Pans Labyrinth Analytical paragraph

In Pan's Labyrinth, gender is presented in a very specific way throughout the film. There is a direct focus expressing the oppression of woman making them appear very strong in tough situations. Del Torro does this through having the female characters continuously undermined until their strength and power is shown - in the Spanish revolution, the undermining of woman was an extreme reality and Del Torro shows the dangers of this. In this scene, Vidal, representing the power craving dictator Franco, states that he can handle Mercedes as she is only a woman. Using cinematography, Del Torro presents Vidal to think of himself as overpowered. We see this from the way he is always in focus and the camera follows him. This symbolises how he feels he is in power in the situation. This juxtaposes the reality as Mercedes escapes with the opportunity to kill Vidal creating irony and showing that woman were very wrongly undermined in the Spanish revolution. Furthermore, the use of sound highlights this as the piercing music and exaggerated diegetic sounds creates a sense of fear of Vidal from Mercedes, the audience feel sympathetic for Mercedes and are scared as we do not expect this to end well for her. The cutting out of music draws the audience attention to the mislead of Mercedes intellect, aggression and strength being shown - traits Vidal did not realise she had - this shows the audience that woman are not less powerful than men and that the men in the fascist regime are foolish for not seeing this and it could cost them as much as their lives.