Pan's Labyrinth

I really enjoyed this movie, it was hard at first for me to follow the movie and read the subtitles, but it was more and more almost second nature by the end. I like fantasy and fairy tale movies, and I like how dark this film was, it was very well done, the way the sets were done was amazing, it was exaggerated in a way that made the reality a very dark place and when they showed the fairy tale aspects it was very much exaggerated and unreal, whether at the point where Ofelia had to kill the frog in the roots of the tree or when she had to pick between the three locked boxes. The roots of the tree were almost cave like and it was very sinister and scary for a child to go into. The part with the pale man was very played up as a place of evil and it was full of color and details to give it a rich feel and make it more alive then the way that the real world was perceived through Ofelia’s eyes.

Something I found very interesting was when Mercedes told Ofelia that she should never trust a faun she immediately had a skewed view of the faun from that point on as did I as a viewer, I think it was interesting that we as people not just her as the one being told, automatically think the worst of people or in the fauns case of characters or creatures.  This obscure view of the faun was a big part of her growing into her roll as the princess and becoming self reliant and gaining a real sense of self.

I really enjoyed how the more Ofelia became involved with the faun the more she became detached from reality, but who can blame her, her mother was sick and died, she had a horrible excuse for a step father (which had a very Cinderella feel about it.) and she became an orphan. Who would want to face that reality as a child, I know I would not, I would try to escape it and that is what she did, she went deeper and deeper into the fantasy the worse her circumstances in reality became. It was very interesting that she died in reality and entered her fantasy permanently, some could view this as entering heaven, but I view it more as rebirth of the princess. There are many different takes we could have on this. I think for the sake of the story it was her abandoning her horrible reality of being an orphan, in a war torn country, having to look after her infant brother and dealing with step father who never loved or accepted her as one of his own. Her stepfather was the one who in reality killed her but she was accepted by her father the king and her mother was there. So to me this was a happy ending and a shedding of darkness and entering into the light.