Fascism In The Film Pan's Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth is as much of a fantastic fairy tale as it is a story about how fairy tales clash with fascism of the post-Civil War Spain. It is seemingly far too often that fantastic films are a disappointment, by patronizing the viewer, making no statement about the real world and is merely a form of youthful escapism. Director Guillermo Del Toro provides a much needed serious fantasy. The film is also special in the fact there is not a national identity attached to it. It is not a national product because of the cross-national production companies, director, and actors. The displacement of a national identity markets the notion of Spanish as a brand, to anyone within the Spanish language (Sanchez). It is not bound to just the language …show more content…
It should be noted that the film places an emphasis on the idea of control with the actions of sadistic Captain Vidal (Sanchez). The film portrays the Captain as struggling with himself and the memory of his father. He carries his father’s pocket watch at all times, because it is a permanent memory of when his father died in battle. His fascination with the time of his father’s death harkens to Fascism as a culture of death and a masculine adoration of war (Sanchez). Captain Vidal’s obsession with time is known as the “Cronus Complex,” Cronus being the Greek Titan who represents time and death (VC). His acceptance that he, and all living things, are just to die, is very much a part of him. His entire existence can be boiled down to the story of his father, who died and broke his pocket watch. Meticulously he tends to his father’s pocket watch in order to preserve it for just the right moment. “The only decent way to die” Vidal believes is to die in war doing something honorable as he charged uphill into resistance gunfire, clutching his precious watch. He is trying to create a mythology of “heroism” for the “New Spain” he desperately wants a son to born into (Bond). This becomes very clear in the important dinner scene. Captain Vidal interests go beyond that of the economics of the oligarchy. His denial of having his father’s watch makes it blatant that he has …show more content…
It is not a national product rather a stylized recounting of a painful memory in Spain’s past left to the tradition of story-telling. Even at the end of the film, Guillermo Del Toro gave an honorable remembrance, the one flower blossoming on the tree, to the proponents of Franco’s Fascism who had to go into hiding after the fall of fascism. For a foreign audience the film can be used as a cautionary tale of the dangers of a powerful few. It also serves as a motivation for any nation undergoing its own political revolution. For Spain this film serves as an allegory of political liberation. Ofelia’s mother serves as Spain trusting in this strong man only to condemn herself and her daughter to terrible hardships and tremendous agony. Everyone in the film has to face this agony, whether it be suffering from the repression or dealing with the guilt of exerting such repression. Ofelia is able to escape such agonies by believing in a utopian future where she, the people, are not repressed. The power of the film came from the trauma experienced by Spain and a painful