https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSICJJq86ic
When reading Goblin Market, I couldn’t help but notice the clear similarities between the colorful imagery of the goblins’ fruit and the feast scene in Pan’s Labyrinth directed by Guillermo del Toro. A little background, Pan’s Labyrinth is a fairy tale that takes place at the time of the Spanish Civil War. The main character, a young girl named Ofelia, is brought with her mother to her step father’s military compound as he wages war against the rebels. In tandem to the human war drama, a mythical Faun creature instructs Ofelia that she is actually the missing princess (Pan) and that she must complete several trials to prove her royalty and return to the throne.
Pan’s Labyrinth contrasts the innocence of female characters like Ofelia and her helpless mother who’s unable to speak up for herself to that of Captain Vidal (Ofelia’s stepfather) who is brutally oppressive and with stereotypical, unflinching masculinity. Vidal’s primary concern throughout the movie is making sure Ofelia’s pregnant mother bears him a son, commenting to a doctor that questions how sure he is that the unborn child isn’t a girl with “don’t fuck with me.”
Midway through the movie, Ofelia’s pregnant mother becomes sick and potentially dying. She asks the Faun for help and he advises her that a mandrake root kept in a bowl of milk under her mother’s bed will heal her. This remedy works until Captain Vidal finds it and throws it into the fire, triggering Ofelia’s mother to go into labor and die in childbirth. This can be likened to Lizzie “remembering her kernel-stone … dewed it with tears, hoped for a root. Watched for a waxing shoot, but there came none; it never saw the sun.” The seed Laura took with her from the goblins had the promise of a cure but it was ultimately useless and not enough. Thus the masculine produced cures were futile, Vidal interrupted the mandrake roots healing effects, and the seeds of the male goblins fruit bore no fruit.
One of the most haunting and memorable moments of the film is during Ofelia’s second trial, whereby the Faun (a male character mind you) commands her to collect a dagger from a creature called the pale man. The pale man sits silent and still at a banquet table covered in delicious fruits and dishes. The Faun comments that “[Ofelia] will see a sumptuous banquet, but don’t eat or drink anything. Your life depends on it.” For if she even so much as tastes the food the pale man will wake up and eat her. Similarly to this scene, Lizzie instructs Laura that “[they] must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits: who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry thirsty roots?” Yet despite this warning, both Ofelia and Laura indulge and eat from the feast of temptation.
The consequences for the two women differ in severity. Upon eating 2 grapes, the pale man eats two of her fairy guides in response, to which the Faun scolds her and claims she must not be the princess, forsaking her until the end of the movie when Ofelia is shot by Captain Vidal, and her blood is the last trial, a sacrifice made allowing her to return to her mythical land. For Laura however, it is only through her sister resisting temptation herself and being covered in the juices of the goblin fruits that end up restoring her.
Where the two stories differ from their depiction of men is in the fulfilling sisterly bond between Lizzie and Laura, who can always look to each other. Pan’s Labyrinth complicates this theme through the Faun who is both a male and protector of Pan, however has the capacity to scold and still control her when she fails to listen to him, as evident in Ofelia eating the grapes and losing two of the Fauns fairys. Additionally, Ofelia confides in her mother at her disliking of Captain Vidal, to which her mother acknowledges his flaws, however compromises that he is just misunderstood and a good provider. Sadly, by the end of the movie Captain Vidal ends up responsible for the deaths of both Ofelia and her mother.