Pan's Labyrinth Color Analysis

Amanda (Leya) Andrews

Film 140: Color Theory

Professor Eileen Jones

21 March 2014

Color and the Disobedience in Pan’s Labyrinth

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) features a remarkably bold and expressive use of color. In the film, color is an essential part of the mise-en-scene, characterizing the central figures in the film and communicating the progression of the narrative. Generally speaking, the film makes liberal use of darkness, as people and creatures alike often emerge in and out of shadows. Del Toro chose to use muddy, dark hues in the costumes and spaces of the film. There are two dominant, and radically different, color temperatures utilized in the film, which, together, create a strong visual dichotomy. The film opens with Ofelia, after having been shot, laying on her back with dark blood creeping back into her nose. This shot inaugurates one of the color temperatures utilized in the film, as it features a heavy use of hues of blue, creating an almost overwhelming sense of coldness. The second color temperature employed is diametrically opposed to this, as it communicates an intense sense of warmth due to the way in which it brings out earth tones and the summery notes of the sun. These color temperatures function as perspectives of the diegetic space, as they imbue meaning into the stable colors of the characters and spaces within the film. Together, these two color temperatures also serve to create a strong sense of opposition and conflict, which is mirrored on a thematic level by the numerous binaries established throughout the course of the film, which include dark and light, life and death, reality and fantasy, good and evil, underworld and human world, mortality and immortality, etc. This sense ...

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...lization of her dream to be a Princess with her real father and mother at her side.
In Pan’s Labyrinth, color functions to characterize the figures in the film and to communicate the progression of the plot. The two color temperatures create a visual dichotomy and, therefore, a sense of opposition, which is mirrored on both a plot and thematic level. Color also contributes to the delineation of the real world and the fantasy world, which, eventually, is revealed to be one. The color of the costumes and the spaces of the film contribute to the communication of what side of the many binaries they are on. Color creates this dichotomous world in which Ofelia has to sift through directions and authority figures in order to reach self-actualization and an individual conscious. The film uses the fantasy world as a more subtle proxy for making a bold political statement.