Juxtaposition In The Film Pan's Labyrinth

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. Del Toro, additionally, contrasts the real world and the fantasy world through the use of colors, shapes, and varying levels of organization and cleanliness. Furthermore, he places objects of the real world into the fantasy one to draw relations between the two. Through these three singular parallels, Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth explores the realities of fascism in Franco-Era

This is especially the case in Guillermo del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth, which juxtaposes fairy tale elements with aspects of Franco era Spain to explore some of its realities in greater detail. By comparing the evils of Vidal and of Ofelia’s fantasy world Del Toro presents the atrocities of Franco era Spain’s Fascist leadership. By contrasting the shapes, colors, and cleanliness of the two worlds, he presented some of the more basic principles of the Fascist regime, and by placing symbolic objects throughout the film, Del Toro emphasizes their symbolic importance to Vidal and again to the Fascist regime. Even with all of these comparisons, however, it is still impossible to determine for a fact if Ofelia’s make believe world was real or