Don't wait for the DVD

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2007)

If your idea of a "great movie" is "White Chicks", you'd best move on, this movie is deep water for you and you are in danger of drowning. Del Torro has created his opus with this movie, it is everything everyone else has praised it for and more.
This film is easily characterized as gory and violent. At times, yes, it is. This is a an ADULT fairy tale. It is no less than "Schindler's List" meets "Alice in Wonderland" in style. It is also no spoiler to say that this movie is an allegory of Spain's return to democracy after the Franco years. In wonderful Del Torro style, the ending is told to you right at the beginning of the movie, much in the style of "Grave of the Fireflies", yet it is the trip TO that ending that will make this movie haunt you long after other movies are nothing but dim memories and ten wasted dollars.
I know many of you will want to see this movie because you've been told the special effects and visuals are stunning. They are, but don't go expecting George Lucas style gee-gaws. The special effects add up to maybe 15 or 20 minutes total screen time, and frankly you won't care. They are 20 minutes of some of the most magical visual effects to come along in the last 8 years. The storyline weaves in and out of reality so fluidly you yearn to see more of the Labyrinth storyline and when it arrives you realize you are on the edge of your seat to learn what happens in the Reality storyline. That is how seamless the directing is.
More importantly, go and see it in a theater. Do not be one of those poor souls who will only know it on the small screen. The impact of the movie will still be there, but the gorgeous, sublime effects will be lost. In school I saw thousands of pictures of Michaelangelo's "David" and wondered "what's the big deal? It's just another statue". Then I saw it in person, up close, and realized I had deluded myself. I had never known that Michaelangelo had carved veins into the statue, that he had carved pores, and muscles, and folds of the skin in the elbow, and cuticles on the nails and furrows above the eyebrows. All these beautiful details carved out of marble perfectly.
It's the same with Pan's Labyrinth. See it in a theater as it should be seen and watch the glint of dew on the fairy's wing, the dying leaves on the Faun. Don't deny yourself the sublime beauty that will make this movie a classic.