Film Slug:
Directed and written by Guillermo del Toro.Stars Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, Sergi Lopez as Captain Vidal, and
Maribel Verdu as Mercedes as the main characters.
Officially released in October 2006 and distributed worldwide in December of 2006.
The film made a good profit; Budget= 19 million and Earned= ~83 million.
Won 3 academy awards; Best art direction, cinematography, and makeup.
Also won 8 Ariel Awards, 3 BAFTA awards and many others in different academies.
Received 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and is ranked 15 in the highest rated movie of all time at Metacritic, which makes it the best rated film of the 2000’s.
Pan’s Labyrinth is set in 1944 civil war era of Spain. The story tells a tale of Ofelia, a young girl mesmerized by fairy tales and a firm believer of magic. Ofelia’s guardians include a sickly pregnant mother and a cruel stepfather; a Captain of the Spanish army, known to show no apathy for his enemies. His only intention with Ofelia’s mother is for her to deliver him a son. Living amidst this sad life, Ofelia soon finds magic. A fairy leads her to a Faun, and soon her adventure begins.
Ofelia now has her a mission; to get to the magic land, and avoid getting into trouble in real life, a task harder than one would think. Chapter 2 in our book talks about verisimilitude; the quality that convinces us that the world portrayed onscreen is convincing and believable. For the third question, I will be using this term to relate the movie to the text. The director does a great job in separating Ofelia’s magic and real life. The viewer, for the most part, will believe that the magical things that are happening in relation to Ofelia are real and are actually happening. Whereas one can see in the end how Ofelia’s magical land could represent her escape from her dreadful reality. In my opinion, the director did a great job of meshing realism and antirealism and completely tricking the viewer into believing that everything happening was literal.
For a film theory that relates to the movie, I
pick the formalist film theory. The main focus here will be on the
appropriate use of sound and color. The film presented the
dark/gothic tone of the labyrinth with eerie music; which I think enhanced the
experience. The scenes where Ofelia was in magical realms had a very
bright color to it. Now, the stunning thing is that the faun, who is a
friend of Ofelia’s is shown in dark, and the scenes that required her
to step inside danger were all bright; a great way to reverse common
ideology- dark is danger, light is comfort.
Article #1 is a review of the film from BBC-
Article #1 is a review of the film from BBC-
"Dark, dreamlike and dangerous, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth
is a fairytale every bit as scary and moving as they were always
meant to be. In both the real world - civil war-riven Spain - and the
fantasy underworld she discovers, our heroine Ofelia must battle
against the most twisted, nightmarish evils to survive. Transcendent,
passionate, full of beauty and endlessly affecting, this is without
question the movie of the year.Ofelia is journeying to meet her facist stepfather, a ruthless captain chasing leftists in the hills of Northern Spain, with her painfully pregnant mother in tow. Unknown to Ofelia's stepfather, the leftists have secretly infiltrated his household. This electric intrigue elegantly ties into Ofelia's other, mythic, journey in which she follows an insect into a labyrinth and then receives quests and promises from Pan the mysterious faun. Ofelia's retreat offers no respite from the real-world danger and fear. Drenched in mud, blood, rain and tears, and met on all sides by skin-crawling creatures, she must rely on her wits and her heart to prevail. 'COMPELLING FROM FIRST TO LAST.' Del Toro's trademark visual flair gets its finest ever chance to shine, rendering the tale onscreen so perfectly that the subtitles are barely needed. Every actor - most notably, Ivana Baquero's wide-eyed Ofelia and Sergi López's vicious, glittering Captain – excels. Compelling from first frame to last, Pan's Labyrinth never misses a chance to wrench, quell or quicken your heart: this visionary project propels Del Toro into the highest league of filmmakers. There can be no excuses. See this film." (Trout)
For my second article, I picked an article entitled, "The Paradoxes of Film and the Recovery of Historical Memory: Vicente Aranda's Works on the Spanish Civil War." The article is written by Steven Shwartz. Here is an excerpt from this article that relates to Pan's Labyrinth, "Nearly seventy years after it ended, the Spanish civil war of 1936-39, and its immediate after math, suddenly regained the attention of the global public when El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth, 2006, written and directed by the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro), won Academy Awards in 2007 for cinematography, art direction, and makeup. Pan's Labyrinth is a fantasy set in 1944, in which the girl-child Ofelia (played by Ivana Baquero), the step-daughter of a fanatical Franco army officer, escapes the cruelties and hypocrisy of the dictatorial regime through an alternate universe. Del Toro's entry into the field of European historical memory was surprising given that his previous work (e.g Hellboy, 2004) was technically ultra-fashionable, but primitive in its intellectual conception. But what can be said about such issues? Obviously, computer gaming and effects, and the sudden respectability of comic books, have already transformed cinema art so that a leap from the infernal fantasies of video games to the real suffering in the aftermath of the twentieth century's most poignant and passionate historical conflict was unsurprising." (Shwartz 501)
In my view, the film is simply spectacular. It has something for everyone. The kids will enjoy it for its innocence, sci-fi fans would love it for its amazing look and graphics, and I'm sure fans of history might get introduced to the Spanish Civil war. In fact, the writer of my second article states how a film (like Pan's Labyrinth) entices viewer's interest in history. I, like the writer of the first article, agree that the movie was "compelling from the beginning to the end.” The acting was very believable, and the story was well written. Most of all, I personally think that the story was unpredictable for the most part; the twists just kept coming out of nowhere. I would have no problems recommending this film to anyone. The bottom line is, the movie received 76 different awards in various different academies, and rightfully so.
Work Cited:
Schwartz, Stephen. "The Paradoxes of Film and the
Recovery of Historical Memory: Vicente Aranda's Works on the Spanish Civil
War." Film History Politics and Film 20.12 (2008):
501-02. Jstor. Indiana University Press. Web.
Trout, Jonathan. "Pan's Labyrinth Review." BBC
News. BBC, 19 Nov. 2006. Web. 18 Oct. 2012. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2006/11/20/pans_labyrinth_2006_review.shtml>.
CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM
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any information from other papers I have written for other classes, I clearly
explain that in the paper.
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passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used
indentation and citation within the text.
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padded the bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the bibliography in
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direct quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in another way. I
cited the source within the paper and in the bibliography.
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over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or
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8) (x) I checked yes
on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully transparent about the research and
ideas used in my paper.
Name: Hemanshu
Agnihotri
Date: October 23, 12
