Ij: Pan'S Labyrinth/Jmw Turner Painting

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Pan’s Labyrinth Guillermo del Toro 2006 Film (a) What ideas about imaginative journeys are explored in the text? Guillermo del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth is set in 1944 during the post-civil war era in Spain. The film explores the imaginative journey in the text through the eyes of a child. He uses a child as the key character, because it is generally children whose minds are not cemented to that of logical reality; they avoid reality through the subconscious imagination which is untainted by the actions of man. The film showcases what the imagination can do as a means of escape to comfort the physical trials one goes through in reality. The protagonist of the film, a twelve year old girl named Ofelia avoids the problems she faces by embarking on a dark and puzzling journey that requires her to fulfill three dangerous tasks in order to reveal the truth of her lineage as the long-lost princess of the underworld. This is similar to that of a person trying to escape a labyrinth and the obstacles they face within it. The world is a cruel place. And you’ll learn that even if it hurts. In this scene Ofelia is caught tending to a root Pan has given her, her mother does not believe in her attempts of explaining the circumstances. She thus becomes desperate in begging her mother to leave the brutal post they live in. But her mother is of no comfort to her, lacking empathy. Reality becomes the catalyst for Ofelia’s isolation in her imagination. (b) How are the ideas about imaginative journeys conveyed? In your answer you should refer to language forms, features and structures in the text, as well as the medium of production. The film uses two separate story lines in order to show contrast and reason in reflecting the underlying moral of the film, the fear of harm from reality rather than the fear of harm from the unknown. An example is the juxtaposition of the
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