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Authority And Reality In Pan's Labyrinth

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Pan’s Labyrinth shows an interesting mix between the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and the imagination of a child that leaves viewers questioning if the imaginary world is actual part of the “real world.” Throughout these mixings of reality, observers are presented with female characters that come to show that the questioning of authority and reality seemingly results in a positive outcome. Ofelia and her mother Carmen are two opposite examples of this. Ofelia continuously disobeys those around her, and thus, she gets to live as the princess of the underworld at the end of the story. Carmen obeys all that Captain Vidal tells her, so by the end of the movie, she dies completing the captains ultimate dream of having a son. This disobedience stresses the importance of each character questioning the world around them whether this disobedience includes characters needing thinking for themselves or fighting against the Franco regime. Ofelia …show more content…

This is also shown through the rebels who ultimately destroy the base camp and kill Captain Vidal. The Doctor tells Captain Vidal that “to obey without thinking just like that. Well – that’s something only people like you can do,” and the captain and everyone who follows this same line of thinking are the ones who lose. In Ofelia’s death, she could return to her father because of her independent thinking, but for Captain Vidal who was trying to continue the legacy of his father by telling his son what time he dies, he loses because Mercedes states that Captain Vidal’s son will not even learn the real name of his father. Through this, viewers are reinforced with the idea that thinking for oneself is vital to success, but when thinking for oneself, one must consider dangers and the effect on others like in Ofelia’s case with her brother and the Pale

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In modern storytelling, it is common to use comparisons to make details easier to understand and lead the audience to a certain conclusion. A much more complicated form of this comparison is juxtaposition. Juxtaposition occurs when an author places two ideas/concepts/characters parallel to each other in order to compare them. The film Pan’s Labyrinth written and directed by Guillermo del Toro serves as a splendid illustration of juxtaposition in film. Beginning with the protagonist Ofelia in 1944 Franco-era Spain, the director presents the parallels between the evils of Ofelia’s make believe world and those evils belonging to the fascist regime and her step-father, General Vidal who is representative of this regime.

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With this, some of their rights were being violated and those rights are slowly starting to perish. Pan’s Labyrinth is one of Guillermo Del Toro’s greatest masterpiece and it shows the reality about how unfair and cruel society can treat women. This movie depicts that society can do a lot of things that can hurt a woman’s dignity but it also showed us what a true woman is and what are they really capable of doing. In the movie, there are three main female characters in the story namely Ofelia, Carmen and Mercedes.

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