Diestro-Dópido's Pan's Labyrinth

An informative new guide to the film:

Pan's Labyrinth
Mar Diestro-Dópido
Series: BFI Film Classics

25 Oct 2013
Paperback
9781844576418
104 pages

Guillermo del Toro's cult masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth (2006), won a total of 76 awards and is one of the most commercially successful Spanish-language films ever made. Blending the world of monstrous fairytales with the actual horrors of post-Civil War Spain, the film's commingling of real and fantasy worlds speaks profoundly to our times.

Immersing herself in the nightmarish world that del Toro has so minutely orchestrated, Mar Diestro-Dópido explores the cultural and historical contexts surrounding the film. Examining del Toro's ground-breaking use of mythology, this book resists a definitive reading of the film – instead exposing the techniques, themes and cultural references that combine in Pan's Labyrinth to spawn an uncontainable plurality of meanings, which only multiply on contact with the viewer.

This special edition features an exclusive interview with del Toro and original cover artwork by Santiago Caruso.


CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Horror(s) of War
2. Vidal and Amnesia
3. Ofelia and Memory
4. The End...
Coda: Interview with Guillermo del Toro
Notes
Credits
Bibliography


Mar Diestro-Dópido is a film critic based in London. She is a regular contributor to, and researcher for, Sight & Sound, and has written for Little White Lies, Dazed & Confused and Vertigo, as well as various academic books and journals.