Gretel sends Hansel away “with a part of herself freely given”, turning sacrifice into a gift. Even the hallucinogenic mushrooms the children consume are vividly red and eventually lead them to the witch in the woods. In the end, both Gretel and the Witch, Holda, have to make sacrifices (eat your children, be the caretaker for your brother). Percolated with the colours red and pink, where both are used to illustrate danger, it seems obvious that this is a film about the raw power and fear of womanhood. With a disgusting old man and potential employer enquiring after Gretel’s maidenhood to the vivid red of her period, from the abandonment of the children’s mother to the final reveal of the witch devouring her own children-the film is a commentary on what being a woman is. The movie is both a meditation on the power of women, the danger of men and a commentary on the sacrifices women have to make for power (or the perceived sacrifices). Women and the blood we spill giving birth. A reference for growing from girlhood to womanhood? Red is the colour of danger-and is used to that effect in the film as well. Ah, women and our periods. The girl in the pink hat the pink smoke turning red the pink bindings holding Gretel down. Throughout the film, the colours pink and red (blood and girlhood) are used to indicate danger. Gretel’s name coming first in the title is no accident. How females have, as the film quotes more obvious uses” than skills like herb-lore and witchcraft. How females always have to sacrifice something. It seems obvious that the movie is a meditation on the female. It is also interesting to note that the shape on the door of the house where they started, and where Hansel ends, is a circle-the first circle I remember seeing in the film (we only see it at the end, not in the beginning where they start), perhaps to symbolise the fact that Hansel has come fill circle? Perhaps to distinguish between the feminine and the masculine? Something else to ponder.

Intriguingly, when there is danger in the film it is often accompanied by a square of a rectangle and the colour red (again, see later about femininity and the female). I’m sure that with a careful re-watch, I could find more threes than I know what to do with. There may be something in there-a commentary on what is to come and Gretel’s rise to being all-powerful? More threes occur throughout the film-the three figures Gretel sees in the woods the three versions of herself reflected in the mirror each mirror pane containing the reflections of three dead children the three corpses on the bloodied table (lots of period references here too, by the way-more on that when we discuss the feminine). When Gretel looks into the witch’s house, she does so through a tiny triangular window that, from the other side, looks strikingly like the Eye of Providence, which is a symbol used to illustrate God watching over all of humanity. She represents the girl, and the woman, where the witch represents the woman and the crone.įrom the triangles scattered throughout the film to the three main characters, threes are everywhere. The film follows Gretel on her journey from girl to woman. It is the (approximate) number of pi, and, my favourite: it is the number of the three fates (the maiden Clotho, the mother Lachesis and the crone Atropos)-also relevant to this film. Three is the number of magic, the trinity, of mysticism and gnosticism. I’ve written many essays in my life about the number three, my favourite being an essay on the number three in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Threes are everywhere in this film, which intrigued me to the core of my being. You don’t need to move your eye very much in order to take in the film, unless, like me, you’re looking for all of the delicious symbols peppered throughout the film. It was shot at 1:55 aspect ratio, almost as though the cinematographer decided to follow the “block of three” photography principle and never strayed from it (another three here, which we’ll talk about more later). Much like Robert Egger’s The Witch (2015), every frame in Gretel & Hansel is perfectly shot-like an oil painting-and perfectly centred. From IMDB: A long time ago in a distant fairy tale countryside, a young girl leads her little brother into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.

Symbolism of number 9