Pan's Labyrinth - Aesthetics

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)

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

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

Underground World

Similar clothes

Eating things

Key is important (visual motif)

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

• 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?

Real World - 

• cold and uninviting
• dark
• blue

Fantasy World - 

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

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