Pan's Labyrinth/Fridge: Difference between revisions

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** I realised after a few viewings that it's even more brilliant, because there's a third kind of ending - that the faun and everything had been real, but he wasn't lying about abandoning her, and only the ending was a hallucination. Which opens up a whole new subtext to the rest of the movie. Her kingdom is called The Underworld, she has to sacrifice a baby to get in, refusing to do so makes her unworthy to get in, and frankly, that faun just isn't a very convincing good guy. Hell much? -Whatever

*** Yes, God forbid any folklore have a conception of the Underworld that isn't [[Hijacked By Jesus]]. Sorry, but that trope really [[It Just Bugs Me|annoys me]].

** Regardless of whether or not {{spoiler|she actually reaches the Underworld when she dies}}, the very nature of it is dubiously "good." It took me a day to remember the actual description of the Underworld, which is a world with neither pain nor sunshine. The reason the princess left in the first place was to be able to know joy, which also led to suffering. What made it brilliant was that the traditional moral of these things is "you must know suffering to know joy," therefore, the chaotic world is the better alternative. However, here Ofelia is {{spoiler|desperate to return to the unchanging, safe world. This is also the brilliance of the movie, because the way the [[Family Unfriendly Aesop|traditional moral is reversed]] serves to augment the fact that the heroes of this story are the communist rebels}}.

** Regardless of whether or not {{spoiler|she actually reaches the Underworld when she dies}}, the very nature of it is dubiously "good." It took me a day to remember the actual description of the Underworld, which is a world with neither pain nor sunshine. The reason the princess left in the first place was to be able to know joy, which also led to suffering. What made it brilliant was that the traditional moral of these things is "you must know suffering to know joy," therefore, the chaotic world is the better alternative. However, here Ofelia is {{spoiler|desperate to return to the unchanging, safe world. This is also the brilliance of the movie, because the way the [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|traditional moral is reversed]] serves to augment the fact that the heroes of this story are the communist rebels}}.

*** Saywhat? Only if you believe that {{spoiler|communism is about grey jumpsuits and nothing much changing, which would have been a surprise to the anti-Stalinist Trotskyist movement. The communists and anarchists of the Spanish Civil War, who decked out the streets with flags and partied like it was 1999 after the Revolution, might be a bit surprised by this.}}

** If it was all just hallucination, then the chalk outline of a door in her room when the adults are looking for her serves no purpose.