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第 98 课:Child's Fairy Tale 'Pan's Labyrinth' Provides Refuge in War
奇幻片《潘神的迷宫》:战争中的庇难所-1

"It is an ancient labyrinth " the housekeeper explains to young Ofelia who has wandered off and discovered the overgrown stone gate. She gently warns the girl to be careful "...you might get lost." Ofelia already feels lost.

It is Spain in 1944. Her widowed mother is pregnant with the child of a Captain in Franco's Army. He has brought them to the remote countryside to live in a commandeered estate while his troops put down the remnants of rebel forces.

Ofelia escapes from the brutal realities of the Civil War by reading fables ...so she is more than curious when she is awakened on one their first night there by the fluttering of wings.

"Mother, wake up ... there is something in the room." But her mother is too sound asleep to see the tiny fairy that alights on Ofelia's shoulder. It beckons and she follows ...into the labyrinth where a stone staircase has appeared.

She tiptoes down as it spirals into a deep chamber where, to her amazement, she finds herself face to face with a creature - half man, half goat.

"Who are you?" she asks. "I have been known by many names," he answers in an ancient, forgotten accent ... "names that are remembered only by the trees."

He is a faun , he explains, and declares that she is not the mortal Ofelia, but actually Princess Moanna, the long-lost daughter of the King of the Underworld.

And so begins her perilous adventure, stealing away every moment she can to learn if her destiny is truly at the end of the dark staircase.

It all comes from the imagination of writer-director Guillermo del Toro, who hedges his answer to the question of whether the world within the labyrinth is simply Ofelia's fantasy.