a beautiful, stunning masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (18 February 2008)

There is no other word but masterpiece do describe this film from writer-director Guillermo Del Toro. The imagery is nothing short of breathtaking, and he has made a major discovery with the young actress, Ivana Baquero, who commands the screen for a majority of the two hour running time. It is 1944, in Franco's Spain, during the time of civil unrest. A combination of history and fantasy, blended so seamlessly that I was completely lost in Ofelia's adolescent world of woe. We meet her on the road, traveling with her mother, Carmen(Ariadna Gil), where they stop for a moment, and Ofelia spots a strange, winged insect which she follows to a hole in a tree. It trails the car to a compound where she meets her new stepfather, Vidal(Sergi Lopez), a Captain in the fascist army, fighting guerrillas hiding in the nearby mountains. Carmen is pregnant and a widow who has chosen a loveless marriage to an evil man in order to provide for her children. The insect leads Ofelia to a tree with a labyrinth inside and she is introduced to a faun(a tall et like creature, played by Doug Jones, the one American in the cast who was taught Spanish line by line). He is her teacher and guide to the underworld. He gives her three tasks to perform before the full moon; the first task is removing a key from a giant toad; the second being the retrieval of a knife from a lair, and the third, a daunting task with her new baby brother. She must complete the three missions in order to become Princess Moanna, the queen of the underworld. The story is compelling and the acting tremendous, from Baquero to Sergi Lopez's scowling villain, Captain Vidal, there is nothing to criticize in Pan's Labyrinth and I give it a 10/10.