Pan's: Not What I Expected

I would like to preface with two things: I had never seen this movie before even though I had heard of its critical acclaim and two I watched it with two friends who have nothing to do with this class. Both aspects gave me such a different interpretation of the movie than I was expecting! The previews and the title both led me to think that the movie would focus mainly on the fantastical, as in the girl would spend the majority of her time in the labyrinth but really the movie focused more on reality. I haven't really previously been exposed to a piece that allowed me to compare the fantastical as correlated to reality on such a clear level before. This leads me into having two friends who were there for the hell of it. I let each of them give me their opinions first, just to see what part my background in this class might play. Each of them said that they much preferred the scenes that were reality and thought the movie would have been so much better off it the director had completely left out the fantastical elements. I was shocked! It meant so much to me to see that the audience was able to take it however they wanted: that Ofelia created an imaginary world or that she actually crossed over into another realm but that either way, despite the tragedy that surrounded her, her belief in something better carried her through. I actually couldn't help but compare this movie to Anne Frank and the Holocaust. Despite all the hatred that little girl had seen and experienced she still stayed true to herself (as in not throwing the baby into the pit). I really thought the fantasy was a good reflection of how humans need to believe in something or else life is pretty much terrible, religion, fantasy, or otherwise. Can you imagine if she hadn't had the labyrinth to get her through? It doesn't really matter if it exists actually. Okay, this is super long. Sorry! And I need to save all this typing for my paper. See you all in class!