Pan's Labyrinth - Aesthetics

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Magic Realm

expresses a realistic view of real world with magical elements added

fables, legends, myths

refers to texts with magic or supernatural presented in real-world setting

IN PAN'S LABYRINTH:

Fantasy

  • fairies, her life, a quest, a mistake, the golden palace
  • beautifully constructed but very dark fantasy

Real World

  • graphic violence
  • Vidal killing people (prisoner, doctor)
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Influence

Look and feel inspired by Spanish artist Fancisco Goya

  • romantic painter
  • 18th and 19th centuries
  • commentator and chronicler
  • suffered from mental health issues

Influenced by 3 periods of Goya's life

1. Fantasy and Invention

  • dark combination of fantasy and nightmare

2. Black Paintings

  • focuses on witchcraft and nightmare
  • Saturn Devouring His Son - the Pale Man

3. The Disasters of War - depicts horror of war; film set after Spanish Civil War

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Influence - Context

Ruling class , in Spain, 1955 - venal and corrupt

- banquet scene; most in poverty - equates to Pale Man

Little empathy for Priest and Catholicism

Mercedes and Doctor - honourable and caring

Catholic imagery evident throught

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Influence - Alice in Wonderland

Underground World

Similar clothes

Eating things

Key is important (visual motif)

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Influence - Catholicism

del Toro - Catholic

Grandma - devout Catholic; believed in 'mortifying the flesh' - walking in shoes containing inverted bottle tops

St Lucia - martyr - depicted with her eyes on her hands/on a plate - Pale Man

Stigmata - marks, sores where crucifixtion wounds of Christ were - Pale Man

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Influence - Religious References

  • temptation, sacrifice, eternal life
  • priest tells prisoner to confess - be rewarded in Heaven
  • temptation of grape - Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden
  • Ofelia is redeemed - sacrifice of herself (Christ on cross)
  • stain glass window in Golden Palace - imagination or heaven?
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Colour

Real World - 

  • cold and uninviting
  • dark
  • blue

Fantasy World - 

  • warm and inviting
  • red
  • bright
  • shadows - horror aspect
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Fantasy World

Ofelia imagined world - fluid camera, red, crimson (uterus)

shapes and curves

Faun - feritility symbols - female fellopian tubes on face

Uterine symbols:

  • Carmen's bed
  • Arch to Labyrinth
  • Enterance to fig tree

Ofelia's idea of heaven is going back to the womb

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