(Fast forward to 2:42/10:29 and pause. That’s my extra)
Pan’s Labyrinth
The extra that I have chosen from this film shows up in scene 19 where the character Mercedes is caught in the circle of horsemen while facing potential death for having defied the captain of the Spanish village. The extra is a horseman who, once the horsemen undergo a surprise attack by the guerillas that they have so desperately tried to stop, rides through the scene. He is wearing the common uniform amongst the captain’s men on a brown horse and appears to be swaggering from left to right ever so slightly. The swagger seems to hint toward the fact that he, along with most of the other men working for the captain, has been shot and will soon die. The audience is not given a full view of the extra’s face, reinforcing the fact that he is no more than an extra in the scene.
This extra serves the purpose of filling in the negative space within the scene while simultaneously adding to the drama of the attack taking place. The director most likely chose to place the extra in this particular scene so as to make evident the vulnerability of the captain’s men at this point. The captain’s men are supposed to have so much more power than the guerillas and yet in this seemingly split second, they are all killed in the midst of trying to capture one woman.
