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synderen — Pan's Labyrinth
Published: 2019-07-22 13:54:34 +0000 UTC; Views: 3956; Favourites: 210; Downloads: 0
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Her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return,perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would
wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning...
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Comments: 25
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That movie was so traumatizing for me mostly because of her violent step-father. I couldn't watch the whole movie more than once.
But damn, I loved the faun so much. 
The faun is such a well-designed, unique character. Not just a pure human half with goat ears glued to goat legs, they mixed both species evenly from head to hoof. And added even more recognizeable details, like a tree bark pattern skin here and there.
This is a beautiful fanart of my one favorite character of the whole movie. You're very skilled when it comes to bringing emotions into art. Especially the girl's facial expression looks real (I forgot her name). She looks as if she's about to lose real tears any second now. I can feel her pain just looking at her. :c
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Same! it was the torture scenes that got to me the most the first time I watched it.
AND SAME, I love how organic all the shapes and textures are... and, and.. (Gah, there's just so much I love about this movie, especially upon viewing it again this week... there was a lot I didn't catch the first time...)
Thanks so so much, bro ;b; ... that means a lot to hear! Your comments mean so much
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Yes, all those scenes. They made the fairy tale monster scenes look like a field trip.
And also, it made me angry how her mother chose... that guy. Out of all people. For the excuse of what, being lonely and "you will understand when you're older" shit. How can someone be so sexually desperate? :'D It made me despise her so much. She doesn't deserve her innocent daughter, who chose not to hurt/kill her little brother even if it meant giving up a ticket to the otherworld and live there as a princess. But her mother chose someone for a step-father who would fucking torture and murder innocent people, and even shoot his own little step-daughter child without hesitation. Because her mother wanted someone who gives her good sex and has no other character traits.
SO MUCH ANGER, haha.
Excellent movie, but too emotionally involved for me. My skin is as thin as paper.
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Aw gosh, thank you! The symmetry was probs the hardest thing, so I appreciate that you like it C: (lol why do I ONLY choose such compositions in TRADITIONAL media 
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you're welcome!!
haha story of my life, my brain secretly seeks the "flip horizontal" command when I'm working on paper...
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Did you know that a novelization of the movie is out written by del Toro and Cornelia Funke?
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Oh wow neat! I didn't know that 
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I love her too. I read the Dragon Rider book, the Inkheart trilogy, and this one other called The Thief Lord.
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Those were the exact books of hers that I read too omg
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O.O Wow, ain’t that a coincidence.
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Great composition, I also like the hint of a madonna with child above. Was something like this anywhere in the movie? I suppose it's archetypal. The iconography fits the story so well.
My mom bought the DVD of this and showed it to me as a fairytale when I was around 11. I never regretted it but the toad was, well. Everyone talks about the grape zombie but for me it was the toad.
Edit: I just checked FA, OMG thanks again lol
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JWiesner : couldn't have said it better myself
But mono I'm laughing----- did your mom know what it was about? (and that it was rated R? 
Also yeah, sorry that IS kinda funny you found the toad scary compared to the """Grape Zombie""" (and the gore) P: -- well, I didn't watch it the first time at 11, so I can't fully compare, but the first time i watched it, it was the torture scenes that got to me
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It's not madonna. If I remember the movie right, it's a king with his daughter with her little brother. The faun told the girl to sacrifice her own little brother as a final test. She refused- and passed the test. Because she wasn't supposed to spill any innocent blood.
Then she gets murdered but her soul returns to her king father who welcomes her back. Or that's how I saw it. It's also possible she halluzinated the whole thing because this movie is tragic.
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To Synderen:
I swear! She loved the portrayal of the little girl and sorta saw herself in there, which I was properly lectured to about. Though I have to say, the trials fascinated me at the time - and I did get very excited by the “””””””grape””””””zombie”””””””. Violence and the Franco regime were just incomprehensible to me then.
To JWiesner and runewuff:
I’ve been misunderstood. Admittedly, the word “hint” isn’t exactly precise, but I’ve come upon an interesting perspective on the movie I’d like to share, including extra insights. Let me illustrate it through this google search:
tiny.cc/y1z49y
I’m not simple enough to assume Synderen inserted a Christian scene into an artwork belonging to an independent and heterogenuous work. What I *am* interested in is whether Del Toro, at any point in the film, utilized this motif - or whether it came into existence in the sketch - and I have found it on my own now, in the monolith at the center of the pit. This means del Toro put it there intentionally and I’ll explain why I thought and think it fits the movie, because it blatantly references the madonna with child, as can be seen in the link I provided.
Mercedes grieves over Ofelia at the end, in a fashion so Pietà-like that it stings. FYI, the Pietà-motif is the grieving Mary with Jesus’ body limp in her arms. See the sculpture by Michelangelo for comparison. Runewuff said it - she is too pure to balance on this line between fairytale and civil war. At the age where girls begin to lose their innocence, she attempts to walk a line between inner and outer reality and cannot live. I might even go so far as to say she is a symbol for our own imagination and innocence, and therefore more than human or film character - she is archetypal and her death is both metaphorical and “real” within the frame of fiction. That means she is a martyr-like figure, and promptly, Del Toro includes the throne scene, which takes place in an obviously cathedral-inspired room. Since sacral architecture represents heavenly Jerusalem, the imagery evokes that Ofelia is indeed a martyr, and that the “crude” carving (crude because it is not concrete but ideal) does not only signify her sheltering her brother from harm, but also her mother holding her - Especially in the Renaissance, Mary’s expression or meaning is one of both joy and grief, she is glad about Jesus’ birth while already knowing that he will be sacrificed. Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, an altar painting, depicts this perfectly while also “breaking the fourth wall”. And on that subject, metalepsis between the fairytale and the real world occurs frequently throughout the movie, which I absolutely adore. And now that I’ve read the Wikipedia article, I am certain that I was correct in assuming a strong catholic component within the film. I read, too, that the grape zombie was a critique of the catholic church itself - but catholicism is bigger, it’s cultural, it’s a way of treating the world as text and living both in physical and spiritual reality simultaneously . . . at least that’s my brief summary.
And lastly, I offer an explanation of her name (which has most likely been done before). Like Shakespeare’s Ophelia, she is torn between two poles - Vidal, representing pure evil and war, and the faun, representing a risky but fantastical allure. Both mothers are absent. Both girls are commanded by men, both die innocently because they are out of place and caught in a conflict. Both are accused of insanity. And then, Hamlet’s Ophelia is associated with flower symbolism - and I did see a CGI magnolia (I believe) blossom at the end of Pan’s Labyrinth, which a quick Google search unveils as a symbol of purity and nobility “in the American South” - Del Toro is Mexican, I think that fits. What’s most important, however, is that Hamlet’s Ophelia dies a tragic death. Del Toro’s work really is a much wider conglomerate of many different stories. Wikipedia lists overt influences, but if Del Toro really did keep the notebooks for a decade before it coagulated, it’s very probable that the film is a treasure-trove of intertextual snippets.
For instance, the wikipedia article summarizes the fairytale of Princess Moanna stating that she “visits the human world, where the sun blinds her and erases her memory.” This reads to me vaguely like a reverse Platonian Allegory of the Cave, where the blinding by the sun is followed by gradual understanding and enlightenment and the harsh climb out of the cave represents a gradual process of awkening from the ignorance of the shadow-play. In Del Toro, the cave becomes the truth and the “Enlightenment”, a very secular movement, becomes a process of desacration - which is in line with Del Toro’s own belief in the fairytale’s Magic Realism and his hatred of the misguided, modern rationalism of the Fascists.
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Mono, omg, that was such an interesting read! I thought I'd caught so much more during my second viewing this week, but it looks like there were EVEN more layers that I'd never considered. What a great story,... by the end, I was under the impression that this story was veryyy carefully assembled, so hearing that it was being sketched out in notebooks for a decade isn't surprising- just really inspiring. Thanks again for writing all that out.
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Haha, thanks! I really want to rewatch it now to look for more stuff, I haven’t seen it in four or five years. I thought that the way the fairytale was ambiguously balanced as a subplot was extremely appealing.
Tho I have to emphasize; Wikipedia ftw! Basically confirmed what I thought. That’s also where I have that notebook fact from, so hopefully that’s a valid anecdote. I do remember reading it a long time ago . . .
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I suspect the movie is told as-if the resistance fighter woman were the storyteller, years after the war, as an old woman, talking about this child who loved fantasy. I can almost hear the words she might choose, "she was too pure to exist in this world."
As for me, nothing in this movie was so disgusting as the real-life war. No part of the fairy tale monsters seemed half as bad.
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Agreed. The human scenes were much more cruel than the "real world" scenes.
I would, too, totally run off to hug this creepy-looking faun if given the chance. The faun is someone safe.
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