The Pale Man sits at a feast which mirrors the opulence of Vidal's dinner. Vidal and the Pale Man both occupy the same seat at the table.

In Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, we are transported to two distinct worlds: The world of Fascist Francoist Spain, and the fantasy world of the Faun’s labyrinth, with both worlds eventually intermingling and playing off of one another. And although these two worlds blend at times, their values and ideals could not be further from each other. Del Toro’s uses gorgeous camera pans to invisibly cut and reveal this fantasy world, which at first is only realized by the young protagonist Ofelia. As Paul Smith states in his essay on Pan’s Labyrinth; “This technique of the masked cut is vital to the fluid texture of the film: the camera is always tracking behind tree trunks only to emerge unexpectedly in another place, another time.” Using this del Toro is able to link the two worlds, and allows them to play on each other. When Ofelia opens her magical storybook to reveal her second labor, the pages become soaked with blood, and soon her mother is bleeding and devastatingly sick from her baby.

These clashing worlds often serve as dichotomies that are seen in other characters. In the case of the faun, we have a very ambiguous character, and it is unknown whether it is male or female, or if its intentions are good or not. As Kim Edwards says of the faun: “Not only does it occupy a largely undefined position between male and female and evil and good, it also literally embodies these binaries by being both the human and the animal, the man and the monster, and the child and the adult.” The character of Captain Vidal perhaps best expresses this dichotomy. A strict, regimented military man who is constantly making sure everything is in order by checking his watch frequently and fervishly cleaning up his appearance, he is violent and ruthless. Towards the end of the film he becomes monster-like; after being stabbed multiple times and then poisoned, he still has the resolve to search for Ofelia through the labyrinth, and is only brought down by a bullet through the eye.

Capt. Vidal performs self surgery after being slashed by Mercedes.
His steely resolve demonstrates his ruthless masculinity.

While cleaning himself and his belongings each day, Vidal plays an upbeat melody on his record player, a stark contrast to the rough and masculine captain. The music played by Vidal even carries on to other scenes where Ofelia is inside the labyrinth. Del Toro loves to play up these parallels. While the captain and his confidantes enjoy a hearty meal in a famine and ration ravaged region in Spain, the Pale Man has an even more opulent banquet laid out on a table before him, although it is clear he has no interest in dining on fruits and jellies. However it is soon revealed that this alternate reality exists within the real one, as Ofelia escapes the Pale Man’s lair, we can still hear him stalking around underneath the floorboards hauntingly. Edwards comments: “The horror of the Pale Man's dining room is literally contained within the space of the Captain's house; rather than a parallel universe, the underiand is inside reality, like a kernel of truth or an essence made manifest.”