Pan's Labyrinth & Fairy Tales

This blog is going to be a little different. I am going to go into details about the different fairy tales in Pan's Labyrinth. Let me just say that this movie is awesome! I love everything about it! I love how the director incorporated a dark twisted fairy tale story into the post-Spanish war. It was very intriguing, and I was trying to figure out before I watched the movie how the director was going to incorporate the Spanish war and fairy tales.

In the movie Pan's Labyrinth, you noticed how Ofelia step-father treats her horrible but treats her mother like a princess. Of course in your typical Cinderella story it's always the daughter getting mistreated by her step-mother. Except in Pan's Labyrinth, it's a twisted. It's a step-father that hates her and the feelings are mutual between the two.  Ofelia mother Carmen doesn't see the tension between the two. Instead, she just thinks Ofelia is acting out because she know's her step-father isn't her  biological father.

Another fairy tale movie that I noticed in Pan's Labyrinth is Alice Adventures in Wonderland. The reason that I compare this fairy tale in the particular movie is because you see Ofelia going off into the wilderness and interacting with magical creatures and roaming outside.  Everything that Ofelia does is outside, in the woods or underground near the bugs. (YUCK!) All I could think of during the scene when she interacts with the magical toad is how dirty she's becoming in the mug.

Ofelia is fascinating! She does her own thing and doesn't pay attention to rules. I'm surprised that she made it through the movie because she was so strong willed and she wanted to do her own thing. Moreso, she just really followed her heart more than her mind. For example, I compare the scene of her eating the forbidden fruit to Aladdin. Aladdin is known for breaking so many rules, and that's exactly what Ofelia did! She ate the fruit even though the Faun told her not too! All she had to do was three simple tasks. Of course, there're consequences to her actions.  Aladdin is known for making too many mistakes without knowing the consequences of his actions. Unfortunately, Ofelia didn't know that she was supposed to make certain mistakes to get to her father. What if Ofelia did kill her brother? What do you think would have happened? 

As far as the visual style goes for Pan's Labyrinth. He focuses on the rule of three. From what I research on rule of three is:

"The rule of three is a common storytelling device and rhetorical technique. As a storytelling device, you find it most often in fairy tales, myths, and fables, but it’s common in all forms of literature, poetry, and songwriting." (indieplottwist)

You can see how he made sure there is three of everything because he wants to show maybe if Ofelia does something wrong the third time or try to attempt the third task it will keep the audience on their feet. She had to choose from three mailboxes to enter to key, there is three fairies that guided Ofelia through the movie, one of the fairies died because Ofelia awaken the monster by eating the forbidden fruit. 

Why use fairy tales? 

According to Del Toro the director:

'I was also trying to uncover a common thread between the "real world" and the "imaginary world"through one of the seminal concerns of fairy tales: choice. It's something that has intrigued me since Cronos, through Hellboy and now to Pan's Labyrinth: the way your choices define you. And I thought it would be great to counterpoint an institutional lack of choice, which is fascism, with the chance to choose, which the girl takes in this movie.'

I thought what Del Toro said was very interesting because when I reflected on the movie. I saw the imaginary world being an opportunity to show that people are afraid of magic. They think that magic isn't real. The magical creatures was an opportunity to put all of the bad things that were happen in the Spanish war and demonstrated how evil things were. Pan's Labyrinth did a really good job demonstrating fairy tales and the real world!