Pan

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Pans Labyrinth EssayPlanning
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Pans Labyrinth

• Choose a film or TV drama in which a particular
  sequence is crucial to your understanding of an
  important theme.
• By referring to the sequence and to the text as a
  whole, show why you consider the sequence to be
  so important to your understanding of the theme.

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Pans Labyrinth

• Choose a film or TV drama in which a particular
  sequence is crucial to your understanding of an
  important theme.
• By referring to the sequence and to the text as a
  whole, show why you consider the sequence to be
  so important to your understanding of the theme.

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Step 1 Planning

• Choose a sequence a theme
• Opening sequence / theme of imagination?
• The pale man / theme of choice/innocence?

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Step 2 - Planning

• Brainstorm points to make about sequence theme
• Ofelias choices which door / to eat a grape
• Consequences of her choices good and bad
• Relationship between themes of choice and
  innocence can you make innocent choices? Is
  choice what separates children from adults?
• Mise-en-scene of sequence connotations of
  church, pale man as devourer of innocence
• Ofelias choices throughout film do they have
  good or bad results? (final sequence)

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Step 3 Writing the essay

• Introduction
• name of film, director,
• brief summary of films main concerns with
  relation to question
• Task statement which makes it clear how you are
  going to tackle the question

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Example Introduction

• Pans Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro,
  is a film which explores the nature of innocence,
  and how it can be sustained or lost through the
  choices we make. The film follows the adventures
  of Ofelia, an imaginative young girl who is taken
  to stay with her fascist step-father in
  post-Civil War Spain. She is torn between two
  worlds the bleak, loveless violence of the
  real world and the no less dangerous but far
  more vivid fairytale world in which she must
  complete three tasks given her by a mysterious
  faun, in order to prove her identity as Moanna,
  princess of the underworld. The sequence which
  deals with the second of these tasks (stealing a
  dagger from the lair of the nightmarish pale
  man) is one of the films most profound
  explorations of the relationship between choice
  and innocence.

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Main body of the essay

• You need to make at least four substantial points
  which are relevant to the task, which analyse
  evidence from the text, and which show your
  ability to evaluate (reflect on, make judgements
  about) that evidence.
• In a good essay, these points would develop a
  logical and interesting argument / line of
  thought in response to the question.

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Main body of the essay

• A simple way to organise each paragraph is to
  follow this three-part structure
• Point - a topic sentence which makes a clear,
  relevant point about the text
• Evidence some sort of textual evidence which
  supports the point you are making
• Comment detailed commentary on the evidence
  analyse how it supports your point evaluate how
  effectively it explores the theme give your own
  response / opinion relate it back to the task

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Example
Point

• The two main choices Ofelia makes in this
  sequence show us how difficult it is to make
  independent choices and retain ones innocence.
  The first choice she has to make is to decide
  which door the knife is behind. As she is making
  her choice, the camera lingers on her anxious
  face and we see the fairies urgently pointing at
  one of the doors. At the last moment, though,
  Ofelia changes her mind and chooses a different
  door.

Evidence
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Example continued
Comment

• This decision turns out well Ofelias
  disobedience of the fairies and her determination
  to make her own choices for herself results on
  this occasion in achieving her goal as she
  successfully finds the knife. Her independence is
  vindicated, and we could see this as an example
  of her maturing and growing up, as the ability
  to make ones own choices is one of the defining
  features of adulthood. However, the tense music
  and the desperation of the fairies as Ofelia
  makes her choice all suggest that it might be
  more appropriate to read this as the choice of a
  wilful or disobedient child perhaps she was
  just lucky. This raises the question of her
  innocence do we blame a child for the
  consequences of her decisions? What level of
  responsibility does she really have? This
  question becomes much more pressing as a result
  of the next decision Ofelia takes in this
  sequence, a decision with tragic consequences.

Link to next paragraph
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Task

• Plan and write an essay in response to this
  question.
• Choose a film or TV drama in which a particular
  sequence is crucial to your understanding of an
  important theme.
• By referring to the sequence and to the text as a
  whole, show why you consider the sequence to be
  so important to your understanding of the theme.