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Pan's Labyrinth Research Paper

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Magical Realism Essay After watching the movie Pan’s Labyrinth, I believe it deals with some features of Magical Realism, which is artistic genre that involves realistic narrative and naturalistic technique combined with surreal elements of a dream or fantasy. This genre includes fantasy elements, but often has real world social and political problems. I believe that the movie Pan’s Labyrinth does have aspects of magical realism, because Ofelia, one of the main characters, believes in fantasy. Since the movie is set five years after the Spanish Civil War it included many political problems. Throughout the movie examples of Magical Realism is present while there are some instances that it could be proven the movie is not entirely Magical Realism. …show more content…

Throughout the movie Ofelia sees creatures from the fairy tales but appears to be the only who sees them. Additionally, she never once panicked about seeing the creatures, she treated them like normal which is an aspect of Magical Realism. For example. in the very first scene, she sees a stick bug, but automatically thinks it is a fairy and does not question where it came from. Later in the movie, Ofelia must pass three tests to prove she is the Princess of the Underworld. Even though the test dealt with magical creatures it could have symbolized event in reality. For instance, her second task is finding the pale man, who is having a feast. While Ofelia is at the feast with the pale man, Vidal and Carmen are having a feast without Ofelia. Carmen ordered Ofelia to her room without dinner because she had ruined her clothing. The task and fairy tales could have been an escape for her during the time of the war and her mother being sick. The Magical Realism aspect of this scene is the pale man and the reality aspect is that Ofelia, Vidal, and Carmen are all at a feast, just not the same

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