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In recent issues of International Psychoanalysis, I wrote about films, Field of Dreams and Contact, which strongly suggest a fantasy of returning to the womb to meet a father long gone and a mother who died too early to be known. Last month, I wrote about Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon and The Hours which suggest a fantasy in which death offers a reunion with a loving mother and a return to a time of blissful memory. In The Hours, suicide by drowning may be linked with a return to the quiet of the womb. In Pan’s Labyrinth, we have all of these fantasies wrapped up in a family romance.
Rarely, a film maker gives us a gift of a ready made demonstration of a well known psychoanalytic concept. We have recently been given such a gift by the Mexican director, Guillelmo del Toro, whose film, Pan’s Labyrinth, provides us with a complete family romance fantasy.
Freud (1909), like many of the authors who subsequently elaborated on the family romance, placed the emergence of such fantasies at pre-puberty. In his paper, Freud says that the child begins to develop dissatisfaction with his or her parents, partly out of sexual rivalry. He emphasizes that the provocation for this dissatisfaction comes from the child being slighted. “There are only too many occasions on which a child is slighted, or at least feels he has been slighted, on which he feels he is not receiving the whole of his parents’ love, and, most of all, on which he feels regrets at having to share it with brothers and sisters. His sense that his own affection is not being fully reciprocated then finds a vent in the idea, often consciously recollected later from early childhood, of being a step-child or an adopted child. … the child’s imagination becomes engaged in the task of getting free from the parents of whom he now has a low opinion and of replacing them by others, who, as a rule, are of higher social standing.” (pp. 237-238)
The film’s central character, Ofelia, fits nicely into Freud’s plan. She is pre-adolescent when we enter her life. Her father, a tailor, has died in the Spanish Civil War. He has been replaced by her mother’s new husband, the very cold and cruel Captain Vidal, whom she will not accept as a father. Ofelia cannot feel that she is receiving all of the love of her remaining parent, having to share her with not only her stepfather, but also with the brother in her mother’s belly. (When asked how he knows the child is a boy, Captain Vidal answers, “Don’t fuck with me.”) Ofelia’s mother is dismissive of Ofelia’s one true love, her books. She appears at times to value Ofelia as a prop to please her new husband. Her mother is further removed from Ofelia by her very painful and dangerous pregnancy. In addition, Ofelia and her mother have been summoned by Captain Vidal to a remote military outpost where the last remnants of the Spanish Civil War are being fought. There is much to turn her to a family romance fantasy.
The film begins with two prologues, one having to do with the outer world in which Ofelia will live, the other with the inner fantasy world. The first is written on the screen, the style and content reminding me of the opening of Star Wars:
“Spain, 1944: The Civil War is over. Hidden in the mountains, armed men are still fighting the new Fascist regime. Military posts are established to exterminate the Resistance.”
But instead of moving to a confrontation between the brave Resistance Fighters and the soldiers of the Evil Empire, the film next shows us a pre-adolescent girl breathing rapidly, with blood coming from her nose. A melody is being hummed in the background. The blood recedes and as the narration begins, we pan into one of her dark eyes.
“A long time ago, in the Underground Realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a princess who dreamt of the human world. She dreamt of blue skies, soft breeze and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the princess escaped. Once outside, the bright sun blinded her and erased her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness and pain. And eventually she died. However, her father, the king, always knew that the princess’ soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, in another time. And he would wait for her until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning … “
During this narration, we have seen a pictorial accompaniment, but at the end, we are back in the human world of Spain, 1944, with the focus on the same girl from the opening scene sitting with her mother in a touring car, reading a fairy tale.
The two prologues engage us in contrasts between the film’s two parallel plots, between the world of fantasy and the world of reality, between a realm that is underground and inside and the one on the surface under the blinding light, between a place that is peaceful and timeless and one that is in the midst of bloody and tragic conflict.
There is some ambiguity about the narration. It seems to be told directly to the viewer, but the way that it is enclosed by the two images of the girl suggests that we are within the girl’s fantasy world. The effect is that we experience the family romance as both the daydream of the girl, Ofelia and the mythic reality of the film. That tension draws us into the fantasy with Ofelia and creates a strange tragic-sweet effect at the film’s end.
The film’s dichotomies are brought home to us gently with Ofelia’s mother’s opening words as they drive through the woods.
“I don’t understand why you had to bring so many books, Ofelia. We’re going to the country, the outdoors. Fairy tales—you’re a bit too old to be filling your head with such nonsense.”
The mother is trying to coax Ofelia with the same enticements that lead the princess to leave her underground home, “blue skies, soft breeze and sunshine.” Sunshine is usually presented as a positive force, for warmth and good humor; but here it enters into a different contrast, as part of a distant and somewhat threatening external world impinging on the world of introspection and inner fantasy. We shall see, as the film’s fantasies develop, that there is also another reason for desiring the underground realm, away from the soft breeze and sunshine.
In fact, the world into which Ofelia enters is not all sunshine and breezes. Her new stepfather is a coldly efficient man who has no empathy for her introspectiveness and whimsy. His symbol is his pocket watch. He is obsessed with punctuality and order. He is controlling and sadistic, ordering Ofelia’s mother to use a wheelchair, then squeezing the frightened girl’s hand, reproaching her for extending the wrong hand to him. Ophelia has been told by her mother to call him Father, but when the kind Mercedes, who runs the Captain’s household, refers to him as her father, she emphatically lets her know he is not her father, that her father was a tailor who died in the war.
Captain Vidal stands for both personal and institutional sadism in his desire to put down all rebellion. In an early scene we see him viciously murder a father and son picked up on suspicion, only minutes later making it clear that he knew they were innocent. The film is not subtle in its contrasts of the Fascists and the Resistance. The Resistance fighters are seemingly part of the world of nature as they appear in the forest, as if by magic. They and their collaborators within the camp, Mercedes and the local physician, are presented as brave and loyal in contrast to the sadistic Fascist soldiers, who appear out of touch with the people and the countryside.
Having lost her father, Ofelia is also missing some of her mother’s love. Her mother is preoccupied with pleasing her new, demanding husband and with his baby in her womb. She is also very ill in her pregnancy, forcing Ofelia to take the role of caregiver. Ofelia’s pain at being slighted in her mother’s love is expressed in a short dialogue between them as they lie together in bed their first night in the country.
Ofelia asks, “Why did you have to get married?”
“I was alone too long.”
Ofelia protests, “I’m with you. You weren’t alone. You were never alone.”
With all of Freud’s requirements falling into place, Ofelia turns to fantasy. As they are driving through the woods in the opening scene, the mother becomes ill, stopping the car to get fresh air. Ofelia wanders off and finds a rock on the ground with some sort of engraving. She quickly sees that it is part of some ancient looking rune that stands close by. The piece she has fits into the rune, making the eye of a face with a hole for a mouth. An insect, perhaps a cicada, suddenly emerges from the hole. At first it startles Ofelia, but she tells her mother that she has seen a fairy. As she and her mother continue to drive on, we see the cicada following in the same direction.
The fantasy coalesces into the family romance. The cicada/fairy leads Ofelia to an ancient labyrinth in the woods in which she meets a large humanoid faun, who seems to come from the earth. He identifies her as the Princess Moanna, daughter of the king of the underworld. She protests that her father was a tailor (the second time she has insisted on this), but he tells her, “You are not born of man. It was the moon that bore you” and offers as proof the existence of a moon-shaped scar on her shoulder. He presents her with a series of tasks that she must perform to prove her true identity. Ofelia readily accepts the challenge.
The violence and cruelty of life surrounding the military outpost may also drive the viewer towards the fantasy. The magical underground world has its dangers, a giant toad that is eating the life from a tree, an ogre who kills and devours. Nevertheless, the fairy tale quality of this world offers us some reassurance of a happy ending and its monsters appear strangely tame compared with their counterparts in the human world. As viewers, we are relieved to retreat to the whimsical world of fairies and underground palaces.
The family in the underground realm is protected. In the “real world” we see glimpses of loving families endangered by the war around them. The father and son who are killed by Captain Vidal are affectionate and loyal to one another. They have been out shooting rabbits, attempting to maintain their normal existence. Mercedes, the kind caretaker who befriends Ofelia, is separated from her (probably younger) brother who is with the resistance fighters in the woods. With every bit of news of fighting, we see her fear for him on her face. Mercedes and the doctor risk their lives stealing supplies under the nose of Captain Vidal, then sneaking into the woods to bring medicine and information under cover of night. Like Ofelia, Mercedes moves about in a hostile, treacherous world while her brother is in the womb of the woods, in nature. At the film’s end, his resistance fighters move in on the outpost, reuniting brother and sister.
With Mercedes and her brother we see only filial affection. Ofelia’s relationship with her brother is more complex and ambivalent. We enter it by returning to the scene in which Ofelia and her mother lie together in the dark of night. Ofelia is a little frightened of the noises. Her mother says that the country is different from the city where you hear the sound of cars and trams. In this quiet moment, she gently plays into her daughter’s magical thinking, evoking the closeness of the country to nature and magic.
“Here the houses are old. They creak. As if they were speaking.”
Within this closeness, Ofelia asks her, “Why did you have to get married?”
“I was alone too long.”
Ofelia protests, “I’m with you. You weren’t alone. You were never alone.”
Her mother answers, “When you’re older, you’ll understand. It hasn’t been easy for me, either.”
We shall see in a moment that Ofelia may already understand. At this point, the mother grimaces in pain and says,
“Your brother’s at it again. Tell him one of your stories. I’m sure he’ll calm down.”
Ofelia speaks to her mother’s womb, “My brother, my brother” and lays her head upon her mother’s belly as she begins her fairy tale. The story is of a “sad, faraway land” with a mountain of black stone atop which “a magic rose blossomed every night that made whoever plucked it immortal. But no one dared go near it because its thorns were full of poison. Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death and pain, but never about the promise of eternal life. And every day, the rose wilted unable to bequeath its gift to anyone, forgotten and lost at the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone until the end of time.”
If we take this as sexual allegory, it tells of a feminine treasure, hidden away and protected by poisonous thorns, suggesting that unconsciously Ofelia is aware of the kind of loneliness of which her mother speaks. She lulls her brother to sleep with an ending in which the rose goes untouched.
But more interesting for our purposes than the story itself is the imagery that accompanies Ofelia talking to her brother. As she begins to speak to her him, we see down into the womb, viewing the now quiet fetus. For Ofelia, the brother is present, inside her mother’s womb, listening to her tale from the surface. It adds a shade of meaning to one of the film’s dichotomies, between the underground world and the world of sunlight and human beings. Ofelia’s brother is seen living in the equivalent of an underground realm.
Ofelia speaks to her brother one more time in the film. Her mother had hemorrhaged badly and was very ill, with a high fever. At this point the magic begins to enter into the mother’s pregnancy. Hearing that Ofelia cannot complete her tasks because of her concern for her mother, the fawn gives her a magical cure.
“Look, this is a mandrake root. A plant that dreamt of being human. Put it under your mother’s bed in a bowl of fresh milk. Each morning give it two drops of blood.”
When Ofelia puts the mandrake root into milk and adds the two drops of blood it appears to come to life as a happy infant. The doctor is baffled by the mother’s recovery.
It is at this point that Ofelia again speaks to her brother:
“Brother, little brother, if you can hear me, things out here aren’t too good. But soon you’ll have to come out. You’ve made Mama very sick. I want to ask you one favor for when you come out, just one: don’t hurt her. You’ll meet her, she’s very pretty, even though sometimes she’s sad for days at a time. You’ll see, when she smiles, you’ll love her. Listen, if you do what I say, I’ll make you a promise. I’ll take you to my kingdom and I’ll make you a prince. I promise you, a prince.”
The fetus has taken on a life and a persona, animated by the image of the happy mandrake root lying in its bowl of milk. More importantly, it is the discontented baby brother who has been making Ofelia’s mother ill. She sees him as a threat to her mother’s life and in this dialogue she begs and bribes him to spare her. This fantasy is further brought to life when the captain finds the concoction under the bed and angrily accuses Ofelia of witch-like superstition, seemingly reacting as if she were trying to harm the baby. In response, Ofelia’s mother throws the root into the fire. We hear its screams and instantly the mother falls ill again, as if attacked by the wrathful fetus inside her. Captain Vidal, who has originally instructed the doctor to care for the mother, now tells him that at all cost he must save his son. His primary interest in Ofelia’s mother is as the bearer of his son. Mother and baby are at odds.
The angry brother does not satisfy Ofelia’s one request of him, to spare their mother’s life. In the end, he will not go with her into her kingdom to become a prince. Ofelia, now alone, hears that her mother has died giving birth to the baby brother as it is told to Captain Vidal. The brother is not only an intruder into Ofelia’s family, but also an angry destroyer. The stage is set for the resolution of the film’s various plots and of the family romance fantasy.
With the Resistance fighters gaining the upper hand, Ofelia is given one last task before she can take her place in the Underground Realm, that she bring her baby brother to the labyrinth. Amidst an armed battle, Ofelia carries the baby to the labyrinth with Captain Vidal in pursuit. Ofelia finds the fawn, who asks her to hand over the baby, but she sees a knife in his hand.
“The portal will only open if we offer the blood of an innocent. Just a drop of blood. A pinprick, that’s all. It’s the final task.”
Ofelia refuses to hand over the baby, telling the fawn,
“My brother stays with me.”
Ofelia remains outwardly sympathetic and protective of her brother.
The other side of her ambivalence, the frustration and anger that Freud alluded to is expressed by the fawn, who asks,
“You would give up your sacred rights for this brat you barely know? … You would give up your throne for him, he who has caused you such misery, such humiliation?”
“Yes, I would.”
“As you wish, Your Highness.”
At this point, the captain catches up with her, takes the baby and shoots Ofelia. He is met at the entrance to the labyrinth by the victorious rebels, led by Mercedes, who takes the baby from him. He is shot as he is told that his son will never know of his existence. Mercedes and the rebels then race into the labyrinth where they find the dying Ofelia. Leaning over her, Mercedes sings the lullaby she has sung for her before. As we hear the melody and see Ofelia lying on the ground, we realize that we are back at the scene that began the film.
As Ofelia lies there a drop of her blood falls into the well of the labyrinth. A light shines and Ofelia rises in a great throne room to the words, “Arise my daughter.” She looks up at a king sitting on a high throne.
“Father.”
He answers, “You have spilled your own blood rather than the blood of an innocent. That was the final task and the most important.”
We now see Ofelia’s mother sitting on a throne next to that of her father. Her mother tells her, “Come here with me, and sit by your father’s side. He’s been waiting for you so long.”
We return above ground where Ofelia’s mouth momentarily forms a smile as she dies, with Mercedes weeping for her.
The narrator concludes, “And it is said that the Princess returned to her father’s kingdom. That she reigned there with justice and a kind heart for many centuries. That she was loved by her people. And that she left behind small traces of her time on earth, visible only to those who know where to look.”
In this dramatic ending, we see the realization of the family romance, and more. Ofelia sacrifices her life for her brother. She dies and he remains alive. Her hatred of her brother is expressed by the fawn, who calls him a brat and speaks of the misery and humiliation he has caused her. But, within the film’s mythology, Ofelia has traded places with her brother. He may have the kind Mercedes as a mother, but he will forever more be excluded from his mother’s womb. Ofelia is in the “underground realm”, back into the womb with her mother and father forever.
The films, Field of Dreams and Contact, strongly suggest a fantasy of returning to the womb to meet a father long gone and a mother who died too early to be known. Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon and The Hours suggest a fantasy in which death offers a reunion with a loving mother and a return to a time of blissful memory. In The Hours, suicide by drowning may be linked with a return to the quiet of the womb. Pan’s Labyrinth brings together these fantasies. The bittersweet ending is of a girl who dies, who goes underground; but in going into the underground realm, she returns to a blissful reunion with her dead parents in a magical womb.
In this fantasy, there is a denial of death. In this it is perhaps most like Field of Dreams. In that film, death becomes a location, a cornfield in which the deceased wait like offstage actors waiting to make their appearance. In both films, we find a magical place that gives the lie to death. This fantasy of denial also informs the film’s other plot in which the brave resistance fighters overcome and kill the tyrannical captain. As we watch, we are certainly aware that the Fascists continued to rule Spain for over thirty years from that time. There was no general glorious and just victory until Franco died in his bed, but the film leaves us with a momentary sense of victory and denial of the death of a free Spain for an entire generation.
But unlike Field of Dreams, Pan’s Labyrinth offers us more than an escape from the reality of death. I called attention earlier to the ambiguity of the narrative concerning the Underground Realm. We are made to feel simultaneously that the narrator is speaking directly to us, creating a fictional reality, and that we are hearing the fantasy of a girl reading a fairy tale. As we approach the film’s end, we are again given the opportunity to experience that ambiguity, to experience death as a reality and its denial in fantasy simultaneously, as we experience the tragic death of a young, bright, creative girl and the fantasy in which her spirit lives forever basking in the light of her parents’ love.
I suspect that each viewer is aware of a different mix. I felt a great sadness combined with a strong pull to the reassuring fantasy. I found myself moving back and forth within the figure-ground emotional illusion in which I was seeing a dying girl’s last fantasy and a poetic vision in which her spirit will never die. I take this as a gift of awareness of an internal conflict, for me and perhaps for many viewers, between an acceptance of the reality of inevitable and irrevocable death and the wish for a return to a blissful reunion in a magical womb “where there are no lies and no pain.”
Freud, S. (1909) Family Romances. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume IX (1906-1908): Jensen’s ‘Gradiva’ and Other Works, 235-242.
This was published in slightly different form in the PANY Bulletin Summer, ’07 issue.