Guillermo del Toro’s Pans Labyrinth is a taste of reality, fantasy, and love. Through my first viewing of the film, I noticed that the whole movie had a distinguished color throughout the film. I realized first that the fantasy worlds were very rich, deep, and vibrant in colors. It almost felt welcoming until you discovered what was in these fantasy worlds. In reality, Ofelia the main the character, she feels discomfort and unaccepted. The only true love that she felt was the love for her mother, who died and was left with the last person she wanted to be with, El Captain. El Captain was displayed as a cold man who had no fear to kill. Guillermo del Toro’s commentary on the set design is exactly what I thought he tried to do. IN the fantasy worlds the colors are very warm, welcoming, and accepting while in reality, it was very cold colored like blues and greys. It conveys the point that Ofelia didn’t want to be in the real world, she wanted to be the princess that the faun said she would be.

There are many ideas that relate together in both worlds. For example, Guillermo del Toro describes in the commentary that there are doors that are important in both worlds. The doors that Ofelia can draw with chalk which makes a door anywhere she wants, helped her get through reality and discover her family in the underworld, where they could rejoin in peace and live together once again. In reality, the doors show importance to El captains presence because whenever he went in a room with one other man, he seemed to torture them and would leave everyone to believe that he is cold as ice and has no emotions or regrets when bashing a mans skull. This door closing can relate to the cold colors that we see in reality too. The cold colors help us get the picture that El Captain is a mean man, but the doors when they close, solidifies that he has no fear to kill. There are also keys in both worlds that seem to help vastly. The key that Ofelia gains is a key to succeeding and being the princess that she thrives to be, once again. Her first task is to be fearless with a very large scary frog monster that later pukes up a key. This key later on helps open a safe in another fantasy world. The keys in reality that Mercedes, the housekeeper, gains helps the other troops facing El Captain survive when supplies are scarce. She can unlock the ration shed and provide them with limited amount of goods.

In the end, we realize that there is a clash of reality and fantasy world when both colors are conveyed very vibrantly in the fort burning down. It signals us that the movie is ending and that something significant is going down. The manners fire is very vibrant and it reminds the viewer of the fantasy world that had deep and rich colors, which felt almost welcoming and nurturing. Throughout the film you can realize where and why Sofia is longing to be part of the underworld. It’s the only thing she can find with comfort, which shows through the colors conveyed because she has nothing in reality, a hateful stepfather who ends up shooting her. As the viewer, I realized that Sofia had no likings of reality and truthfully hated the position she was in. She realized she needed to leave. She found comfort in the fantasy world and the urge to discover what the underworld was, is what drove her to do the courageous things she did. Guillermo del Toro believes that conveying emotions is very important and that he wanted to work with everyone to make sure the sets were perfect. The colors conveyed in the movie help the viewer understand who the characters seem to be based on warmth or coldness of colors and where Sofia wants to go in the end, the underworld because of its welcoming presence.