Formal Pan's Labyrinth Evalution: Lunsford et al. P. 268

Pan's Labyrinth is a powerful movie that doesn't just make you think, it shatters your illusions and your perspective of what a movie is "supposed" to be. It is a unique and a rare movie that will wow people for years to come. It is one of the best movies that ever came out in years.

For hundreds of years in countless stories from "Cinderella" to "Lord of the Rings" the plot usually conform with what people want it to be. "There is no knight in shining armor to save you", says it all. There are one key element that makes Pan's Labyrinth what it is. Without that element, the movie will vanish in the countless stacks of B-budget movies in history. The element is reality. It's a movie that goes in the opposite direction. Normally, movies that relies heavily on myths and fairy tales has very predictable story lines to follow. The hero(or heroine) saves the day and gets the girl(or guy) basically summarizes fairy tales.

In Pan's Labyrinth, "happily after ever" doesn't happen. That is what makes the movie special. It's unpredictable. If you were watching a batman movie or a superman movie, and when you arrive to the scene when they battle their arch-nemesis, let me ask you this question: "Who wins?" Of course, the answer is the hero. Movies of Pan's Labyrinth's caliber, it would be very difficult to predict it, thus making it more fascinating because you won't know what happens next, because it doesn't follow the rules of people's views of what "it should be" in movies. But what if the hero dies in the movie? An elderly woman sprints and saves a boy scout from an incoming car. These examples never happens in many movies. The point is, movies follow the society's view on how movies should end in their fantasies. Pan's labyrinth went the opposite way and did it in a way nobody expected.

Pan's labyrinth is reality. Ofelia dies, when normally fairy tales calls for her being saved at the last minute. She wasn't saved. That's one major part of the story that sets the table for it all. The picture shows reality as it is, no matter how much we don't like it or deny it, it happens anyway. Pan's labyrinth showed things that we don't want to happen, but happened anyway. Ofelia was shot by her stepfather. The doctor was shot in the back. A young man was bashed in the nose repeatedly and the movie showed every bit of it.

A lot of people denies reality. They stubbornly cling to their idea of illusion. They can't accept what happened in front of their eyes, may it be the hero who gets killed early in the movie because he accidentally trips and falls in a shark pit. They require the main character to lead the movie, to save the day, to give the dramatic one-liners. They require walking off in the sunset at the end, the children to never die, and that good always triumphs over evil. Those people probably won't like Pan's Labyrinth, but in other ways they will love the movie if they ever watch it.

Purdue OWL Website and The Lessons To Learn

The website was interesting because of how it shows its ideas. Too often in countless books and websites, they use long and fancy words to show their points, which just makes it more complicated to understand. Purdue OWL was simple and straight to the point. For example, one page had several points about literary terms at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/575/01/ It wasn't a 20-page overload of specific details. The page summarized it very well with good points and I understood it easily, and I liked the ideas it gave me how to create a story for the future.

One piece of the website that I liked was "Writer's Block/Writer Anxiety". http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/567/01/ I liked it because with it, I'm able to write this more easily. Many ideas from that certain topic I would probably have never thought about it. One idea from it is a one that I will use in the future. It stated if I got a topic which I found boring, then find an aspect of the topic that interests you, which will get the ball rolling.

My favorite part was "Creative Nonfiction in Writing Courses" http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/753/01/ because for some reason since I was young, I always have loved any essays, personal or impersonal and stories that started with a question. It shows what path your mind is going in the essay or story. The question is the key that begins everything. If I made a story about my life, I would begin with this question; "What made me that I am today?" Then after that talk about my experiences, influences and the people I have had met in the 22 years of my existence. Another topic in it, "Generating Ideas for Personal Essays" was good. In the third paragraph, it spoke about how you would want to know what it's like to be a hot dog vendor who puts mustard on two thousands hot dogs every saturday afternoon. It said if you wanted to be able to write and know about it, a good way to do that is spend the afternoon with the food vendor. Talk with him, spread some mustard, and experience it firsthand, so you'll have a deeper and a more personal thing to write about.

I recommend it to any students who has writer's block, struggling for a good topic or something to build on. Purdue OWL will help with that. If you need proof, look no further. My proof is in the blog I just wrote.

Pan's Labyrinth

I think the main theme and idea of the whole movie is disobedience. Del Toro, the director, is trying to tell us that it's okay to go against the flow, rather than conform to what you're "supposed" to do. Often in the movie, Ofeila doesn't follow orders that got her in hot water, but yet that is the way she is. She just wants to do things her way.
Disobedience is not always a good thing. When Ofelia ignored the pleas of the fairies to not eat from the delicious banquet where the monster with eyes in its hands sat and slept at the end of the banquet table. She went ahead and ate some grapes which woke up the monster and lead to the death of two fairies and Ofelia barely escaped. That shows you can't always ignore advice from others who know what they're doing.
However, it can be a good thing sometimes too. Without disobedience, many rebels who fought against the fascist soldiers would be dead because many people who worked for the infamous feared Captain secretly rebelled against him and helped them to win. The doctor and Mercedes worked hard to bring the soldiers' regime down by supplying the rebels with medicine.
I liked how Del Toro portrayed that the girl is on her own, and any mistakes she makes, she'll pay with her own life. In nearly any movie with young children in it, they have guardians who lead and protect them at every turn. Not this movie. There's people and monsters who want to kill Ofeila and no one is coming to save her.
The Captain and how Del Toro made the character interested me. The director made the Captain very methodical, cold, precise, narrow-minded, and a person who depends upon routine. He's shown in the movie that he cleans his pocket watch with care, shave, groom himself, and shines his shoes. Normally, that would be pointless in a lot of movies, but not Pan's Labyrinth. It proves that the Captain is not like many others. He is in a class of himself, and he's willing to do anything that's necessary and he will eliminate anything or anyone who gets in his way.
The end was unique. Ofelia died but yet she passed the test. I liked it because it plays with your mind. Was she truly the princess, and is she really in the underworld with her family now? Or is that all in her mind, and she's just an another dead girl? Through the movie, there are some hints that it may be a fantasy. Near the beginning when the girl read a fairy tale book, and the large insect came scurrying on her bed, and she showed the book to the bug with a picture of a fairy in it, and the bug changed in that. Why the same shape and kind of fairy from the book? Was she just bored and just fantasized about it?
The movie stands out from the rest because it breaks the rules in so many ways. Normally, a fantasy or a fairy tale ends with happiness, ray of lights, and everybody lives. Del Toro broke the rules by doing it in a dark and a different way. It may be different and in our minds we don't want that, and we don't want disobedience because that means trouble, but yet you have to stand up for what you think is right. If disobedience is the right way, then it is.