Abbigail Azirou

The opening scene of Pans Labyrinth proves the cyclical structure related to City of God whilst tying both  the realistic random violent and facist reality of post civil war Spain in 1944 with the underworld where rules and consequences make sense.  From the beginning, pans Labyrinth immediately begs the questions within the audience- is the underworld real? personally, I don't think so. I think it can easily be argued both ways, but through film form we it's evident to me which world we are really living in.  The scene opens with Mercedes Melody which we also hear in the closing scene. the contextual subtitles establishing not only the harsh reality our protagonist lives in, but the one she desperately want's to escape from. Then, a close up which gradually opens into an extreme close-up into Ofelia's eye follows to convey, perhaps to the people who believe that the underworld is a coping mechanism for Ofelia, that we are in fact in her head.   The cinematograp...

  The end scene is crucial for exploring and presenting the ideological themes of the film such as escapism ,urban life and the changing nature of it's crime.  Towards the end of the film, Rocket begins to see light at the end of the tunnel in terms of his escape. Through use of mise-en-scene we are put in a professional office environment which reveals major hope for our antagonist as we haven't seen outside the city before,  however the cool toned lighting which looms over the present day is still prevalent. Finally, in relation to Rocket's escape, he gets another camera from a photographer he looks up to. This can be seen as symbolic for his journey, however Rocket is not the one character upgrading his weapon- Both gangs buy guns from the police yet Lil Ze doesn't pay for them. And thus the "beginning of the end" scene commences and the City Of God is transformed into a war zone.  In the closing scene, we are brought back to the opening scene which enforce...