Pan's Labyrinth In Cronus Complex

Pan’s Labyrinth: Analysis Ofelia and Captain Vidal in Cronus Complex

Abstract
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth locates the story within the context of the Spanish post-civil-war. Mythical elements play a leading role in the film when the totalitarian system of social control that Francisco Franco’s fascist system established during the post- war period function as the underlying reference in the film’s narrative. Ofelia, the child main character, enters a mysterious world to escape the horrors of the reality she is forced to face. Playing with the traditional fairy-tale literary formula, del Toro’s work not only offers a contemporary creative representation of the state of ‘Franquismo.’ Instead, the film functions as a cautionary tale that blames commonly taking place under totalitarian systems anywhere. I propose the ‘Cronus Complex’ as a theme through which the symbolism that permeates Pan’s Labyrinth acquires a universal dimension. I analyze del Toro’s film in light of the ‘Cronus complex,’ an overlooked psychopathological condition, and illustrated how this motif commands two narratives that bleed into each other as the diegesis unfolds: one at a historical-realism level, and the other at a fantasy-psychological one. To do so, I will focus on the characters of

He is in charge of removing the guerrillas resisting in the mountains. Ofelia is an orphan whose father died in obscure circumstances during the Spanish Civil War. Carmen, her mother, remarried Vidal who controls her. She is constantly sedated and kept in her bedroom during the last weeks of her pregnancy with Vidal’s child. From the beginning of the story, it is clear that Ofelia is not willing to establish a daughter-father relationship with Vidal. Moreover, it is obvious that Vidal is also incapable of any type of filial relationship with