Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun

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You're getting older, and you'll see that life isn't like your fairy tales. The world is a cruel place. And you'll learn that, even if it hurts." Carmen Her mother’s voice was like a broken bell. Ofelia couldn’t remember her ever sounding like that when her father was still alive. In the bathroom, Ofelia examines the book again, hoping for clues about her next task. The book fills with red the color of blood, and Ofelia closes it, frightened. When she goes into the next room, she finds her mother, bleeding profusely. It’s just a pile of old stones,” Mercedes said. “Very old. Older than the mill. These walls have been here forever—long before the mill was built. You shouldn’t come in here. You could get lost. It has happened before. I’ll tell you the story one day if you want to hear it.” She smiled at Ofelia. There were secrets in her smile, but Ofelia liked her. She liked her very much.

Cintolo didn’t use stone for this sculpture. He carved the Faun’s likeness from wood, for wood always remembers it was once a living tree, alive and breathing in both kingdoms, the one above and the one below.People talked about all the pain the thorns of the rose could cause,” Ofelia whispered to her unborn brother. “They warned each other that whoever climbed the mountain would die. It was so easy for them to believe in the pain and the thorns. Fear helped them believe that. But none of them dared to hope that in the end the rose would reward them with eternal life. They couldn’t hope—they could not. And so, the rose would wilt away, night after night, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone. . . .” Then he left with Mercedes, and Ofelia was alone for the first time with her mother in this old house smelling of cold winters and the sadness of people from ages past. She liked to be alone with her mother. She always had, but then the Wolf had come. Please allow me not to answer your question,” Cintolo said. “I don’t know yet whether my hands will be able to create what I see in my mind. I hope, though, that despite my silence you will agree to sit for me so I may sculpt you.” The driver throttled the engine with a grunt. Wolves—that’s what they were, these soldiers accompanying them. Man-eating wolves. Her mother said fairy tales didn’t have anything to do with the world, but Ofelia knew better. They had taught her everything about it.

My young nurse.” She pushed her hand under Ofelia’s arm with a tired but happy smile. “Close the doors and turn off the light, cariño.”Cintolo wasn’t sure, but no one dared to say no to the Faun, as he was known for his temper and his influence on the king. So Cintolo went to work. One year later, hundreds of stone columns grew out of the Upper Kingdom’s soil, wearing the sad faces of Moanna’s parents, carrying the Faun’s hope that the lost princess might one day walk past them and be reminded of who she was. But once again, many years passed and there was no news of Moanna. Hope died in the Underground Kingdom like a flower bereft of rain. I do,” Mercedes replied. “You’ll see, you will love your little brother. Very much. You won’t be able to help it.” The faun hands Ofelia The Book of Crossroads, which include the instructions for how to complete the three tasks. After he disappears, Ofelia opens the book and is confused to find that there is nothing inside. Indeed, Ofelia’s grasp of fantasy is as much a virtue and a power as it is something that alienates her from the pragmatics of the real world. When she is lying in bed with her mother and the baby begins to act up in her mother’s stomach, Carmen asks Ofelia to tell the baby one of her stories, and Ofelia begins telling a fable. Ofelia is able to conceive of the world around her in terms of allegories and archetypes, to see the fanatical elements in the world. As she spins a story, we see the story unfold on the screen before us in vivid imagery. Ofelia’s next task is retrieving a dagger from an underground lair where a child-eating monster sits at a table full of food. In the process of procuring the dagger, Ofelia accidentally eats some food off the table, which is expressly forbidden, but still manages to escape.

Oh yes, there are many roses like that, the Fairy thought as she flew toward the window behind which the girl was telling her story. When she slipped into the room, her wings fluttering as softly as Ofelia’s voice, she saw them: the girl and her mother, holding each other against the darkness of the night outside. But the darkness inside the house was far more frightening, and the girl knew that it was fed by the man who’d brought them here. It’s nothing, cariño. It’s nothing, just the wind. Nights are very different here. In the city you hear cars, the tramway. Here the houses are so much older. They creak. . . .” Then one day Moanna was gone. And Cintolo remembered how often she’d asked him about the sun and the moon and whether he knew what the trees, whose roots laced the ceiling of her bedroom, looked like above the ground. The princess had been gone for 330 years when one night the Faun walked into Cintolo’s workshop, where the sculptor had fallen asleep amid his tools. He longed to comfort Their Majesties by chiseling Moanna’s countenance from a beautiful moonstone, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember the princess’s face. It sounds as if the walls are speaking, doesn’t it?” Her mother hadn’t held Ofelia like this since she had learned she was pregnant. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m giving you a surprise.”Vidal placed bronze markers on the map. Mercedes didn’t take her eyes off his gloved fingers. That’s what she was: the eyes and ears of the rabbits they hunted, as silent and invisible as a mouse. Ofelia felt reluctant to share her stories with him, but finally she sat up. Under the white sheets her mother’s body looked like a mountain covered in snow, her brother sleeping in its deepest cave. Ofelia put her head on the bump in the blanket, caressing it where her brother was moving, deep under her mother’s skin. The opening lines of the film set the stage for the fantastical world of the film. The faun tells us the story of Princess Moanna, who wandered out of the safety of the underworld and was subjected to the hardships of the world of the living.

Ofelia descends the stairs into the labyrinth, where the faun approaches her and hands her a piece of chalk to take care of along with the key. "We'll soon be strolling through the seven circular gardens of your palace," he says.Ofelia looked down. Her damp shoes were covered with mud, but she still felt the smile on her lips. Dr. Ferreira’s steps were as soft and careful as his voice. He stopped a short distance from the table. Vidal silenced his officers with a wave of his hand. The fear on their faces never ceased to please him. It even made him forget what a miserable place this was, so far away from the cities and battlefields where history was written. Being stationed in this dirty, rebel-infested forest—he would make it count. He would plant fear and death with such precision that the generals who had sent him here would hear about it. Some of them had fought with his father.