Pan's Labyrinth: Pale Man and End Scene Analysis

The pale man scene is quite the most memorable scene in the entire film due to its great symbology and meaning behind it, it has a few references of events that happen in the real world and show us the true nature of a fairy tale. The first thing we see when Ofelia walks in the room is the pale man sitting all the way at the end of the table, which so happens to be the same seat where Captain Vidal sits in the real world.  

Firstly, we could assume that the Pale Man is a pure reflection of Captain Vidal in the underworld, he's this sort of hybrid that does everything in a rigid mannered way, the symbology behind the hands with its eyes can signify how everything that Captain Vidal lays his eyes on he gets with his own hands, which very well describes the way Captain Vidal acts in the real world, for example being his son where he doesn't care about anything he just wants his son which means he's very driven by his desire, in the same way that the Pale Man is driven by his hands in order to see what he wants, which in this scene would be Ofelia as he eats children.

Furthermore, a reference made during this scene was the pile of shoes which can exemplify the mountain of children's shoes leftover after the holocaust, this scene portrays the true cruelties and chaos that happen in the actual world and puts them into one alternate place which is called the "underworld". This further supports how I believe that the underworld may be a portrayal/symbol of death, where the cold lighting in the film represents the whole theme of cruelty, war and death. However in the pale man scene the lighting contradicts my point as the lighting is warm, completely in contrast to the real world where you'd feel comfortable but the lighting was cold and grim when Ofelia got back, even though you're safe. 

In addition, all the foods in the huge feast of food that there is on the table are mostly red in colour, same colour as blood which can reflect the violence and gruesome cruelty of war in the Spanish Civil War, which was not too long before the film was made.

The end scene however, can be quite confusing because Del Toro gives us several sort of ending alternatives, you can either believe what everything that Ofelia was doing, which is all the fairy tale stuff, or think that Ofelia was actually using this as a coping mechanism from the trauma caused by the civil war and her cruel life she's had to go through. Del Toro gives us several reasons as to why we can think this is which is why you can find the end scene a bit puzzling.

Firstly, you can come to the first alternative where Ofelia was being tested and when she died she was sent to the underworld with her father who is the king and lived a happy life afterwards, this was shown after she died which could be said that it is the actual formal ending. However when the Captain chased Ofelia, and Ofelia was talking to Pan, the Captain couldn't see him which you can say that in reality it was all Ofelia's imagination, making Ofelia's death really sad. Del Toro however contradicts this as right before the Captain had taken some antibiotics for his slashed mouth which could make him hallucinate and not see things. 

Overall Del Toro does a great job making the audience believe there is several endings and makes huge emphasis on the differences between the underworld and the real world through the use of lighting , sound and background.