Pan's Labyrinths Analysis Essay

Timothy Adams

Theater 220

Tracy Sunderland

November 10, 2015

Analysis of Pans Labyrinths Cinematography

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

entire movie and eventually dies of childbirth. Ofelia has a friend Mercedes who is a servant for the captain she acts as her mother figure and protector in the movie. Additionally, Mercedes and the doctor taking care of Ofelia’s mother are helping the rebels with food, medicine, and information. Ofelia knows about this but doesn’t say anything out of the care for Mercedes.
There is a seemingly imaginary story that runs with and represents the real things that she struggles with.

I first realized this when she opens the book to find blood filling the page and then in real life shortly she hears a ruckus outside and runs into her room to find her mother bleeding profusely due to pregnancy complications. Ofelia is the only character in her imaginary world. At the beginning of the movie she finds a large insect in a statue and assumes it to be a fairy due to its human-like behavior. The fairy later appears to her in her bed and transforms into a more fairy-like appearance. The fair then wants Ofelia to follow it somewhere. She is very curious so she gets out of bed and follows the fairy into the forest to find the labyrinth she had checked out earlier in the movie. In the middle of the labyrinth, she is greeted by a faun. This faun lets her know she was not born of this earth and she was a princess in some other world, but she had to pass some test here on earth in order for her to earn her spot next to her real father and mother. She is to complete three tasks to earn this

right.
The color contrast of Ofelia’s fantasy world vs the real world was obvious during the entire movie and I believe contributed most to the story as far as cinematography goes. Her world was bright in color and the world was dark and gray. The two scenes I chose to break down is also going to be a contrast. I will explain one scene from her fantasy world and one from the real world.
The first scene happening in her fantasy world was the scene with the “pale man.” The pale man was a motionless monster in one of Ofelia’s tasks.

She needs to avoid eating from his table while retrieving a dagger from a locked box. The room was filled with bright colors and the light appeared bright amber or gold. Crimson, orange, and purple colors were obviously made to pop and add to the contrast of the fantasy world. The pale man’s feast on the table looked like the most joyous feast you could imagine with the colors. I feel the choice to make the man pale was a good one he was evil and wanted to kill Ofelia. I believe this had a connection to her real life that she was running away from, a world that was dark gray and

evil.
The second scene that contrasts this scene in the real world was a scene when Ofelia and Mercedes are going to make an attempt to escape because Mercedes had been found out. In this scene in the real world in which she is running away from an evil “monster” the captain. It was dark and gray with almost no other color. The lighting was dark with a touch of moonlight. It was raining very hard the entire scene with made the sorrow and urgency really come out. They were eventually found at this moment they did a close shot of their captors face. It was the captain, his face was well lit my only by the moonlight but dark and gray as ever.
I really enjoyed this movie I hope to watch it again soon. I liked this project a lot, it make me really take a deep look at something that often get overlooked. I will defiantly be paying more attention to these details in the future.