I'm not a fan of fanciful fantasies, but my taste has always been towards realism with a documentary effect. Although "The Lord of the Rings", "Harry Potter" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" were not enough to watch, the habitual numbness made me admire the grandeur and delicacy of the scene, but I really couldn't feel it. There is also a need for aftertaste chewing. They are like those beautifully dressed women, maybe I will stop to look back, but I have no interest in meeting and talking. Of course this is just a personal feeling. I admit that I am biased towards the subject of fantasy.
Before watching "Pan's Labyrinth", it was just another "The Chronicles of Narnia" in my mind, or the movie version of "Alice's Adventures", so despite hearing about its four Oscar awards for a long time, In fact, I haven't even looked for a movie review. At the end of last month, I was busy with exams, and my nerves got nervous from reviewing, so I went to an Internet cafe to watch a movie to relax my mind. I opened it by chance, and I didn't expect that the first shot was a little girl trembling and bleeding in the dark background, and then followed by the bright red blood. The flashback begins - the
story takes place in 1944, on the eve of the end of World War II, when Spain is shrouded in the shadow of civil war and the Franco dictatorship. The little girl Ophelia and her mother Carmen in labor arrive at the command post of Ophelia's stepfather, Captain Vader, which was converted from a mill in the woods. Vader, a fascist officer with the indifference of a killing machine, brought Ophelia and his daughters to his side not so much to take care of them as to watch Carmen give birth to him "a son who will inherit his and his father's surname". ". The plot begins with Ophelia's life at the mill and her adventures back to the underground kingdom, merging through Ophelia's death on the night of the last full moon.
Although the story takes place in Spain, Guillermo de Toro, the director from Mexico, still makes the film exude a strong atmosphere of Latin American magical realism, which vaguely reveals the shadow of García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Magic here is no longer a way to release people from their powerlessness in the face of nature, but the most appropriate metaphor for reality. It is the poetry of life. Therefore, it can lift heavy pain with lightness and heal wounds with splendor. Therefore, although Ophelia died in the dark and cruel reality, she also gained eternal life in the bright and warm underground kingdom.
I really like this little girl in the film, not only because of her bravery and kindness, but because she lacks a bit of cuteness and cuteness, but has a little more melancholy aura, which makes people feel pity and pity while sighing. On her first night at the mill, Ophelia told her unborn brother a story full of metaphors:
"A long, long time ago, in a desolate and remote place, there was a mountain of black rough stones. At sunset, On the top of the mountain there is a rose that blooms every night and can immortalize the soul of anyone who picks it.
But no one dares to approach it because its thorns are covered with deadly poison.
People talk about death and pain The fears of life, but never mentions the promise of eternal life.
So every day the rose wilts, powerless to leave its gift to anyone. On a cold, dark mountain top it is forgotten, lost, and forever alone until the end of time "..."
For some reason, the first thought at the time was that the rose that Ophelia was talking about must belong to her underground kingdom. And following the plot, I gradually found that the rose not only "belongs" there, but also a symbol of the underground kingdom. The process of getting the rose is the process of returning to the underground kingdom. Ophelia finally endured death and pain, and what she received was the gift of the bouquet of roses - the immortality of her soul.
Ophelia's life has always been gloomy, the death of her biological father, the melancholy of her mother, the cruelty of her stepfather, and only the care of Mercedes, who manages the living for Captain Vader, is her only real warmth. I feel that she is a very special character in the film, and Ophelia's two adventures in the fantasy world can be reduced to her real experiences. When Ophelia climbed under the old tree roots and took out the key from the ugly toad, Mercedes also stole the key to the warehouse for the guerrillas in the forest, and then opened the door of the man-eating monster in Ophelia. When they got the golden dagger, the guerrillas also used the Mercedes key to get the weapons and ammunition. Through them, the two lines of fantasy and reality echo each other, which also gives Ophelia's fantasies a basis.
But it is the final test at the end of the film that reveals the theme of the entire film. Ophelia was shot and killed by her cold-blooded stepfather because she refused to let Pan use the blood of her younger brother to open the door for her to return to the underground kingdom, so the screen returned to the beginning of the film, and the blood came from Ophelia's nose and hands. Up and down, dripping on the boulder in the center of the labyrinth, Ophelia's life is lost in the lullaby hummed by Mercedes, but at the same moment Ophelia's soul walks into the door of the open underground kingdom, the film For the first time, the warm glow of Pan and her mother, Carmen, and the king of the underground kingdom welcome her back—she passes this final stage because she "would rather lose her life than let the innocent People who bleed for themselves."
Although this is a story about a twelve-year-old girl, and although the film is still a magical theme, it is by no means a film that children can watch. The cruelty and darkness in the film shocked even people like me who have seen many war movies. But for those who can understand it, it is not a movie of despair and destruction. Although it is closely related to death, it is about the immortality of the soul beyond death. In fact, those beliefs that make us willing to use our lives to maintain and die for them with a smile are not Ophelia's underground kingdom and poisonous roses? I think at this point, fantasy is more real than all reality, and death is more fantasy than all fantasy.
Let's end with the passage from the priest at the funeral of Ophelia's mother:
"When we opened our arms, the earth took in this empty and unconscious body, but now this soul has moved away, into eternal radiance. It is because of pain that we find the meaning of life and the grace that we lost at birth. There is infinite The wise God has put the answer in our hands. It is because he has no body that our souls can be reborn in his world..."
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