Captain Videl is the tyrannical fascist leader and antagonist of Pan’s Labyrinth who enforces iron-solid standards and harsh or dismissive treatment of those around him and smokes out and crushes any opposition towards his fascist rule. Throughout the film he’s shown torturing innocents and rebels, ruthlessly tearing through social situations to show he’s in charge as well as taking immense care of anything that may continue his legacy. However, his influence on the film leaks out in some ways that aren’t shown front-and-centre (a hint of irony because it’s mostly his self-centeredness that causes this!) and I’ll do my best to explore his authoritarian traits and how they shape the film in various ways.
Not only does Vidal ferociously lay down rules with those around him, such as doing everything possible to starve out the rebels, even if it means cutting the village’s rations, and killing or threatening anyone who even comes close to breaching his standards, even to his own men, but he takes care of precise activities that could’ve easily have been done by his house-carer, Mercedes, such as shoe-shining and watch-cleaning as a means to prove even to himself that he’s utterly non-relying and doesn’t trust anyone, even himself, showing how hard he obsesses over polishing his legacy by being completely independent, a huge irony as Mercedes is smuggling supplies out to the rebels but he’s too self-absorbed to notice.
However, his doing-everything-himself persona stretches to more grizzly things than watch-cleaning and shoe-shining, as he charges into battle when he doesn’t need to, yelling to his comrades ‘This is the only decent way to die.’ As though he takes every chance he can to die the same, admirable death as his father. He’s shown the best at everything and won’t have anyone fill in for him, he’d die before someone rose above him and he’d go out in full bloodshed to ensure discipline and order, smashing a mistaken innocent farmers’ face in to leave an impression of how severely he wishes his order to be affirmed on his soldiers, telling them they’d better learn to check suspects ‘properly’ even when he likely already knew they were innocent. He even goes on to torturing his victims personally and satisfyingly, going so far as challenging them to do impossible tasks, like making a stutterer not stutter in counting, to give a sick, delusional sense of superiority and self-security.
He’s seen ruthlessly cutting off chit-chat at the dinner party to stop the attention drifting from him, such as denying his wife any affection by cutting off her story, and doesn’t let the slightest detail of inaccuracy towards him slip, insisting Ofelia learn to use the other hand to shake when they’ve just met, obsessing of besting his father in being the perfect figure by going as far to claw away at basic human errors.
Videl’s motives and traits are explored greatest, although a little vaguely, in just how similar he is not only to the Pale Man, but to the gluttonous toad as well. Del Toro has presented hyperbolic traits and elements of Virgo into the two monsters Ofelia had to confront.
For instance, his self-centeredness draws him down a blind path, making him easy to take advantage of, such as Mercedes sneaking out goods under his nose due to him seeing her as too weak to be taken seriously and Ofelia drugging his liquor, much like how the pale man has his eyes laid out directly in front of him on a plate, wide-open for anyone to take advantage of. He violently snaps at any disorder (eating from his feast) but doesn’t care to stop anyone interfering with his vision, possibly reflecting how egotistical him and Videl are, not considering anyone would dare full-on defy them as they’re too self-absorbed. Both Videl and the pale man also chase the fleeing Ofelia with an arm outstretched: the Pale Man with his eye, the only thing to guide him, and Videl with his gun, reflecting how bloodshed is the only way he knows to guide his way to respect and order, oblivious that that’s the entire reason people like Mercedes and Ferrero exist.
Another similarity is shown to the pale man when both monsters are shown sitting at luxurious feasts but they don’t tend to eat from them, or Videl’s hoarded rations. They only feast on the blood and agony of innocents, so much so that Videl proudly states the only way he can make true connections to people is by torturing them relentlessly, almost as though he allows the lid of his inner-frustrations of keeping his legacy while having to live with an imperfect reputation to be lifted in close, personal pain-infliction on others.
Ofelia’s drugging is also hinted when she feeds the frog the disguised executioners, which it laps up without hesitation as Videl did with the drugged whiskey so Ofelia could escape easily, not even occurring to him that someone would oppose him while he drains everybody of their rations and forces the villagers live in bare minimal conditions as a means to starve out the rebels (when this actually encourages more villagers to help them) like the frog did to the tree that was dying because it kept eating it inside out.
Another irony is that the film centres primarily around Ofelia’s fairy tale world, with her being constantly absorbed in her books of magic. However, we also unknowingly see Videl’s fantasy world of self-centred perfectionism such as in the scenes where he shaves his face, cleans his watch and shoes, and even stitches his cheek back together. Every angle is focusing on what he does in all the detail as he deludes his fascist self into thinking himself a superior power, with his looking at himself in the mirror for most of these self-centred scenes as though he’s the only one that matters.
It’s as if Ofelia confronts 3 similar monsters but with the final one being the one that tragically unleashed its gluttony on the few things and people she cares about in the place she hates so, while the frog and pale man strive sealed away in their isolated lairs.
Videl tends to use his pocket watch as a metaphor to drive him: a reminder of living up to his father and to make the moment of his death perfect for his son. His current position is the aftermath of years of insecurities of filling in his father’s well-honoured shoes and he therefore demands every ounce of fear and respect be his with iron-handed bloodshed and cruelty. He wouldn’t have his son know him any other way than heroically dying in battle like his father, which explains his constant cleaning of his watch to keep his mind in check of perfecting his son’s future with his father’s legacy coursing through his veins (his room even looks like the insides of a clock!) only for all his delusions and insecurities to smack him in the face in the end when Mercedes reels him into a hopeless situation and denies him any continuing legacy after his death, leaving his unfulfilled soon-to-be-forgotten self bleeding out on the floor.
The only character that truly sees the large-scale impacts of Videl is Dr Ferrero. While presumably all the rebels see him as the big cheese (as Videl sees himself) to kill to restore order and equality in the area, Ferrero, however, realises just how miniscule his place is in the world, that he’s just a puppet of the government to keep fear and control and is in every way replaceable by another egotistical figure who claims themselves unmatchable and incomparable. The pale man also relates in this case too, as we see a stack of shoes in his lair, identical to Ofelia’s, suggesting various incarnations of her failed the test and were eaten by him, much like how various generations of innocents were murdered and subjected to cruelty at the hands of various fascist tyrants.
Ferrero sees the repeated cycles of Videls, consumed by deluding perfectionism and how hopeless it is for the rebels. Not with Videl himself but the doomed chain as a whole. When Ferrero doesn’t see anything to lose after mercy-killing a rebel that suffered Vidal’s infamous torturing, he straight-up spits in his face by saying only men like him can obey without question. His blunt ideology results in him not being able to comprehend how he’d straight-up defy him.
His great irony is that he’s just like all the other fascists (with only some luck of his father’s inheritance empowering him), which goes completely against his ideology that ‘we’re all here by choice’ when he can’t escape the paranoia of living up to his father’s legacy and his hatred of equality.