Pans Labyrinth opening scene

Opening Shots: Pan's Labyrinth | Scanners | Roger Ebert
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 cinematography is extremely dim and cool toned. Throughout the course of the film the cinematography plays with the traditional roles of warm and cool toned lighting where the real world which is harsh and brutal is warm toned, and the comforting underworld appears dim and cool toned. The only thing that makes the existence of the underworld ambiguous is Del Toros use of camera movement. Instead of jarring cuts or, any cuts at all, he instead smoothly pans the camera and uses continuity editing to seamlessly blend both worlds together. 

The shot of Ofelia's eye is utilised to bring the audience into the underworld without cutting. The camera slowly pans upwards as the narrator tells Ofelia's tale. As it reached the sky, the screen goes completely white and it fades into the warm toned real world, again, without cutting. We are brought to the miseducating-en-scene of ruins of an old church which carries heavy symbolism. Later on in the film the Catholic Church is represented for their role in facilitating fascism, but at this point perhaps infers the destruction of hope or virtue. Although is is warm-toned, there is a very eerie and expressive use of shadows which results in an empty and unnerving feel. 

Another symbol which is used in the first scene is a book- a fairytale book which Ofelia is reading with a very familiar looking silhouette is surrounded by fairies. I think this insinuates perhaps, that Ofelia has been enchanted with this book the way that children often are with certain items or ideas, and uses this as her coping mechanism; a clever and subtle use of mise-en-scene.


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