The movie Pan's Labyrinth sparked my attention, being a Spanish movie, you really need to pay attention to details and follow along with the captions. It takes place in Spain, 1940, both in the real world and a fantasy world. The main character, Ophelia, is a young proto-feminist hero who becomes a scapegoat for the sake of others.
As she progresses through the stages of a hero's journey, (Departure, initiation, road of trials, etc), she becomes more knowledgeable, she changes mentally and emotionally. By the end of the film, Ophelia is an entirely new person.
In the beginning, she leaves her hometown and moves in with her new step-father and pregnant mother. She soon meets a mysterious faun who calls her to an adventurous and dangerous quest to prove her identity; although reluctant, she accepts. She is naive and inexperienced but the faun acts as a mentor and a guide. He tells her "I've had so many names... Old names that only the wind and the trees can pronounce. I am the mountain, the forest and the earth. I am... I am a faun. Your most humble servant." In mythology, wind represents life, trees represent knowledge, mountains can represent ambition or goals, the earth is a solid foundation while the forest can mean fear or in some cases, evil. The mixed and almost hypocritical archetypes that the faun's name holds lead the viewer to question his role in the film.
Ophelia is armed with magical devices to help her with the various tasks that will test her strength, resourcefulness and endurance. The final task is to defy her mentor when he asks her to spill the blood of an innocent (in this case, her baby brother), she refuses and instead, her own blood is split when protecting the innocent child. Do you feel as though this spiritual mentor helped Ophelia discover herself or only made things much worse?
Personally, I loved the way the ending was thought-provoking and could either be interpreted as a genuine fantastical tale, or merely a little girl escaping into her own story book based world to avoid the horrors of war and reality during that time.
Personally, I loved the way the ending was thought-provoking and could either be interpreted as a genuine fantastical tale, or merely a little girl escaping into her own story book based world to avoid the horrors of war and reality during that time.
This movie reminds me of other stories such as Narnia and Bridge to Terabithia or even The House on Mango Street because of the time they were set and the similar aged lead characters. The theme of resolving outside influences and making decisions for oneself is evident in both the films and novels of these stories. This movie is one of very few where a girl is the hero, but even here she ends up dead in the end.
I have a love/hate relationship with this film. I agree with your insightful analysis of the protagonist's journey. I'm happy to see that we can indeed find strong female heros. The pan character frigthened me and certainly each time our protagonist meets him I wanted to see her distance herself as far from him as possible. Despite my dislike, I believe he challenges her to find her strength and she grows emotionally and intellectually as a result.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that a common feature of heroes is their selfless nature and willingness to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others.
I agree Quinlyn, another connection to gods is the film's connotation of the Greek god 'Pan', Hermes' son. Part god part animal, with goats horns, hoofs and hindquarters. The forests and thickets were his home, this is another common similarity between the two. The sounds a traveler heard in the night were said to have been made by him; This emphasizes the fear and bone-chilling feeling the faun gives us in the movie.
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