13 Apr. 2009. <http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/
2006/10/13/pans_labyrinth/index.html>.

Some film sequences may be re-viewed online on YouTube.com
(perhaps useful viewing reminders though the quality is often poor):

Pan's Labyrinth on YouTube - URL:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Pans+Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth Lullaby
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96ju7754pXU

Pan's Creatures [the Faun & the Pale Man
with commentary by Guillermo del Toro, Doug Jones, & Ivana Baquero]
 URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L74coPk1iO8&feature=PlayList&p=5E2B89DEA75B9EE0&index=17

Child Eating Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth
[i.e. Ofelia & the Pale Man sequence]
 URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9YD2PFF31E

Pan's Labyrinth: A Tribute
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqeL5SbC7yE&feature=PlayList&p=5E2B89DEA75B9EE0&index=2
[Cora's description: a Montage of scenes from Pan's Labyrinth]

Pan's Sanctuary **MAJOR SPOILERS** [Pan's Labyrinth MV]
 URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwww6eeuJI0&feature=PlayList&p=5E2B89DEA75B9EE0&index=9
[Cora's description: Another Montage of scenes from Pan's Labyrinth edited by "gahooley,"
 who supplied a musical soundtrack - "Sanctuary" by Utada Hikaru -
which is suggestive of gahooley's interpretation but is not in the film.]

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 URL: http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/FA125/PansLabyrinth2006/introPansLabyrinth.htm
Last updated: 06 April 2010