How does narrative create meaning in Pan's Labyrinth?

For my exam, I will be comparing La Haine to Pan's Labyrinth. The film is set in 1944 Spain, a girl (Ofelia) fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather (Vidal), a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun (Fauno) in the centre of the labyrinth. He tells her she's a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again. Like the film La Haine and the character Vinz, Ofelia is doomed and her eventual fate is that she dies at the end in order to be the princess of the underworld. Ofelia, like Vinz, is stuck in her own world, and like him, she is delusional. Propp's theory of fairy tales stock characters can be applied to Pan's Labyrinth because the director Guillermo Del Torro shows that each character can be applied as a fairy-tale character. For example, Ofelia would be the Hero, Mercedes is the Helper, Vidal is the Villain, Fauno is the Donor, Carmen is the Dispatcher and the Princess's father and Ofelia's brother is the Princess she must protect. 

The story of Pan's Labyrinth is not a CHN because there is no state of equilibrium, there is a constant state of conflict, where the Hero (Ofelia) cannot get along with the Villain (Vidal). The disruption starts when Ofelia enters the Labyrinth because this starts her quest to become the princess of the underworld. It hence starts her delusions and imaginations because she wants to get away from the location she has been forced to stay in. The resolution is where Ofelia is murdered and Vidal is murdered as Ofelia goes into the 'underworld' where she is a princess an meets her 'real' parents, the King and Queen of the underworld. However, the resolution doesn't follow the CHN as he gets murdered by her step-father. Think links back to La Haine as Vinz and Hubert don't get justice and they get killed by the Police they were fighting against, just like Ofelia who was killed by the step-father she was fighting against. La Haine also doesn't follow the CHN because the film starts with the resolution because there is a monologue linking to the end of the film. This creates the message that there is a 'circle of violence' derived from the cyclical narrative. 

The concept of a fairy-tale is used in Pan's Labyrinth because they want to distract from reality just like people try to do during troubled times. An example of this would be the manchanke root to look after the baby because this is a belief that is still alive today. I think Guillermo Del Torro is trying to shed a light on the idea that no matter what you believe in, it won't take your problems away. I think that this can be applied to La Haine as the reality is shown throughout the film and there is no sense of false hope, unlike Pan's Labyrinth. I also think that fairy-tale characters could be used to highlight the evil deeds that went on throughout the Spanish Civil War. This is seen through monstrous characters such the Pale Man who sits amongst the feast of food while the village is starving. Could this be linking to Vidal, who, as a Captain of the Spanish army, has access to all the food from the storage barn.