Essay
The directors of both Pan’s Labyrinth and Wild Tales employ aspects of mise-en-scene to convey meaning throughout their films and have a wide range of effects on the audience.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth focuses on the civil war in Spain. An election in 1936 brought to power a leftist Popular Front government causing Fascist and extreme-right forces to respond with a coup attempt that turned into a civil war. The film is set in 1944 after the fascist victory as the remaining rebels are routed out and killed.
During the Pale Man sequence, Ofelia opens a doorway to a hidden lair of an ancient monster so that she can retrieve a golden dagger with a key she found from her earlier task. At the start of the sequence, Ofelia is located within her room with del Toro using a dark colour palette to demonstrate how she is confined in the Captain’s world with one window the main source of light, partially barred by wooden planks and leaves which only provides a small glimpse of light shining into the room, showing that she is a prisoner, creating fear for the audience as we feel confined and as hopeless as she feels in his grasp. When she opens the book given to her by the Faun, the pages change from being a blank to reveal a picture of the Pale Man she is soon to encounter, depicted in a similar style to the drawings of Alice in Wonderland with pastorally colours that make the picture appear less threatening than its real life counterpart, thereby deceiving the audience as to the dangerous nature of the creature which makes its appearance all the more terrifying. Del Toro foreshadows this appearance of the Pale Man in order to have an effect on the audience, creating suspense for the creatures emergence. After drawing a small door shaped outline with chalk given to her by the Faun, Ofelia pushes open the new door in the wall to gaze into the piercingly bright lair of the Pale Man. Del Toro’s creative decision to change the colour palette from a cold blue to a far warmer red indicates a change from the reality of the Captain’s world to the fantasy world that she is about to step into which shows the audience that Ofelia is temporarily free from the Captain’s entrapment.
Del Toro gives the appearance of the Pale Man’s lair aspects of typical gothic design as the vaulted ancient ceiling gives the impression of catacombs underneath a cathedral with a chessboard-like floor which gives the audience the impression that the creature is mythological and enhances the mystery and intrigues surrounding the monster. There are further references made to the story Alice in Wonderland such as the oversized sand timer that she places in the doorway before she steps down to keep track of how much time she has left, emphasising to the audience its importance to the plot. The corridor that leads to the main chamber curves around a winding corner to show how deep the lair is whilst the windows are smaller than typical windows which demonstrates that she will be unable to get out; these various elements of the lair present to the audience that Ofelia is small in comparison to the task she is facing and how the task will be overwhelming for her, creating anticipation as it seems that she will inevitably face trouble in escaping from this place. Ofelia emerges into a huge expansive chamber, dominated by a large table that almost extends the length of the entire room with a figure at the end of it, resembling the Captain in a previous scene when he had previously held his feast for a group of the most important people including the doctor and other fascist sympathisers, heading the table as a commanding and evil figure and showing that both characters are as evil as each other, creating a further sense of foreboding for the fate of Ophelia. Del Toro uses an extraordinary collection of different foods including jellies and overflowing fruit piled up on this table to form a large banquet, something that a child might possibly imagine as all this food is unavailable due to the rationing brought into effect by the war, hinting towards the fact that she could be imagining what she used to have but can now only dream of which has increased relevance given the ending of the film which can be left up to interpretation as to whether Ophelia imagines all these events.
The towering figure that heads the table is the Pale Man; a skinny giant with large flaps of pale skin that dominate its body as the murals on the wall of his lair depict him eating large amounts of children as a creature of legend, but he hasn’t been able to eat in a long time, causing him to grow thin and frail allowing for him to look even more visually horrifying to the audience. There is a substantial amount of shoes piled up across the chamber; a visual reference to the concentration camps at Auschwitz during WW2 which is when the story is set and so the atrocities that resulted in the deaths of thousands of children would have been occurring at the time, links the creature to the atrocities of real life events and how its actions have caused the deaths of an enormous amount of innocent people, further influencing the audiences mindset that Ophelia is in grave danger. A fire situated behind the Pale Man appears to represent satanic imagery such as the mouth of hell, further utilising the hellish imagery seen in the murals to show how this monstrosity of a creature has a clear evil intent.
At first Ofelia chooses to acknowledge the figure before moving on to focus at the task of finding the dagger. She uses the shining and golden key with a twig handle, referencing Ofelia’s natural elements that link her to the rebels, to open a hatch so that she can obtain an ancient looking knife wrapped in a cloth with a golden handle that further links to the colour palette used to identify the fantasy world. Her temptation to take and eat the grapes is caused by them being oversized which gives them a succulent and divine appearance, referencing to the forbidden fruit in genesis where Eve was tempted to eat the fruit from the tree of life that had been forbidden from her, and like Eve, Ofelia’s actions lead to loss as two fairies die as she attempts to make her escape.
Another film that appropriately uses mise-en-scene to covey meaning is the portmanteau film Wild Tales, with six different stories, all connected by themes of violence and revenge, directed by Damián Szifron.
Focusing on the wedding sequence, it starts with a montage of old childhood photos that present the innocence of the couple which will later contrast their nature in the sequence and help the audience to infer relevant information about the sequence such as it being a family event that wouldn’t be available at this point in the scene without this context. The setting of the wedding gives a distinct rich and privileged appearance with lots of champagne glasses, expensive alcohol, golden chandeliers and tuxedos that all contribute towards this whilst also creating a disturbing feeling later on in the sequence when the bride later threatens to take everything away from him as they speak on the rooftop after she discovers he’s been cheating on her, allowing the audience to grasp the scale and severity of her threats and what she would be taking away. There is also a use of pathetic fallacy on the rooftop, used to demonstrate her ferocity as she lashes out at him and simultaneously, a bolt of lightning can be seen striking behind her in the distance as the sound of thunder follows thereafter.
Before these events however, the bride and groom first appear from behind a curtain as they joyously bound towards their in-laws, greeting them affectionately. The fact that they appear from behind a curtain immediately implies to the audience that their relationship is a façade and they are putting on a show to appease their guests as they wish to avoid criticism. The groom, Ariel, has neglected to shave for his own wedding showing his lack of care for his new wife, foreshadowing the fact that is unfaithful to her and the caring attitude that we were originally led to believe that he had is replaced with suspicion as it is a sign of his intention to conceal his cheating nature. After the buoyant dancing, the crowded setting is replaced by a much calmer and spacious one, where all their guests are sitting down as the bride, Romina, talks with them and points out from what backgrounds everyone is from in relation to them. Romina is drawn to her husband appearing to flirt with a mystery woman across from the room and therefore uses her initiative to uncover whether her suspicions that her husband might not be as caring as she once thought, by using her phone. The phone is used as a device to discover the secret that Ariel has cheated on Romina and is used to call the mystery woman who he had been flirting with earlier, leading to her confronting her husband during their first dance where its revealed to her that her suspicions were true. To escape this embarrassing and distressing situation, Romina runs frantically down a long, narrow hallway that leads to a fire escape and on to the rooftop. This hallway suggests to the audience that she feels trapped and claustrophobic because of the events that have just transpired and now feels as though everything is closing in around her, betrayed and alone. Her white wedding dress is intended to represent the idea of purity and innocence that is present in her character before she discovers the harrowing truth of her husband’s deceit, but the white becomes tainted with blood later on after she smashes the mystery woman into a mirror, showing that her innocence has been fragmented by this act and has stained her personality that can never wash out and return to her original purity, symbolised by this dress.
As the film reaches its climax, a broken cake, glass and ripped out hair show the destruction both physically and mentally inflicted on one another and how it has caused chaos for both them and their guests. At this point it seems unlikely there will be a happy ending for either of them, until Ariel offers out his hand possibly in forgiveness and apology and they slow dance alone on the stained floor as their guests look on in amazement. The final image is a particularly striking one, depicting a bride and groom statue resting crooked on the floor as the couple have sex on the adjacent table where the cake once stood, which could be symbolic of all the evenets that have occurred at the ceremony and how as a couple. they have both fallen down but still remain together despite the anguish they have caused each other.
Both Szifron and del Toro use aspects of mise-en-scene to convey meaning throughout their films to have a wide range of effects on the audience. Del Toro utilises it to show the contrasting world’s from the realistic and the fantastical in Pan’s Labyrinth, and how they share similarities with each other that only Ofelia is compelled to see. Szifron on the other hand uses mise-en-scene to allow the audience to empathise with characters through the use of symbolic imagery that appropriately coveys how they are feeling or how they have changes as people on screen.
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