The first scene 11-year-old Ivana Baquera and Doug Jones shot together in Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, was their characters’ final moments on screen.¹

Baquera, who played the young Ofelia, is in the heart of the labyrinth, holding her newborn brother and facing Jones’s Faun, who merely wants some of the baby’s blood.

It’s an ominous scene, the climax of the movie, and Jones was a bit worried. “I was seven feet tall with my stilts on and these big horns, and I was holding a dagger, and I thought, This is an 11-year-old girl. I wonder how this is playing with her,” he told me in a joint interview with Baquera to promote a 4K version of the film coming to theaters on October 9.

Jones added that he didn’t need to worry. His co-star, he said, was “11 going on 40” and “the most mature actress I’d ever worked with.”

Baquera (who, I might add, still isn’t 40) said that this moment, which was the first time she saw Jones as the Fawn, made a lasting impression on her: “The labyrinth was there. You [Jones as the Faun] were there. There were no tricks. It was very immersive.”

Del Toro also talked about this scene in a separate interview he did in the lead up to the film’s rerelease in theaters this month. He remembered something else on set that day.  “People didn’t want to take the movie seriously,” he said. “A lot of the people in the crew, when the Faun first walks into the labyrinth, I could hear people giggling.”

Pan’s Labyrinth takes place in 1944’s Francoist Spain and centers on Ofelia who, along with her pregnant mother, heads to a house in the country where her stepfather, a brutal military captain, is hunting down resistance fighters hiding in the woods. There, in the nearby ruins of an ancient labyrinth, Ofelia meets a giant Faun who gives her three tasks to prove she is the lost princess of a magical realm. Her fantastical adventures (which include a run-in with the iconic Pale Man, also played by Jones) take place in tandem with the bloody brutality of war.

For del Toro, working on the movie was one of the most stressful moments of his career. After the success of Hellboy, Hollywood expected him to work on another blockbuster; instead he made a Spanish-language movie that’s both a fairy tale and a story about the brutality of war. He struggled to get funding and then, when he got a modest $19.5 million budget, pushed how far that money could go with bespoke sets and practical effects.

There’s something congenerous with Pan’s Labyrinth’s shooting that pivotal scene first and del Toro’s battle to make the movie in the first place. In that near-final moment of the film, Ofelia chooses love over fear and finds her power. In the real world, del Toro took the hard path and created a masterpiece that hits just as hard as it did 20 years ago. “You can’t control adversity, but you can control what you do with it,” he said about the challenges he faced. The same could be said for Ofelia.

Del Toro has said he views Pan’s Labyrinth as a parable or myth that examines how the power of love and silent acts of courage can shape the world. Twenty years later, the movie still resonates, which got me thinking about what makes certain movies hold up so well over time.

For Pan’s Labyrinth, part of its longevity is owed to how the film speaks to the young. Del Toro noted as much in his opening remarks at the Cannes Film Festival this year, where he screened the remastered version for an audience at least as enthusiastic as the one who saw it there 20 years earlier.

Jones, like del Toro, has noticed the same. “So many young people to this day, and especially young women, can really relate to Ofelia’s character feeling like an underdog in some way, or facing challenges that seem insurmountable,” he said. “Seeing her rise up and fight back in a way, with her pure innocence… it gives a message that innocence and good and purity can win in the end, in this world of evil.”

But universal, timeless themes aren’t the only reason why so many continue to watch and connect with Pan’s Labyrinth. The movie is also beautiful. Almost all the fantastical elements, including Jones’s Faun and Pale Man, are practical, not a bevy of CGI pixels plastered onto the screen.

Those practical effects, Baquera added, still look amazing today and don’t distract from the story. “That's helped maintain its quality,” she said. “I'm very proud about the technicality and cinematography behind it, too. I think Doug has said this before, but [it’s aged] like fine wine, truly.”

The 20th anniversary editions of Pan’s Labyrinth will premiere theatrically in 4K thanks to Cineverse and Fathom on October 9, with versions available in both 3D and HDR (High Dynamic Range) by Barco, the dedicated HDR viewing solution offering up to six times higher peak luminance.

Each version for the rerelease has been personally overseen by del Toro. I already have my ticket, and you can buy yours here.