Ofelia’s tasks resemble the sort encountered in European folk legend, and, at least through the young girl’s perspective, seem to affect the outcome of events happening around her. This invites us to see a commonality between the two sets of underground communities.
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The voice-over meanwhile describes a forest that was “home to creatures who were full of magic and wonder” and who protected and looked after one another. For example, during a split scene, Ofelia walks through one part of the woods reading her fairy tale book while Vidal leads his men through another part to search for a possible rebel hideout. The link between the fairy and real worlds is strengthened as the film progresses, particularly in sequences where both Ofelia and the rebels undertake clandestine operations. Though we’re asked to stretch our imaginations and accept the possibility of a magical world existing parallel to our own, we’re also asked to contemplate a rebel victory both scenarios seem unlikely. What links the underground resistance and the underground world of magic is, of course, the natural environment-a mysterious, verdant, and unpredictable landscape where one is just as likely to see a fairy or faun as a well-disguised guerrilla fighter.
It also helps that they have spies living and working in the same miltary outpost where Ofelia is now forced to live. These rebels have survived because they know the terrain better than Franco’s men. Early in the film we learn that Ofelia’s pregnant mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), has married Captain Vidal ( Sergi López ), who is leading the campaign against the resistance. To add even further complexity and richness, del Toro shoots the film in such a way that we are asked to contemplate the similarities between two “underground” communities. After the initial voice-over, we’re introduced to the protagonist, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), whose story runs parallel with that of the princess from the Underground Realm. As Paul Julian Smith notes, this is probably Belchite, the setting for an important battle during the Spanish Civil War (4), which instigated the conflict we see in the film. Just as the fantasy sequence ends, the camera pans up from the underworld, and when it emerges, we are suddenly amongst the ruins of a bell tower in modern Spain. Shortly thereafter, she weakens and dies. Before the main thread of the story begins, the voice-over narrator describes how a princess escapes the magical “Underground Realm” only to lose her memory when she emerges in the upper world.
“In the Underground Realm, where there are no lies and no pain, there lived a princess who dreamt of the human world.” So begins Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film El laberinto del fauno ( Pan’s Labyrinth ), which uses fairy legend to frame a narrative about Spanish rebels attempting to resist Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in the 1940s. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), which has its 10th anniversary this October, might be one of the most successful attempts to blend fantasy/dark fairy tale with political allegory.