GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “Pan’s Labyrinth″ — Structure
Welcome to Week 6 of the GITS Script Reading & Analysis series. This week we will be analyzing the screenplay for Pan’s Labyrinth (written by Guillermo del Toro), your selection for the Fantasy genre. If you haven’t had a chance to read the script yet, you can go here.
As background, here are some thoughts from an interview with del Toro about what inspired him to write a modern day fairy tale:
“In the time of spiritual formation, for me, both fairy tales and the Bible had the exact same weight. I was as enthralled by a parable in the Bible about the grain of mustard, as I could be about three brothers on their quest to marry a princess. I found equal spiritual illumination in both. Even when I was a kid, funny enough, I used to be able to find those fairy tales that felt preachy and pro-establishment, and I hated them. I hated the ones that were about, ‘Don’t go out at night.’ There are fairy tales that are created to instill fear in children, and there are fairy tales that are created to instill hope and magic in children. I like those. I like the anarchic ones. I like the crazy ones. And, I think that all of them have a huge quotient of darkness because the one thing that alchemy understands, and fairy tale lore understands, is that you need the vile matter for magic to flourish. You need lead to turn it into gold. You need the two things for the process. So when people sanitize fairy tales and homogenize them, they become completely uninteresting for me.
“I have collected them since I was a kid, so it’s hard for me to tell you. There’s a whole streak of them. The movie and the notebook both say that we are doing homages to Lewis Carroll, to The Wizard of Oz, to Hans Christian Andersen with the little magical girl, to Oscar Wilde, and very specifically to David Copperfield and Charles Dickens. These are things that I voluntarily do. But, the one book that I would say was a huge influence on making the movie is a book called The Sands of Fairy Tales which is a recent catalog of all the primordial streaks of storytelling in fairy tale lore.”
Interesting choice of words: primordial. The script has that feel, doesn’t it. Even though it’s set in a specific time and place because of its location in a forest and an old abandoned mill, it has a timeless feel to it.
Today we discuss the script’s structure. Once again you may choose to consider the story in terms of three-act structure with one of these iterations:
Aristotle: Beginning / Middle / End
Campbell [Hero’s Journey]: Separation / Initiation / Return
Hegel: Thesis / Antithesis / Synthesis
Jung: Invitation / Immersion / Integration
If anyone is into sequence theory, if you’d care to break down the script per its sequences, we would all laud and honor you.
Or make your case that the script has some other narrative structure… or perhaps none at all.
See you in comments!
For Day 1 of our analysis of Pan’s Labyrinth, go here.
[Remember next week (10/16–10/20), we will be reading Blade Runner, your choice for the Science Fiction genre. You may access the 1981–05–15 version of the script here.]
NOTE: THIS SERIES AND THE USE OF SCRIPTS IS STRICTLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES!
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