The Beauty of The Pale Man Scene - Pan's Labyrinth

‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ is a 2006 Spanish fantasy/war film, directed by Guillermo Del Toro. The film is set in 1944 post-Spanish Civil War and the narrative follows a young girl ,Ofelia, who escapes tyrannical rule within her household and the world around her to Pan’s Labyrinth. Del Toro uses mise-en-scene to create meaning in the film, especially to enforce the binary opposition of good vs evil. Del Toro presents this by utilising the societal evils occurring in 1944 to magnify those who challenge it.

In the Pale Man scene, Ofelia is faced with her second task. Del Toro uses the mise-en-scene of set design in the sequence to help create meaning. The production designer of the film, Eugenio Caballero, made the interior of the Pale Man’s lair mirror that of a church crypt. There is a sense that Ofelia is walking into a pit of death disguised as a place of sanctum, the previous dinner party scene alludes to hell but this scene is hell. The crypt illustrates the historically sinister workings of the church. Many died as a result of the church siding with fascist rule, the Catholic Church continued down a path of sacrilege and during WWII signed an agreement to not interfere with the Nazi regime and in return the church would not be interfered with. In some translations, a crypt is described as a chamber, this parallels with WWII gas chambers and creates an atmosphere of entrapment and finality. In other translations, a crypt is more of a vault, Del Toro personifies the church’s wealth and greed through the set design. The gothic-like pillars of the set suggest security but also destruction and collapse, the weight of the churches sins is toppling and crushing.

Towards the end of the Pale Man scene, Ofelia eats the fruit from the Pale Man’s feast. This parallels with Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the bible. Ofelia and Eve give into temptation. Eve out of deception but for Ofelia it’s out of naivety and rebellion. Del Toro uses this parallel of ‘eating of the fruit’ to enhance Pan as an executioner, he eats the fairies, punishing society’s construct of what it means to be ‘guilty’, through the law of retaliation. The fruit itself is used to represent escapism for women under Franco’s reign, as they were a slave to the fascist state and Catholicism, trapped by the constraints of the patriarchy women were forced into stereotypical gender roles. An audience can also see how short lived this sense of freedom is, Ofelia was instructed not to eat or drink anything by an authority, but chooses to ignore. From the moment she picks up the fruit a viewer is made to feel uneasy, the atmosphere becomes darker and denser as with every act of rebellion one must be punished. Del Toro uses Ofelia to represent the Republican Army’s rebellion against the Nationalists -the Pale Man-.

In short, Del Toro wanted the mise-en-scene of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ to convey meaning for the viewer. The mise-en-scene adds to the narrative themes and context of the film - which helps to express Del Toro as an auteur, as many of his films draw heavily on sources of obscure fiction, fantasy and war.