Pan's Labyrinth Response Paper

Pan’s Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth is a story about girl dealing with her beliefs in fairy tales and what she should believe about the real world. In this film she struggles with her mother being sick, a horrible step-father, and a magical faun giving her tasks to see if she is a princess of another fantasy world. Before watching the movie we saw a short documentary from the director of the film, Guillermo del Toro, and he explained the common cases of “threes” that he interacted into the movie. There were three fairies that visited Ofelia, she had a choice between three doors to unlock, and she had three tasks to complete before the moon was full. I think that the reoccurrence of threes in literary in the text. Ofelia’s character in the movie certainly acts in a believable manor. She is young girl who is curious about her surroundings. She gets thrown into a new home and a new father comes into her life that could care less about her. There were times that I was kind of shocked about how calm she was and trusting she was around the creatures. I would have been freaked out. This movie takes place just after the Spanish Civil War in the 1940s and throughout the film the Spanish Maquis guerillas are being rooted out by Ofelia’s step-father, the Captain Vidal. Ofelia and her mother just moved out to the post in the mountains of Northwestern Spain. I think some of the forces affecting the narrative world in this story are a change in atmosphere for the both of them and Ofelia’s adventurous and rebellious side. I think that when Ofelia is on her second task and she eats some grapes off of the table, when she is strictly told not to, really drives the dramatic energy. Because she breaks the rules the faun tells her that she will never be able to return to the other realm. After this happened it left you wondering how the story was going to end. I think that Pan’s Labyrinth made a lot of political statements because it was set in post-Civil War Spain and you saw how the doctor and Mercedes were helping the Maquis guerillas while working for the Captain. That just shows you how loyal people really were the person firmly in power. You can tie this story together with a lot of other fairy tales. Guillermo del Toro explained how he used influences from Alice in Wonderland. So I think that other fairy tales like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz can be associated with this because the storyline involves a girl trying to find her way home while overcoming obstacles that are thrown her way whether they are real or fantasy. I would definitely give this text a thumbs up! I feel that the story was very well thought out and I really enjoyed watching the short documentary beforehand to give us a more in depth perspective of how Guillermo del Toro came up with the ideas behind Pan’s Labyrinth.