Pan’s
Labyrinth
Essay
Planning
Pan’s Labyrinth
• Choose a film or TV drama in which a particular
sequence is crucial to your understanding of an
important theme.
• By referring to the sequence and to the text as a whole,
show why you consider the sequence to be so important
to your understanding of the theme.
Pan’s Labyrinth
• Choose a film or TV drama in which a
•
particular
sequence is crucial to your understanding of an
important theme.
By referring to the sequence and to the text
as a whole, show why you consider the sequence to
be so important to your understanding of the theme.
Step 1 – Planning
• Choose a sequence & a theme:
– Opening sequence / theme of imagination?
– The pale man / theme of choice/innocence?
Step 2 - Planning
• Brainstorm points to make about
sequence & theme:
• Ofelia’s choices – which door / to eat a grape
• Consequences of her choices – good and bad
• Relationship between themes of choice and
innocence: can you make innocent choices? Is
choice what separates children from adults?
• Mise-en-scene of sequence – connotations of
church, pale man as devourer of innocence
• Ofelia’s choices throughout film – do they have
good or bad results? (final sequence)
Step 3 – Writing the essay
• Introduction:
– name of film, director,
– brief summary of film’s main concerns with
relation to question
– Task statement which makes it clear how you
are going to tackle the question
Example Introduction
Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro, is a film
which explores the nature of innocence, and how it can
be sustained or lost through the choices we make. The
film follows the adventures of Ofelia, an imaginative
young girl who is taken to stay with her fascist stepfather in post-Civil War Spain. She is torn between two
worlds – the bleak, loveless violence of the “real world”
and the no less dangerous but far more vivid fairytale
world in which she must complete three tasks given her
by a mysterious faun, in order to prove her identity as
Moanna, princess of the underworld. The sequence
which deals with the second of these tasks (stealing a
dagger from the lair of the nightmarish “pale man”) is one
of the film’s most profound explorations of the
relationship between choice and innocence.
Main body of the essay
• You need to make at least four substantial
points which are relevant to the task,
which analyse evidence from the text, and
which show your ability to evaluate (reflect
on, make judgements about) that
evidence.
• In a good essay, these points would
develop a logical and interesting argument
/ line of thought in response to the
question.
Main body of the essay
A simple way to organise each paragraph is to
follow this three-part structure:
• Point - a topic sentence which makes a clear,
relevant point about the text
• Evidence – some sort of textual evidence which
supports the point you are making
• Comment – detailed commentary on the
evidence: analyse how it supports your point;
evaluate how effectively it explores the theme;
give your own response / opinion; relate it back
to the task
Example
Point
The two main choices Ofelia makes in
this sequence show us how difficult it
is to make independent choices and
retain one’s innocence. The first
choice she has to make is to decide
which door the knife is behind. As she
is making her choice, the camera
lingers on her anxious face and we
see the fairies urgently pointing at one
of the doors. At the last moment,
though, Ofelia changes her mind and
chooses a different door.
Evidence
Example continued
Comment
This decision turns out well – Ofelia’s disobedience of the
fairies and her determination to make her own choices for
herself results on this occasion in achieving her goal as she
successfully finds the knife. Her independence is
vindicated, and we could see this as an example of her
maturing and growing up, as the ability to make one’s own
choices is one of the defining features of adulthood.
However, the tense music and the desperation of the fairies
as Ofelia makes her choice all suggest that it might be
more appropriate to read this as the choice of a wilful or
disobedient child – perhaps she was just lucky. This raises
the question of her innocence – do we blame a child for the
consequences of her decisions? What level of
responsibility does she really have? This question becomes
much more pressing as a result of the next decision Ofelia
takes in this sequence, a decision with tragic
consequences.
Link to next paragraph
Task
• Plan and write an essay in response to
this question.
• Choose a film or TV drama in which a
particular sequence is crucial to your
understanding of an important theme.
• By referring to the sequence and to the
text as a whole, show why you consider
the sequence to be so important to your
understanding of the theme.