Pan's Labyrinth: Watch it or Ditch it?

                                                              

                                                             source: https://goo.gl/images/fAvPQJ

Summary

In 1994, there was this kid named Ofelia who is enthusiastic and really believes in the fairy tale world. As she and her mother travel to her stepfather’s campsite, Captain Vidal, her mother felt an episode of nausea because she is pregnant of Ofelia’s brother. Her mother asked their driver to make the vehicle stop and as Ofelia went out of the vehicle, she noticed something enticing. Ofelia saw an insect who somewhat wants to tell her to follow it. But because her mother’s feeling immediately felt right, they went back in the vehicle to continue their ride to her father’s place. As the story goes on, while she’s trying to sleep, she saw the insect again who later on turned out as what she believes, a fairy. The fairy lead her to the labyrinth where she met a tall earth-like creature who is called as Faun. It was revealed to her that she is a princess who’s trapped in a child’s body. In order for her to be back in the underworld, she needs to accomplish the task that the Faun tells her. It didn’t became easy for a child to accomplish the task because Ofelia encountered a lot of different creatures who can kill her. Her father, who is a general, is a hard-handed person who kills people that may turn against him. A lot of things happened. Her mother died, Ofelia and a maid tried to escape the wrath of her stepfather. While being in pursuit, Ofelia finally met the Faun at the end of the labyrinth. With a dagger on the Faun’s hand, he asked Ofelia to give him her brother in order to fulfill the prophecy by pouring innocent’s blood in the well. She refused to do it and his father finally caught her talking to someone he cannot see. Ofelia gave her brother to his father and his father shoot him because of anger for disobedience and being stubborn. She fell in to the ground as her blood drips in the well. Ofelia became dead in the real world and the story ended as Ofelia became alive and reconciled with her father and mother in the underworld.

Interpretation of Symbolism

       There are a lot of symbolism that we see in the film yet let me choose only the most relevant and significant of all. What I’ve noticed that the characters itself symbolize something in particular. As what I have understand and analyzed, Captain Vidal and the Faun represents authority while Ofelia and the activists represent disobedience. The Faun and Captain Vidal are the characters that we can say authoritative in how they presented it. They give rules and certain instructions that if you fail to accomplish, bad things may happen. On the other hand, Ofelia and the activists are the one who represent how people question things and just merely following them because of authority. We can look at the scenes in the movie wherein Ofelia failed to follow orders numerous times. She goes out by night to meet the Faun and the fairies, she ate the fruit that the Faun told him that she shouldn’t eat, she tried to escape his stepfather and brought his baby brother with him, and lastly, she refused to follow the last step in being a princess again which is to give some blood from his brother. We can also see the disobedience of the activists by fighting against their so called “leaders” because of their contrasting principles. Two contrasting ideas are visible in the movie and that makes us question things. Is it true that disobedience is a form of wrongness or is it a protest against something that could be worse?

 Relevance of the story to current events

Through its symbolism, I can say that the movie has a relevance to current events. The fascist authority represents our current situation state today with our President Duterte. I can say so because there are killings that has been shown in the film where the victim died because of false hopes. In our today’s situation, a lot of people got involved in our president’s war on drugs yet a lot of people has been killed without due process and without even verifying if it’s true. Sad thing that happened is that a kid became killed because of their wrong information about the target. The activists are what we see in the news or televisions. They are the one who are fighting for their rights, contradicting the leader’s belief, and fighting for something that we cannot specifically identify right now. The one that we saw in the movie is similar to the activists that we have today and the movie mirrors the current situation of the battle between the privileged and the unprivileged, the superiors and its inferiors, and the struggle of the mass killing of innocent people because of false hopes. I also noticed that the last part (that is when Ofelia died) shows that the way into a better life (to be a princess) does not have to take the lives of the innocent. That scene may not be literal but in a deeper sense, we can see that it may be related to the current issues about the killings in Duterte’s regime.

My Thoughts

Pan’s Labyrinth at first glance is a film for kid who loves fantasy and fairy tales. However, as I watch it, it’s not. Aside from the brutal scenes that it contains, the message that it conveys is something that is not really for kids. The movie itself is more about just monsters and fairy tales. I like the way how the story was made because for me, it’s not too conventional yet can get a good feedback from the audience. Overall, the movie is great and it can be interpreted in many ways not just in my angle. I also would like to mention that there’s a question that has been left to me even after watching the movie. Is the Faun and every fairy tale things in the movie true? Or is it just made up of Ofelia’s mind in order to relieve herself from the status quo of their society that time? Well, if those things are all made up of her imagination, then I can say that our imagination makes us what we think. Ofelia’s imagination made her risk things in order to grow and discover by herself. Pan’s Labyrinth is indeed a movie to watch.

Final Verdict

Rating: 4/5

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