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  • From Georgesliès's lunar landscape to the sands of Tatooine, movies have been

  • transporting us to different worlds since the beginning of cinema.

  • And a lot of these films use their fantasy worlds to comment on the real world that we

  • all live in.

  • Avatar can be read as a plea to protect the natural world, while The Hunger Games takes

  • reality TV and income inequality to their brutal extremes.

  • And in 2006, a movie took on authoritarianism and the violent aftershocks of the Spanish

  • Civil Warall through the eyes of an innocent young girl and the fairy tale world she discovers

  • in the woods.

  • Filled with original imagery and drawing on folklore and fantasy traditions, Pan's Labyrinth

  • takes us on a journey to a place as violent and cruel as it is beautiful and compassionate.

  • [Intro Music Plays]

  • Acclaimed Mexican writer-director Guillermo

  • del Toro was already an established filmmaker by the time he released Pan's Labyrinth

  • in 2006.

  • From the gothic horror of Cronos and The Devil's Backbone, to the sly humor of his comic book

  • adaptation Hellboy, del Toro had built a reputation.

  • He's known for embedding rich, sympathetic charactersespecially children and otherworldly

  • creaturesin larger than life stories.

  • With Pan's Labyrinth, he set out to combine both these impulses to create a story that

  • was half fantasy adventure, half historical political drama.

  • Set in 1944 just after the Spanish Civil War, the film follows Ofelia, played with wonder

  • and grit by Ivana Baquero.

  • She's a young girl traveling with her pregnant mother to join her stepfather in the Spanish

  • countryside.

  • The forces of fascist dictator Francisco Franco have an outpost there, from which they hope

  • to exterminate the rest of the anti-fascist rebels hiding in the hills.

  • And Ofelia's stepfather, Captain Vidal, is the commander of this outpost.

  • He's also fascism personified.

  • Grimly portrayed by Sergipez, Vidal demands absolute loyalty and sees mercy as a sign

  • of weakness.

  • He won't hesitate to torture or kill anyone who even might be a threat to the new Spanish

  • government.

  • Now, the film opens with an unnamed narrator telling the story of Princess Moanna, the

  • long lost daughter of the King of Underworld.

  • And Ofelia is a voracious reader, especially of fairy tales.

  • So whether that story is coming from her imagination or her books, or is the actual

  • truth of the film is hard to pin down at first.

  • But the movie does suggest there's more to Ofelia's story than meets the eye.

  • She escapes Vidal's outpost and discovers a fantasy world in an ancient stone labyrinth

  • hidden in the nearby woods.

  • There she meets a faun, as menacing as he is magical, who tells Ofelia that she may

  • be the long lost Princess Moanna.

  • And she has to complete three tasks to claim her birthright.

  • The action of the film then moves back and forth between these two worlds.

  • In one, Ofelia's mother Carmen, played by Ariadna Gil, fights illness as her due

  • date nears.

  • Meanwhile, Vidal hunts the rebels, and Vidal's housekeeper Mercedes embarks on a dangerous

  • mission to aid them.

  • And in the fantasy realm, Ofelia gets a key from the belly of a giant toad, reclaims a

  • dagger from a child-eating monster called the Pale Man, and finallyafter her mother

  • dies in childbirth and the rebels storm the outpostshe steals her baby half-brother

  • and brings him to the center of the labyrinth.

  • There, Ofelia is confronted with a final choice, to give the baby to the faun as a sacrifice

  • or return him to the villainous Vidal.

  • In the ultimate selfless act, Ofelia refuses them both, protecting her half-brother's

  • life with her own.

  • Vidal grabs the child andspoiler alertshoots Ofelia, leaving her for dead.

  • As her blood drips down into the labyrinth, Ofelia is magically transported to a golden

  • throne room.

  • She finds herself healed, dressed in beautiful clothes, and wearingnot quite Ruby Slippers,

  • but definitely red shoes.

  • Her mother and father sit on two impossibly tall thrones, with a third seat for her.

  • Her family is reunited.

  • And while we see Ofelia die in the real world, the closing narration tells us that she reigned

  • for centuries in the Underworld, that she was beloved by her people, and that traces

  • of her can still be found if you know where to look.

  • The film ends on the image of a flower opening on a branch Ofelia had once touched, suggesting

  • just that.

  • Pan's Labyrinth is a film of strong contradictions, as beautiful as it is bloody.

  • It's a fairy tale about a child, but also a violent, R-rated film clearly made for adults.

  • Our job as film critics is to reconcile these contradictions as we construct our reading

  • of the movie.

  • One way to look at Pan's Labyrinth is to consider it through the lens of folklore.

  • Scholars have long suggested that fairy tales give children a framework to understanding

  • the sometimes arbitrary and brutal world of adults.

  • In this reading, the fantasy world operates as Ofelia's way to interpret the real world.

  • I mean, think about it: here's a young girl, dumped onto the front lines of a violent conflict,

  • perpetrated by this scary man she's expected to callFather.”

  • And on top of it all, her mother's in real danger.

  • The only way for Ofelia's mind to cope is to create a fantasy world through which she

  • can explore and understand what's actually happening to her.

  • And what's actually happening is downright disgusting.

  • del Toro rarely pulls the camera away from violence, forcing us to confront Vidal's

  • homicidal wrath as he smashes a man's face with a wine bottle, prepares to torture a

  • rebel, or shoots half a dozen people in cold blood.

  • Ofelia doesn't necessarily witness all of these attacks.

  • But Vidal's menace and sadism is so intense that the film suggests that Ofelia lives in

  • terror in his house.

  • Which is exactly why Ofelia has invented the fairy tale half of the film.

  • American scholar and fairy tale expert Jack Zipes writes in the Journal

  • of American Folklore: “[Ofelia] wills herself into this taleand creates it

  • so that she can deal with forces (her mother, Vidal, the end of the Civil War) impinging

  • on her life.

  • What happens in the fairy tale is what provides her with the courage to oppose the real cruelty

  • of monstrous people.”

  • Seen this way, when Ofelia outsmarts the giant toad and extracts the key or uses her ingenuity

  • to outwit and outrun the Pale Man, she's actually figuring out how to stand up to the

  • adults in her life who are ill-equipped or not willing to protect her.

  • del Toro's genius is to go back past the sanitized Disney version of fairy tales to

  • their more barbaric origins.

  • In Pan's Labyrinth, the fantasy world seems as merciless as the real one.

  • The toad is nearly as big as Ofelia and seems like it could eat her.

  • The Pale Man bites the heads off two little fairies in graphic detail.

  • And the faun clearly plans to sacrifice Ofelia's infant half-brother with the dagger she recovered.

  • So, really, Ofelia doesn't really escape the atrocities of fascist Spain, but she learns

  • to come to terms with them, by refracting them through the lens of these stories she loves.

  • Del Toro draws inspiration from a wide range of tales, novels, and films to build the world

  • of Pan's Labyrinth.

  • Everything from the early stories of Snow White and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland,

  • to The Wizard of Oz and ancient Greek myths.

  • He even draws on the most famous Spanish novel of all, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

  • That story also follows a protagonist whose fantastical visions help him cope with the

  • trials of the real world.

  • But that's not the only way to read Pan's Labyrinth.

  • Another, more radical, approach suggests that the fairy tale world might be just as real

  • as the one crawling with fascist soldiers.

  • This reading takes its cues from what Guillermo del Toro himself has said about the film.

  • Now, people like to go back and forth about whether it is acceptable to take into account an author's

  • intent when analyzing a piece of film.

  • But that doesn't mean it can't be useful.

  • Especially if there's evidence to support their ideas.

  • Guillermo del Toro has said the he wanted to make a film aboutauthority and disobedience.”

  • And when you look at the film through this lens, the movie's contradictions and characters

  • can be divided up in a different way.

  • Some characters, like Captain Vidal, his soldiers, and Carmen, represent authority.

  • Vidal and his lieutenants issue commands and enforce order.

  • Carmen obeys, even when it puts her, Ofelia, or her unborn child at risk.

  • Other characters represent disobedience.

  • Like, time and again, Ofelia refuses to follow the rules.

  • She wanders off on dangerous adventures, gets her fancy clothes dirty, and nearly dies in

  • one terrifying sequence when she disobeys the faun and eats food from the Pale Man's table.

  • Mercedes disobeys Vidal by sneaking food, medicine, and information to the rebels.

  • And they're engaged in the ultimate act of disobedience: all-out war against the new

  • fascist government.

  • At first, the film seems to break down along clean lines.

  • Fascism and allegiance to power are bad.

  • Resistance and hope are good.

  • But where does the faun fit into all this?

  • He's part of Ofelia's disruptive fantasy world, but he also abandons her when she dares

  • to disobey him.

  • And he only returns when she agrees to do exactly as he says.

  • In the end, he demands blind loyalty.

  • Just like Vidal.

  • Really, Ofelia's life is more often in danger in the fantasy world.

  • It's just as dark and cruel as the world of Vidal and the rebels.

  • And maybe it's just as real, too.

  • So what if the fantasy realm is not just a child's coping mechanism, but it's an

  • actual reality within the world of the film?

  • The filmmaking techniques del Toro uses seem to support this view.

  • In shot after shot, the camera moves fluidly between the two worlds.

  • He often uses the trees or walls to hide wipe-cuts that make it feel like fantasy and reality

  • are connected.

  • Several times, del Toro even moves back and forth between the dimensions in uninterrupted

  • single shots.

  • Which also suggests that they're both part of a single reality.

  • Finally, objects from the fairy tale world sometimes show up in the real world.

  • Things like a special key, a mandrake root, and a magical piece of chalk all make the

  • transition.

  • What first seems to be a film divided cleanly between fantasy and reality, turns out to

  • be much more ambiguous.

  • As the Canadian scholar Jennifer Orme puts it: “This ambiguity iscrucial

  • to the film's social critique of the systemic violence employed by militaristic regimes

  • that wish to create, as Vidal says, a 'clean' and decidedly unambiguous world by destroying

  • all that is disobedientall that does not fit into the master narrative of totalitarianism.”

  • Guillermo del Toro refuses to obey contemporary conventions of fairy tales as clean and safe

  • stories for children.

  • He refuses to draw a clear line between the real and the fantastical.

  • And he refuses to make one reality clearly good.

  • By doing all this, del Toro has made a film that, in itself, is an act of rebellion against

  • unquestioned authority.

  • However you choose to look at Pan's Labyrinth, the film stands as a remarkable achievement

  • of narrative and technical mastery.

  • It's also a deeply tragic story. Del Toro once said:

  • Guillermo Del Toro: War is the ultimate act of intolerance.

  • War gives no honor. In my mind, it gives no victory.

  • And there are no winners, only losers.

  • There's only live victims and dead victims.

  • And few films drive home that point as elegantly as Pan's Labyrinth.

  • ...Or The Devil's Backboneyou should watch The Devil's Backbone too.

  • Whether you think Ofelia's escaping into her imagination, or involved in an actual

  • quest, the horrors of Franco's fascist regime provide the perfect backdrop for this story

  • of innocence as the ultimate hope for the future.

  • Next time, we'll follow a British criminal as he scours LA and his own soul in search

  • of his daughter's killers in Steven Soderbergh's revenge thriller The Limey.

  • Crash Course Film Criticism is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.

  • You can head over to their channel to check out a playlist of their latest shows, like

  • It's Okay to be Smart, Origin of Everything, and Eons.

  • This episode of Crash Course was filmed in the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio

  • with the help of these [nice people] and our amazing graphics team is Thought Cafe.

From Georgesliès's lunar landscape to the sands of Tatooine, movies have been

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パンズ・ラビリンスクラッシュ・コース 映画批評 #9 (Pan's Labyrinth: Crash Course Film Criticism #9)

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    irene Hu に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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