The evil creates fairy tales: analysis of Guillermo del Toro’s film The Labyrinth Of The Faun

Abstract

The Labyrinth Of The Faun (2006) by Guillermo del Toro is a film built on two planes that intertwine constantly: the real plane that matches with the 1944 Spanish post-war when a group of military men commanded by Vidal merciless chase the maquis in the area, and the imaginary plane, thought by Ofelia in parallel, as a sort of escape in front of the negative events she is enduring or that surround her life. When the surrounding evilness is extreme, to escape to a world of fantasy becomes a way out in order to survive; anyway it is only a partial solution as the negative reality will burst to a large or lesser extent into this imaginary world and, unfortunately, this will not be avoided. Guillermo del Toro creates a fiction that, even if originated by evilness, adopts a shape closer to the goodness: a fairy tale. Nevertheless, not everything is goodness in this a priori idyllic world.