LibGuides: English: Pan's Labyrinth

Useful Links

Del Toro Films: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
This article contains plot, cast and notes on influences and effects, plus other useful information.
Embracing the Darkness, Sorrow, and Brutality of Pan’s Labyrinth
Fairy tales are often stripped of their darkest and most threatening elements, or transformed into complex morality tales to mirror current values, the victim of an overprotective industry of children’s literature.
Pan's Labyrinth Study Guide
Via Film Education, this study guide is downloadable via PDF and will assist in examining the themes and symbols of Pan's Labyrinth.
Review: In Gloom of War, a Child's Paradise - The New York Times
Set in a dark Spanish forest in a very dark time — 1944, when Spain was still in the early stages of the fascist nightmare from which the rest of Europe was painfully starting to awaken — “Pan’s Labyrinth” is a political fable in the guise of a fairy tale. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Does the moral structure of the children’s story — with its clearly marked poles of good and evil, its narrative of dispossession and vindication — illuminate the nature of authoritarian rule? Or does the movie reveal fascism as a terrible fairy tale brought to life?
Pan's Labyrinth - Film Quarterly
With Pan’s Labyrinth, however, writer-director Guillermo del Toro has built on his proven skills in fantasy (Hellboy in 2004) and Spanish history (The Devil’s Backbone from 2001) to produce a work that is at once a logical development of his artistic trajectory and a wholly unexpected masterpiece from a director identified with such low-status genres as horror.
'Pain should not be sought - but it should never be avoided' - The Guardian
For sheer imaginative brio, Pan's Labyrinth is one of the films of the year. But the dark fable was a labour of love for director Guillermo del Toro, who says that violence in his native Mexico is key to his extraordinary vision

Film: Pan's Labyrinth

In the facist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world.

Rating: MA15+

Production Year: 2010

Duration: 1:55:00

Video: Guillermo Del Toro interview

Film director Guillermo Del Toro talks about his latest film "Pan's Labyrinth" with "metromix on CLTV" host Marcus Leshock. "Pan's Labyrinth" is one of the recent classics, a dark horror film that explores the fantasy of a child during the Spanish civil war. The "Alfonso" discussed in the interview is fellow Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, who was releasing his film "Children of Men" around the same time as Guillermo's movie.

Video: Pan's Labyrinth: Disobedient Fairy Tale

Pan's Labyrinth: Disobedient Fairy Tale – Disobedience in relation to characters but also the narrative of the film: how del Toro ‘undermines a single authoritarian master narrative, like those championed by Vidal and fascism in general, by setting up a network of intertexts that make meaning a matter of choice’. I love this idea. It’s a great springboard to multiple interpretations as part of authorial intention, and by extension the “reading practices” idea central to this Area of Study.

Video: The Director's Notebook - Pan's Labyrinth 2006 EXTRAS

Director’s Notebook – del Toro shows his sketches of the set and discusses their evolution.

Background Reading: Spanish Civil War

A Short History of the Spanish Civil War by Julián Casanova
ISBN: 9780857733047
The years of the Spanish Civil War filled twentieth-century Spain with hope, frustration and drama. Not only did it pit countryman against countryman, and neighbor against neighbor, but from 1936-39 this bitterly contended struggle sucked in competing and seemingly atavistic forces that were soon to rage across the face of Europe, and then the rest of the world: nationalism and republicanism; communism and fascism; anarchism and monarchism; anti-clerical reformism and aristocratic Catholic conservatism.
Life and Death of the Spanish Republic by Henry Buckley; Paul Preston (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9780857721709
In 1940, Daily Telegraph correspondent Henry Buckley published his eyewitness account of his experiences reporting from the Spanish Civil War. Life and Death of the Spanish Republic is a unique account of Spanish politics throughout the entire life of the Second Republic, from its foundation on 14 April 1931 to its defeat at the end of March 1939, combining personal recollections of meetings with the great politicians of the day with eyewitness accounts of dramatic events. This important book is one of the most enduring records of the Spanish Republic and the civil war and a monumental testimony to Buckley's work as a correspondent. Providing a fascinating portrait of a crucial decade of contemporary Spanish history, and based on an abundance of the eyewitness material that only a really assiduous resident journalist could collect, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Spanish Civil War.

Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso
Probably Picasso's most famous work, Guernica is certainly the his most powerful political statement, painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War.

Guillermo del Toro's other films

Film: The Shape of Water
The Shape of Water is a 2017 romantic fantasy film directed by Guillermo del Toro. Set in 1962 Baltimore, Maryland, the film follows a mute custodian at a high-security government laboratory who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature, and decides to help him escape from death at the hands of an evil colonel.
Production year: 2017
Duration: 2:01:07
Film: Hellboy
At the end of World War II, the Nazis attempt to open a portal to a paranormal dimension in order to defeat the Allies, but are only able to summon a baby demon who is rescued by Allied forces and dubbed "Hellboy" (Ron Perlman). Sixty years later, Hellboy serves as an agent in the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, where he, aided by Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), a merman with psychic powers, and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), a woman with pyrokinesis, protects America against dark forces.
Production Year: 2004
Duration: 1:53:09
Film: Pacific Rim
Long ago, legions of monstrous creatures called Kaiju arose from the sea, bringing with them all-consuming war. To fight the Kaiju, mankind developed giant robots called Jaegers, designed to be piloted by two humans locked together in a neural bridge. However, even the Jaegers are not enough to defeat the Kaiju, and humanity is on the verge of defeat. Mankind's last hope now lies with a washed-up ex-pilot (Charlie Hunnam), an untested trainee (Rinko Kikuchi) and an old, obsolete Jaeger.
Production Year: 2013
Duration: 2:02:25