Analysing films - 'Pan's Labyrinth' (4/6/2013)

Having watched 'eXistenZ' last week we were shown a popular foreign language film today known as 'Pan's Labyrinth' by Guillermo del Toro. We watched this movie in particular as we will be analysing the concepts of fantasy next term in more detail. 

My analysis:

Having watched half the movie when I was younger I was not looking forward to watching it during the session as I remembered a lot of its bloody moments which I didn't enjoy watching. However, watching the whole thing with the knowledge of when to look away, and being less affected now by the sight of blood I found it to be a very good and interesting movie.

It's a fantasy movie heavily grounded in a real world scenario e.g. post Spanish civil war (1944). Therefore it gave its audience a recognisable starting point that allowed them to believe in the world, despite the fantasy elements that appear throughout.

The story itself follows a little girl named Ofelia who loves fairy tales. She moves into a forest house with her mother who is pregnant with the baby of the cruel captain who is hunting rebels who are hiding in the area. As the movie progresses however, the girl finds a labyrinth next to the house which houses a faun (see below) which tells her that she is in fact the lost Princess Moanna and that if she completes three tasks she will be able to return to her kingdom alongside her real father.

This was an interesting film as many of the members of my group analylised it in different ways. Personally I felt the fantasy world may have been the girl's imagination and like most children a means of escapism. This would make sense during a time of war as she would most likely want to try and forget about as much of it as possible. However, due to this time of war her imagination may well have been corrupted and therefore not a traditional child's fantasy world as seen in her books. That's why the fantasy world may be creepy and bloody at times.  

The escapism may also come from the fact that the girl does not want to live with the captain and would prefer to go back to the city. Therefore being offered the role of a princess and the opportunity to live in a palace with her natural family forever is something she desires (similar to most children today who wish to be princesses). This escapism continues when (spoilers ahead) the girl dies at the end and goes to her kingdom e.g. heaven and a fairy tale ending despite the fact that the girl died in our world. Her escapism is even more obvious when you realise all the fantasy stuff happens when she is on her own which is underlined at the end when the the captain sees her talking to herself and although she believes she is talking to the faun he is not visible to the captain.
She is also told constantly not to read fairy tales and therefore her belief in them only grows stronger.

Group discussion on Fantasy:

After watching the movie we talked about it and fantasy in general. You can read my notes below.

• Be aware of the world outside your game world. What makes it believable for the player? e.g. Is it historically accurate or does it take elements from other genres? 
• Is the fantasy in the movie actually the fantasy world or is it the war torn world? This is something viewers could debate when watching the movie.

Interested by the ideas of the movie and the subject of fantasy in general I decided to ask if the same/similar story had been told with a soldier in the main role instead of a child. For example, suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and therefore stepping into fantasy to escape reality?
I asked this because I have always had an idea for a game, even before watching Pan's Labyrinth in which an injured solider in hospital during World War 2 suffers with PTSD and keeps waking up in a fantasy world where aliens or robots try to wipe out the human resistance (a metaphor for the Germans invading Europe). The main protagonist (the solider) is meant to be the chosen one who will lead the humans to victory. However, when the soldier tells this to his doctor/psychiatrist he tells him to deliberately hinder the resistance every time he enters the fantasy, thus breaking his connection to the illusions as he doesn't believe in them. The solider on the other hand sees them as very real and believes that if he were to hinder them he would feel like a traitor. Therefore, in this game the player would need to decide if the fantasy was real or not as well as the best ways of healing the soldier's mental health.

Harvard Referencing: 

• Viewfromacouch. (2010) Faun from 'Pan's Labyrinth' [Online image]. Available at: http://viewfromacouch.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/13-pans-labyrinth-my-mother-told-me-to-be-wary-of-fauns/ (Accessed: 4/6/2013).

Analysing films - 'eXistenZ' (28/5/2013)

* YEAR TWO WORK *

Having handed in our year one work our lecturer decided to make a start on the sort of things we will be looking at during year two. Therefore we were asked to watch and analyse the movie 'eXistenZ' (1999) by David Cronenberg which is about a video game being play tested which also offered virtual reality. 

My analysis:

Overall I felt it was less about video games and more about coming of age, growing up and sexual encounters. After all, the main male protagonist worries about his body and has never played a game or as the saying goes "plugged in" before. Many sexual references dominate the movie as the characters say their 'ports' which are located just above their lower spines and used to play the game, are tense and need to relax. They do so by lubricating and even fingering the ports which also incidentally look like anuses and can be affected by 'computer' viruses. To obtain these ports the player has to have them pierced into them in a similar way to ear piercing. This appears to be another huge step for someone growing up as it makes a significant change to their body. The sexual tropes of the movie are only intensified when you realised the players play the games on beds or other soft surfaces using devices which look similar to women's genitalia with umbilical cords that go into the users' ports, thus the symbolism for 'birth into new life' through playing a new character in a virtual world is almost immediately apparent.

The movie itself (spoilers ahead) makes the audience think that the characters are who they are and are play testing a video game, when in fact the whole movie is really based within another video game and the lives and personalities the players thought they had were in fact just video game characters. This ending was introduced so as to make us question whether or not the reality we live in is true reality or just another simulation?
However, I felt the movie did a poor job of this as I kept questioning the realism of the world that of course turned out to be a game all along. Yet it didn't define this aspect well enough as, even though the chaarcters were meant to be playing a game all I could think was that it wouldn't work as one anyway. The rules as they stated were never defined to even the players and, although I wasn't expecting a futuristic or fantasy environment for them to play in its chosen slaughter house and Chinese restaurant was just confusing and boring. It also didn't help that I couldn't understand why it had to be such an overly complicated game, and why its overall goal was for the 'greatest game's designer in the world' to survive when you would think the developers would have people PAID to realise that this alongside the other mental things the players go through when playing is a BAD thing.
This was odd since it has been proven that other worlds can be made interesting as was the case in one of my favorite movies 'Inception' which I feel did well since it grounded its reality and mechanics whilst explaining to its audience what was going on. This allowed the audience to interpret the movie in their own way whilst asking the same questions posed in 'eXistenZ'. 
For me 'eXistenZ' was poorly explained and therefore I couldn't help but constantly question why the game consoles were organic, instead of allowing myself to be absorbed into the world which is what I love to do in movies.

The director Gronenberg stated that "I have no city, and there are no computers, no television screens, no running shoes, clocks, watches, jewelery. I'm trying to dislocate the audience so they don't know where they are, and they have to give themselves up to the movie.". However, I felt this isolated me and the other viewers more due to the movie not establishing or truly grounding itself in a reality.

I didn't enjoy the movie because...

The ending didn't help matters either as any realism the movie was trying to depict 'jumped the shark' as they say. Why? Because the two main characters having left the real game decide to kill the game's designer. How? By ripping off a fake coat of fur from their dog, pulling out guns from holsters strapped onto it and shooting him dead. Again killing any realism that the director was trying to create and sustain.
Also I refuse to believe that this may have been done in order to 'symbolise' that the ending was another game they were in. If that were the case then it could have been done far better/more realistically as seen in the pre-mentioned example. This is a shame as I admit that the ending did hold some promise for me which might have made me overlook some of the flaws in the movie, especially since the gamers admitted to their in game characters having bad accents and lack of play time due to dying early in the game.

Group discussion on virtual reality:

After watching the film we discussed why people would want to play virtual reality games even if they included games such as 'Gears of War' and other bloody and gory games which would surely have the player killed in gruesome ways. Despite this, I felt players would continue to play a whole variety of games as lots of players love action and at times love to be scared. Its the adrenaline kick that people get playing these games which brings them back for more.
I also feel that players would continue to play a game such as 'The Sims' even though virtual reality would offer worlds you could never explore in real life rather than just a life simulator which in many ways human beings play 24 hours straight in their actual lives. If the player played as a Sim themselves then they could look how they want to look, live in the house of their dreams and start a family with the person they always wanted, have the perfect neighbours, job and eat whatever food they want without too much fear of becoming obese.
If the game, however offered a player the god like role as seen in 'The Sims' usually, but also let you walk around their world like the empowered Bruce from the movie 'Bruce Almighty' then that would be fun for players as well. Bringing up the families they want and then controlling the world around them as if they were all powerful would prove to be both a new take on the game and an interesting experience.

One interesting thing that came up during our discussion was whether or not players could get post traumatic stress disorder and other mental problems from playing war games in virtual reality as soldiers do in real life. Thus if virtual reality were ever made a reality it would need to be carefully tested in order to avoid this problem.

Harvard Referencing: 

• Buckie, A. (2011) eXistenZ scene [Online image]. Available at:  http://thefilmemporium.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/classic-throwback-existenz-david.html (Accessed: 28/5/2013).