Pan’s Labyrinth” is a grim story labeled as a fairy tale. This film is the dark department of “The Little Girl Who Sold Matches”, in the cruel reality of the little girl are chosen to escape reality with fantasy, laughing away from this disappointing world, to the ideal paradise. This movie is the little girl to the underworld hell, the same smile, the same heartbreaking.Many people who watched the movie struggled with whether the little girl’s contact with the god Pan was a myth or a hallucination of the little girl, and the supporting parties also used the details of the movie as supporting evidence respectively. I do believe that the story itself is the presentation of the director’s thoughts, it does not matter whether it is true or false, because every film is a work of fiction, we should focus on the meaning that the director wants to convey through it. I don’t know if you have noticed, but the little girl’s contact with the God of Pan is actually a mutual confirmation of the reality she has experienced. As Pan said when he handed the little girl the book, “It will reveal your future”.
First encounter with the genie: (Reality) On the way to the captain’s house, the little girl was reading the fairy tale book she brought, but her mother said we are going to the outdoors, you are not too young to believe in fairy tales and so on. It shows that the child’s mother foresees the darkness of the upcoming reality and does not believe in magic, myths and other miraculous powers. And the child still has a child’s heart when facing a confused future, for the fragile young mind, there are fairy tales there is hope. It is also destined that she will meet the genie. At a chance stop by the roadside, the little girl gets out of the car to collect rocks and comes across a strange bug, believing it to be a genie.
Meet the God of Pan: (reality) Meet her stepfather, a stranger who is unwilling to accommodate herself (as evidenced by the handshake), live in a house with strange noises everywhere, see the eerie ruins of a maze, and sleep next to her frail, pot-bellied mother. All of this is disturbing to the 12-year-old, with a mother who needs her own care and a stepfather who is not her father at all (the little girl clarifies her relationship with the Captain when she meets her maid). To tell the unborn brother about the magic of eternal life and death, but also brought himself into the world of the unreal, probably in the little girl’s subconscious is the concept of death is eternal life, but also for the ending.
(Unreal) to meet the god Pan under the leadership of a strange bug that turned into the appearance of a genie, was told that he was the child of the god of the underworld and the god of the moon, which is also affected by the reality of her own father’s death and her mother’s critical illness. The dead become the god of the underworld, and she hopes that her critically ill mother can become the eternal moon to protect herself. Get the magical book, you can see the future, get the task, return to the underworld and become a princess.
Find the toad and get the key for the mission.
The little girl soiled her dress, and her mother was angry. Because she had said that in her own childhood as long as there is such a skirt will not want anything. Beautiful skirt represents the rich life of the officer’s family, and the little girl in pursuit of freedom, get the key to give up all this, but also the meaning of resistance to reality.
Fairy grass to save her mother, her mother died of burning grass. Worried about her sick mother, the little girl shelved the plan to complete the second task, Pan Shen gave him the root of the fairy grass to save her mother, I feel a little like ginseng, probably on behalf of her mother, because the fairy grass just started to move when the action and the action of the sleeping mother in bed is extremely similar. Soaking it in milk to nourish it with blood is a metaphor for the fact that her mother can only give birth successfully by sucking the blood and sweat of the people. But the secret of the immortal grass was discovered, the captain handed over the right to handle it to the mother, she desperately threw the immortal grass into the fire and said some words of helplessness and disappointment in accepting the cruel reality, and then died in childbirth. The disappointment for the world, so that he had no hope of life, from another point of view, perhaps it is her choice in the exploitation of the people and self-contradiction to make it.
Gluttony of grapes misses the mark.
(Unreal) The second task the little girl accepts is to draw a door on the wall, cross the table full of food, open the cabinet with a key to get something, during which she has to move quickly and cannot eat anything on the table. In the process of carrying out the task, she saw a man-eating monster with eyes temporarily asleep, let down her guard, and after getting the dagger, stole the grapes on the table, killing the two elves responsible for leading the way, and narrowly escaped death at the hands of the monster.
(Reality) The maid and the doctor brought the guerrillas medicine, keys and news of the war. And persuade them to leave the country as soon as possible, but the guerrillas chose to steal supplies after creating the bombing, resulting in the troops being hit hard, the captives betrayed the inside man, the doctor and the stuttering captive two people sacrificed, only the maid escaped. In the captain ambushed the guerrillas when the right hand raised the gun, and the monster one-handed to find the little girl’s posture. Grapes, guide elves, daggers (on behalf of the resistance or the maid’s weapon when escaping), temporarily sleeping ogre are mutually corroborating relationships.
At the end of the story, the partisans find the little girl, who has fallen in a pool of blood with a smile on her face. (Unreal) She went to the underworld and saw her father and mother (exactly like her mother in reality), and the god Pan explained that because you “sacrificed yourself and did not hurt innocent people”, you passed the test and became a princess. (Reality) people in the moonlight with tears to send goodbye to the little girl who died without regret. This not only reminds people of the ending of “The Little Girl Who Sold Matches”, the dawn, the sun shines on the little girl’s body, she has been frozen, still holding half a match that has been extinguished. Who said that death is a kind of pain, the little girl who sold matches saw her mother, and the girl became the princess of the underworld, they both lived a happy life a hundred times stronger than the real world…Such a tragic ending also carries warmth, heart-wrenching warmth.
If you are a person who can change yourself and change reality, put an end to all this cruelty so that children don’t have to go to another world to find a fairy tale, because this is the paradise of happiness!
