Guillermo del Toro was born in Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico and was raised by his Catholic grandmother. He had an interest in filmmaking at a young age but learned about special effects and makeup first. In 1993, del Toro got his career break with Cronos after it won nine academy awards in Mexico (Guillermo del Toro). Soon after, del Toro created his first Hollywood film, Mimic. Unfortunately, del Toro describes Mimic as the worst film he has ever made and the hardest to work on due to constant interruptions by producers. He returned to Mexico in order to form his own production company, greatly disliking the demanding Hollywood studios (Guillermo del Toro). Del Toro is well known for his films in the horror genre and his love for dark beauty …show more content…
She soon goes to live with him at his mansion on a hillside with his sister Lucille Sharpe. She is continuously visited by ghosts within the mansion warning of family secrets. Edith slowly learns that not everything may be as it appears within the Sharpe mansion. Red is the most important color in the movie, hence the title. While crimson is a name given to the mansion because of the red clay it sits on, red also connects objects or people to ghosts. In an interview, del Toro states that the color red only appears when Edith arrives at the mansion (Hawker, 2015). Red clay oozes from the walls, clearly telling the viewer that the mansion is haunted with ghosts. While there are hints of red in the dresses Edith and Lucille wear, the ring Thomas gives Edith is the best example. It’s a big ring with a large red stone in the setting. It was once Thomas and Lucille’s mother’s, before Lucille killed her and took it. The insect which del Toro uses are moths which signify death and darkness. While they, along with red, are also linked with ghosts, the moths are also associated with Lucille. Del Toro told Jessica Chastain – Lucille – to take insects into account while playing the character. He said, “she never blinks. She has this sort of insect-like stare”, and Chastain took this to heart; you only see her blink three times (Hawker, 2015). Lucille’s wardrobe also mimics moth’s wings. Her dresses aren’t particularly beautiful and are usually dark colors or black. Her clothes are tight and concealing but as the film goes on her clothes become more colorful and loose, resembling a butterfly’s cocoon and spreading its wings. Critics of the film praise Guillermo del Toro for, if nothing else, the fact he is so beloved in the horror genre. While most praise him for the passion he put into “Crimson Peak” and the visuals of the film, most
Rudolfo Anaya’s, Bless Me, Ultima and Guillermo del Toro’s, Pan’s Labyrinth are two coming-of-age stories. Both the novel and the movie are full of events that contribute to the disillusionment of the main character’s childhood idealism and the realization of the real world they live in. Both protagonists absorb themselves in a mythical world full of fantasy and each receives exposure to religious theology and trauma by the violence of men. Despite the fact that Antonio and Ofelia have different familial role models and travel along different paths, their childlike innocence, disillusionment, and initiation into adulthood comes about through similar themes: myth, religion, and violence.
Light, especially fire, and darkness are significantly reoccurring themes in Fahrenheit 451. Guy Montag, the main character, is a fireman, but in this futuristic world the job description of a fireman is to start fires wherever books are found; instead of putting them out. Montag takes a journey from a literary darkness to a knowledgeable light. This journey can be compared to the short story Allegory of the Cave by Plato, in which a prisoner experiences a similar journey. An example of light, in reference to knowledge, occurs just after Montag meets Clarisse for the first time. "When they reached her house all its lights were blazing" (9). Since Montag had rarely seen that many house lights on, I interpreted those lines as saying "that house is full of knowledge and enlightenment; not like the rest of the houses around here which are always dark." Clarisse went on to explain to Montag that her mother, father, and uncle were just sitting around and talking. This was also something that wasn't very commonplace in the city. Fire is an important element of symbolism in Fahrenheit 451. Fire consumes minds, spirits, men, ideas, and books. Fire plays two very different roles in this book. The role of a destructive, devouring, and life ending force, and the role of a nourishing flame.
Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ rotates around the notion of our vision as humans being limited, and only being exposed to a certain extent of knowledge within our surroundings. The Allegory of the Cave presented a rare case where prisoners were trapped in a cave for all their lives with hands, neck and feet bound to look at a wall with shadows beings casted by a fire that lies behind them. Once a prisoner breaks free of the binds, his curiosity allows him to follow the light that then exposes him to the real world where he is blinded by the sun. Each of the elements in the allegory are symbols that can be related to modern day situations as metaphors. Though society has evolved drastically, many struggles that we face today resemble the allegory.
Robert Rodriguez is highly known for El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and the Spy Kids movies. By looking at each of these movies separately, we can see how Robert Rodriguez developed as a director. From El Mariachi to Spy Kids, we are able to see that Rodriguez stays close to his roots by casting mostly Hispanic actors/actresses, and we can begin to understand why not all movies need big budgets to be successful.
Throughout the course of history, mankind has unceasingly strived to comprehend the purpose of our existence. Who are we? Why are we here? While many different conclusions to these questions have emerged, Plato shared Socrates’ believe that ignorance is the mind’s natural state and that our human existence is meant to be lived seeking true knowledge through debate and questioning. In “The Allegory of the Cave” from The Republic, Plato depicts a cave where prisoners are chained from their childhood to grow up only looking at the back of the cave wall. Above and behind them is a fire with a wall standing in front of it where puppeteers hold various figured objects in front of the fire to create dancing shadows on the wall. The prisoners, seeing
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is the most comprehensive and far-reaching analogy in his book, The Republic. This blanket analogy covers many of the other images Plato uses as tools through out The Republic to show why justice is good. The Allegory of the Cave, however, is not the easiest image that Plato uses. First, one must understand this analogy and all of it’s hidden intricacies, then one will be able to apply it to the other images Plato uses such as the Divided Line, or Plato’s Forms.
Pan’s Labyrinths was one of the better movies I’ve seen all year I’m really glad a chose it out of the list to watch. I think I’m going to check out more Guillermo del Toro films. The overall plot of this movie is about a little girl named Ofelia and her struggle within the battle of good and evil she has been surrounded by. She arrives at a military outpost in Spain that is occupied by a Spanish army trying to eradicate the non-pure Spaniards. They are there because her mother married and is pregnant with the captain of the outpost child. This man is a cruel and evil character the show no mercy to anyone around him. Her mother is sick the
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that for the perfectly just city to be realized in practice, philosopher must become kings and kings must become philosophers. In order to prove his point I will discuss the metaphor of the divided line and the allegory of the cave to explain Socrates’ theory of knowledge. Finally the questions of whether what a person knows make him or her better person? Does it qualify him or her to rule? Will get answered.
Is the fantasy world a mirror image of the “real” world in the film “Pan’s Labyrinth”? The answer could be yes. However, people only see what they like to see currently. They choose not to see the deeper side of one thing. As a consequence, there is some unknown information have been missed by the people. There are actually many unknown connections between the fantasy world and the “real” world in this film. The film “Pan’s Labyrinth” tells people a story that happened during the early Francoist period when the Falangist Captain Vidal and the Republican rebels who fought against each other in the “real” world. And at that time, there was a little girl who called Ofelia believed in the fantasy world
Director Tim Burton has directed many films. He started out working at Disney, but shortly after he decided to make his own films. He split away from Disney because they wouldn’t let him add the scariness and darkness he has in his films. After he left he created many great films and also developed his own style. He uses many cinematic techniques in his films for example he uses close-up camera angles on symbolic items, he uses music to show foreshadowing, and he uses lighting and color to show mood
The term trauma is used to describe a mental condition due to the painful and distressing situations experienced by a person. Most people do not express trauma explicitly, but there are some symptoms that indirectly can be related due to trauma like mood problems or behavioral disturbances. Now, when referring to children who have experienced or are experiencing trauma, it is difficult to identify or to understand. Psychologists use a mixture of six types of coping strategies: belief, affect, social, imagination, cognitive, and physiological. The film “Pan’s Labyrinth” by Guillermo del Toro narrates the story of Ofelia, who is a bookish eleven-year-old girl that loves fairy tales. She and her pregnant sick mother, Carmen, arrive at her heartless
Magic and reality are often considered as two extremes on the opposite ends of a spectrum. And while they are so different, when presented in the form of a fairytale, they hold many parallels. Pan’s Labyrinth addresses real-world socio-political issues. Guillermo Del Toro uses the ambiguity of magic and the magical characters as a way of uncovering a common thread between reality and imagination, using them as parallels to express the cold adult world and pure childhood innocence. It is a way of offering Ofelia’s perspective about the revolution as a child growing up in the fascist regime while simultaneously using imagination as a way of transforming reality. Magic seems to be having real-world implications at various instances, but at the
C.S. Lewis is the author of the popular book series: The Chronicles of Narnia. In The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis utilizes the understandings of Augustine as well as his own understandings of myths to help better explain concepts of Christianity for younger generations. Despite C.S. Lewis’s claims, The Chronicles of Narnia qualifies as an allegory due to the way the characters and events in the book series are portrayed similar to those in biblical text.
Born on 30th of July 1970 in London United Kingdom to a British father and American mother. Because of that he has both British and American citizenship and has been living in both London and Chicago since his childhood. He found his passion for filmmaking at early ages and at age 7 he made his first short film with his father’s camera. Eventually just like most directors he did not attend film universities, instead he went on to study English literature in London, his hometown. One of his early short films which is probably his best also, is ‘Doodlebug’ which he made in
When one thinks of children’s storybooks, one robotically assumes a simple fairy tale with no particular purpose. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, is very successful in means of portraying a deeper message with usage of symbolism and satire. Just about all the characters found in the story function as a symbol, leaving the rest for the reader’s imagination. Even though Alice in Wonderland does not fulfill the “classic fairy tale,” it does not leave one, particularly children, questioning the story. Because Alice in Wonderland is a dream-like tale, it enables Lewis Carroll to criticize and make fun of the Victorian Age. Like many other known authors, they use satire to point out faults of society and the people in a humorous manner. The core idea behind Alice in Wonderland is the chaos that comes with puberty and growing up. More importantly, the use of the rabbit hole, growing and shrinking, having to identify herself to characters, and Alice herself help to construct the main theme of the story.