Pan's Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth was a unique film that combined the realistic with the mythical in an unusual way, kind of like Mucha ☺. The scene I found most interesting was at the very end, when the captain is finally surrounded by the rebels and surrenders his only son. I honestly wasn’t sure what he was going to do with his son when he was surrounded, but he handed him over safely to Mercedes. He then breaks his pocket watch and the dialogue goes:

Capitán Vidal: Tell my son the time that his father died. Tell him...
Mercedes: No. He won't even know your name.

Within seconds the captain is shot by the rebels and dies.

(A little background conversation during one of the captain’s dinners sheds some light on the scene and it’s importance:

Mayor: Have I told you that I was acquainted with your father, Captain?
Capitán Vidal: No. I had no idea.
Mayor: In Morocco. I knew him only briefly, but he left a great impression.
Capitán Vidal: An excellent soldier.
Mayor: The men in his battalion said that when General Vidal died on the battlefield, he smashed his watch on a rock so that his son would know the exact hour and minute of his death. So he would know how a brave man dies.
Capitán Vidal: Nonsense. He didn't own a watch.)

The Captain obviously didn’t have the best relationship with his father (I suppose he died when the Captain was young) and he spent the rest of his life trying to live up to the standards he believed his father would have desired. The Captain wanted more than anything to have a son to carry his name, and honestly I was a little surprised that the writers chose to give him that son (the baby could have just as easily been a girl).

I think I found this scene most interesting because it really moved me, and in that moment I felt sorry for the Captain. Strange, I know. Earlier in the film, when he had inflected so much senseless pain and merciless torture and had acted so selfishly, I honestly wanted him to die. I was happy when Mercedes stabbed him. But in that last moment of his life, I felt like his vulnerability was exposed. For all his brutality and display of strength, he was actually insecure about living up to his father’s standards. His greatest wish was to have his father’s name carry on by his son, and for his son to regard him in the same way he respected his own father. In that last moment, all of his hopes of living up to his father’s reputation and instilling that respect in his son were vanquished. He was a horrible, brutal man, and yet in those last moments I felt sorry for him.

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