Labyrinths: A Comparison Between Pan's Labyrinth and Labyrinth

In tone and substance, these two films are worlds apart—literally. Each is anchored in its own space and time: Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006) takes place in the foothills of Fascist Spain in 1944. It is shot in muddy, violent smears of color and contrast, wetted by oppressive rain. In contrast, Labyrinth (Jim Henson, 1986)  is a day-glo, brightly lit adventure, though with its own sly darkness.

Each of these movies addresses a strikingly similar theme: There is a bookish girl who prefers escapism to real life. She is confronted by a faun, the guardian of fantastical world, who seems kindly at first but who becomes increasingly authoritarian and demanding as the tale goes on. The faun offers her a chance to be a princess. She is given tasks to perform, and scary monsters or obstacles will confront her. She befriends a traitor. Gradually, she becomes empowered enough to challenge and resist the authority of the 'dream' world and its representative, the faun. When he requires the girl's infant brother, she refuses, and asserts her control over the fairy tale.

How these two films interpret this singular theme is a function of the vastly different points they are trying to make. Each reflects a different setting, audience and sensibility. It is my contention, however, that one of these movies is much scarier than the other. Guillermo del Toro's films are characterized by a love of the fantastical, with a dash of moodiness thrown in. He made the vampire movie Chronos in 1993, followed by The Devil's Backbone, a powerful ghost story, in 2001. 2004 's Hellboy featured a demon fighting the forces of evil in the steampunk style of the eponymous graphic novel.

Pan's Labyrinth is an eerie, brutal film with a spare and creepy soundtrack. One of its taglines was "An imaginative gothic fairytale for adults set in Spain during World War II," and it certainly lives up to old fairy tales like Grimm's: dark, violent, and not for the faint of heart. Dark-haired Ofelia, played by Ivana Baquero, is a small, graceful girl of 10 or 12 years old who, according to her mother, "reads too many fairy tales." A creature of shadow and forest, she wears soft green, in one case looking like a woodland Alice in Wonderland complete with white pinafore.

Soon after she and her mother move to a remote outpost, Ofelia discovers a labyrinth presided over by a faun. He is elegant - tall and lean, with long hair and a powerful physical presence. Though he seems charming, he exudes a certain creepiness which becomes more angry and menacing as the film goes on.

She is the long-lost daughter of the King of the Underworld, the faun tells her. If she wants to reclaim her status as a princess, Ofelia must perform a series of tasks: first she must slide obtain a key from toad beneath a tree. Next she will sneak past the Pale Man in order to use the key. Last, as she later discovers, she must offer up her newborn baby brother.

As she gains confidence in her noble-born self, Ofelia begins to subvert the fairytale paradigm. Hungry after having been denied supper, she succumbs to temptation and steals forbidden fruit—two grapes—from the table of the Pale Man, waving aside the protests of her fairy companions (two of which are eaten in tum by the monster). Unlike her new stepfather, the sadistic Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), she does not follow orders blindly.

            Ofelia watches as her pregnant mother, subservient to the whims of her husband, slowly withers and dies in bed. She attaches herself to the housekeeper Mercedes, played by Maribel Verdu. Mercedes is a traitor within the home of the captain, smuggling supplies to the rebels in the hills, impassive on the outside but terrified within. She has given up on fantasy—life is enough of a nightmare. She is Ofelia's only friend.

Finally, Ofelia comes to the Labyrinth to complete the last of her tasks: the delivery of her baby brother. By now she's learned to think for herself; she challenges and resists the faun when he tells her the boy must be killed. "You promised to obey me!" he shouts. "Give me the boy!" But she refuses. Even if she must "give up her sacred rights" (and, as it turns out, her life) she will not let him have the baby.

Pan's Labyrinth is by no means a cheery film. It shows vividly the horrors of war—fear, death, hopelessness—as it is meant to. We are meant to wonder: which was the actual world, and which was the dream (or nightmare)?

The second film, Labyrinth, blurs the lines between fantasy and reality as well, but it puts a vastly different spin on the fairy tale. Director Jim Henson is widely known as the creator of "The Muppet Show," a variety-style puppet TV show which appealed to adults as well as children. Its innocent-yet-subversive humor proved popular enough to spawn a series of Muppet movies, and then he moved toward the otherworldly with Dark Crystal in 1982. Labyrinth combines puppet characters with human actors to create a darkly comical take on the princess fairy tale. Henson considered it a fantasy film for adults; some of the slyly knowing dialogue was written by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame.

A mopey, bookish teen, Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) resents being a babysitter for her crying baby brother and amuses herself by wishing the child into an alternate reality: the Labyrinth, ruled by a Goblin King. Little does she suspect what will happen next.

Jareth, The Goblin King exists, alright. He has stolen away the baby, who is fated to become a goblin—unless Sarah can perform a rescue within thirteen hours. Jareth (David Bowie), is tall, elegant, and shaggy-haired, much like Ofelia's faun. He offers Sarah trinkets which turn into snakes - a push-pull of channing and threatening behavior which sets the stage for the rest of the film. He also has an imposing presence, a tendency to burst into song ... and a very large codpiece. "Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave," he tells her.

Like Ofelia, Sarah has a quest to undertake, tasks to perform. She must navigate the huge, constantly changing Labyrinth and contend with obstacles such as the Bog of Eternal Stench, oubliettes that disappear people, and a Junkyard where she finds herself with no memory. Scary creatures she must face include the malevolent Fireys: dancing, cackling monsters who pop out their own eyes, juggle their heads, and soon want to remove hers as well.

One of her companions is the traitor Hoggle (voiced by Brian Henson), a gruff, melancholy gardener first seen killing fairies with poison. He alternately helps and hinders Sarah's quest—through cowardice or greed, we don't know.

In the end, Sarah finds the courage to disobey the faun. After a final confrontation on the Escheresque stairs of the goblin castle, she retrieves her baby brother and takes him home. The walls between fantasy/nightmare and reality have been rebuilt. Or have they?

The separate stories of Ofelia and Sarah reflect the dates, settings and sensibilities of the films which follow them. In Ofelia's brutal "real" world, she is often disheveled and finding her way through darkness and shadow. She is surrounded by strangers, adults who have little regard for her. Sarah, despite her adventures and near-misses, never gets dirty. The creatures she meets are a polyglot; some speak Spanish or have British accents, while others barely speak at all. And her labyrinth is creepily Disney-esque in that it is brightly lit - no shadows are cast, and darkness never falls. Everything is watched and manipulated by Jareth.

It's worth noting that in neither film can we be sure if our dark-haired heroine is delusional. Does her "alternate reality" exist at all, and if so, which is the real world and which is the fantasy? Which outcome should we be hoping for?

As we have seen, Pan's Labyrinth and Labyrinth are two stylistically different tellings of a single fairy story, that of a lonely girl facing a labyrinth and a faun. Both are frightening films, but it is my contention that the latter, with its capering and dancing, its never-ending daylight and David Bowie's omnipresent crotch, is by far the scarier film of the two.

© Shaii Stone 2013