I went to see Pan's Labyrinth earlier this week expecting to see an interestingly designed sub-Gaiman "dark fairytale" (or possibly even "faery tale"). What I actually got was something much more complex, much more subtle, and much more interesting. It is with some irritation, therefore, that I find everybody talking about the film as if it is an interestingly designed sub-Gaiman dark fairytale.

You can find several plot synopses of this film floating around the 'net, including one in the review on this site, so I shall not provide another one. Instead, I want to talk about people's reactions to the film, and why I think that most people utterly, utterly miss the point.

Oh, I should probably also say that there's going to be ... y'know ... spoilers.

The big debate about Pan's Labyrinth, amongst most people who have seen it is "is the Labyrinth real or not?" and by extension "does Ofelia really live on in the Labyrinth, or does she just die?" These two questions are as meaningless, and as infuriatingly persistent, as that old classic of the Tolkein fandom "Do Balrogs Have Wings?"

It makes no sense for the Labyrinth to be real. Nobody apart from Ofelia ever interacts with it, nobody ever comments on the strange and unusual things that she sees and hears, even when they are in the same room as she is. You would think that even a distraught and heavily pregnant woman would notice a mandrake root come to life and start screaming.

Equally, however, it makes no sense for the Labyrinth to be nothing more than Ofelia's delusion. She physically escapes from locked rooms, acquires tangible objects, and follows courses of action which no child would ever consider on her own.

Indeed the only interpretation of the Labyrinth which makes any sense at all is to accept that it is ... whisper it ... a metaphor used in a work of fiction. I know it sounds snide, but all this fixation on what is "real" or otherwise really does miss this basic point. Whether the Labyrinth is "real" in the sense of being a physically real part of del Torro's alternative vision of post-civil-war Spain does not make one whit of difference to its purpose within the story.

The Labyrinth as many people including our editor-in-chief have pointed out is a reflection of Ofelia's world. It becomes gradually darker and more desperate as her situation becomes more and more hopeless. That really is all you need to know about it. We don't need to know whether the faun literally is the god Pan, or what the seven circles on the portal signify, or indeed whether any of it is really happening. All we need to know is that this sinister faun, this dark staircase, and this empty book all tell us something about the character of Ofelia and the (extremely real) world she lives in.

The other thing about the Labyrinth is that it remains resolutely separate from the real world. A lot of people (myself included, along with the reviewers in the Times and the Cherwell) found this confusing. I naively expected that the two worlds would combine at some point, for Vidal to face off against the faun and get his fascist ass handed to him. Thankfully, this did not happen. Vidal meets his end at the hands of the rebels, and his death is a small victory in a war which is already lost.

All of this is steadfastly contrary to the rules of the modern fantasy genre. Those of us raised on a diet of Neil Gaiman expect these things to work a certain way: we are presented with a real world, which is bad. We are presented with a fantasy world, which is good. The fantasy world is also frequently "dark" which means "nothing particularly bad ever happens to anybody, but the lighting is moody, and things sometimes look funny." The fantasy world collides with reality, and fantasy wins. The Bad People meet the Bad Fairies, and the Bad Fairies prove that Fantasy Is Better Than Reality by killing the Bad People and making big speeches about how much Bigger and Scarier and More Important they are than anything in the real world. From this the audience learns that reading trashy comic books is a better way to spend your time than going to the gym.

Pan's Labyrinth defies this convention by being about something other than the intrinsic specialness of the human imagination (or at least, that part of the human imagination which involves fairies). Pan's Labyrinth is about a little girl living in Spain under Franco. All the mystical, metaphysical, and supernatural elements of the story are utterly subordinate the the exploration of this girl's life.

In fact Pan's Labyrinth cuts closer to the true essence of "fairytale" than pretty much any other "modern fairytale" I have seen in a good long while. Fairy tales, at their heart, are about the characters in them, and the decisions which those characters make. Too many works of modern fantasy focus on the "mythology" without actually recognising that "myths" are more or less meaningless without a real world to go with them.

At the end of Pan's Labyrinth Ofelia dies, and we are told that her spirit returns to her father's underground kingdom. There is fierce debate on the internet about whether she "really" returns to this magical kingdom, or whether she just dies. Once again, we are into Balrog territory. Vidal rules by fear, and by the threat of violence. Throughout the film, people are faced the choice: submit to Vidal's will, and the oppression of Franco's regime, or accept the risk of death. When the doctor kills Vidal's prisoner, contrary to the Captain's instructions, he makes a choice: either he allows somebody else to suffer intolerably, or he accepts that he will die. He chooses death in preference to submission. At the end of the film, Ofelia is given an identical choice: give up her kingdom and her immortality, or allow her brother to suffer at the hands of the faun. Both Ofelia and the doctor choose to suffer themselves, rather than allow somebody else to be harmed. They overcome their fear of death and, in so doing, they rob Vidal (and by extension the fascist regime, and by extension evil in general) of any power over them.

Whether Ofelia lives or dies doesn't matter. What matters is that she overcomes Vidal and the world he represents.