Pan's Labyrinth

In the film Pan’s Labyrinth, the characters must deal with struggles and hardships throughout the story. It is a classic story of good versus evil. For Ofelia, she must not only deal with the tyrant of her stepfather, Captain Vidal, but also with the strange and dark fantasy world that she is experiencing. She must complete three tasks in order to become the princess of this alternate world. In this story, the characters do behave in believable ways. In one setting of the story, Captain Vidal is fighting the resistance fighters and doing whatever he can to win. This is expected from a captain of the Spanish army. Ofelia and her mother Carmen are trying to deal with everything that is going on around them in believable ways as well. Carmen marries a man she does not in order to gain support. This might not be righteous but it is a believable action. Even in the magical world Ofelia experiences, the creatures still behave in believable ways. The faun gets angry at Ofelia when she disobeys him just like a regular person would.

At the end of this text, the world is definitely more orderly than it had been. Captain Vidal is shot and killed by the rebels, ending the conflict that had occurred and stopping the fighting to make that scenario more orderly. The magical kingdom is finally in order when Ofelia sacrifices herself and returns to be the princess of her kingdom.

This film may make some political statements as far as the Spanish Civil war is concerned. This text definitely displays the nation’s army as an evil force and the rebel fighters as just and setting things right. The text clearly depicts the army as evil and the rebel fighters as good.

This text reminded me of traditional fairy tales as well as tales with other worlds. The reinforcement of the theme of three and mythical creatures reminded me of fairy tales such as the three little pigs and Cinderella how she had three mice friends and three evil people in her life. The story also reminds me of adventures in magical lands such as Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed this movie because it had a familiar fairy tale theme but had a twist that made it interesting. The twist was that it was dark and chilling and the characters and setting reflected this. It reminded me a little bit of The Labyrinth with David Bowie.

One gap question that comes to mind is if the imaginary world and scenario was all in Ofelia’s imagination or if it was real. There is no other person to verify the latter claim because only Ofelia could see the magical creatures. The fact that Ofelia was reading all of those fairy tales and that she was under a lot of stress and surrounded by conflict could cause her to start to imagine things. In my opinion however, I do believe that the alternate world did exist because when Ofelia put the root under her mother’s bed, she did indeed get unexplainably better and when it was thrown in the fire, she went back to deteriorating health. I think it would be a better story anyway if it was real and not a mental delusion from Ofelia from reading all those fairy tales.