Pan's Labyrinth (p. 268)

Pan's Labyrinth supports disobedience through conflict. Internal conflicts show a struggle within the characters themselves, and the protagonists are the ones who disobey. The 'bad guys' try to follow the rules and they end up dead. Ofelia and the other protagonists struggle with their destinies but ultimately decide for themselves. The movie quite vividly and strongly supports thinking for yourself in this manner. .

The movie Apocalypse Now! supports disobedience. It is subtle, but evident in this statement by the antagonist Kurtz :

"You have to have men who are moral, and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion,without judgment. Without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

Kurtz's internal conflict and insanity is blindingly obvious in this statement. He opens with the comment that he prefers soldiers to be moral. Later in the tirade, he then states 'it's judgement that defeats us'. Morality and judgment go hand in hand because you need morals to judge fairly. Kurtz ends up lost in insanity, screaming 'the horror, the horror', because he lost his internal conflict to following his mistaken beliefs unthinkingly, unbendingly, unwillingly.

Apocalypse Now! showed that despite changing opinions you can still follow unthinkingly, and that this is negative.

You may say that the conflicts were mandatory in Pan's script, that their only point was to drive the story along and not to symbolize disobedience. This is wrong, because although a conflict is necessary for a progressive plot, the word itself in a literary setting implies a lesson learned. Conflicts start with a problem and are resolved. They are resolved in Pan's Labyrinth by way of disobedience. The plot supports this notion because it is integral to the whole experience, that independence is a good thing.

External conflict in Pan's also supports disobedience. The movie centers around two parallel conflicts. The real-world conflict is the Spanish Civil War, involving the unthinking Vidal against the democratic and anarchist partisans. The fantasy world of Ofelia pits her against the Faun's test of princess-like stubbornness and independent thinking. Vidal and his boring, hard-faced, gray suited men lose their struggle against the warm, brown-clothed, country-looking rebels. The rebels fight for what they believe in and Vidal fights for what he has been told is right. Ofelia, too, decides for herself, lets her own thinking take over the Faun's instructions. The movie supports disobedience through these two conflicts.

However, some may say that the Pale Man was a consequence of disobedience and that the movie doesn't support it at all. This is wrong because there is a difference between disobedience and doing the opposite of what someone is told. Disobeying implies making a choice, thinking, being a person. Just doing the opposite over and over would result in death just as obedience would, as shown in the scene with the Pale Man.

That is why disobedience is supported by the movie Pan's Labyrinth.