24 Hours Later ... Still Not Sure What to Make of It

Rating: 8/10 (28 January 2007)

It's been over 24 hours since I saw Pan's Labyrinth at the local Googleplex. I'm still not sure if I liked it or not. I'm giving it a good grade (8 out of 10) because it is wonderfully shot, and has great art direction, cinematography, and set design. It's also very well acted and directed, and it's not pretentious or overbearing or simplistic or goofy.
I guess it just didn't connect with me, like it's apparently connected with thousands and thousands of true fans. I'll try to describe the reasons why in a couple of paragraphs, but I doubt they'll be able to capture my antipathy properly.
First, this isn't really an "adult fantasy film" as some have ascribed. It really is about kids, namely a girl who's stuck in a horrible position (forced to live with the cruel captain who married her mother). The film shows how kids in terrible situations can often mentally retreat into various fantasies, in this case a realm of fauns and fairies. So why did they give it an "R" rating and market it to adults? They should have cut down the violence a bit (it's not gratuitous, the extra notch of "R" rated violence doesn't markedly propel the plot) and gone for a PG-13 rating. This way, it would have been actually directed at kids (albeit older ones).
As a reference point, consider what Stephen Spielberg did with his classic "Empire of the Sun." That, too, is a story about a kid caught in terrible circumstances (namely imprisonment in Japanese-held China during WWII). That was a PG-13 film, and shot through the eyes of the child, instead of through the eyes of the adults around the child. Something about "Pan's Labyrinth" doesn't ring true because of this. We're seeing a young girl's fantasies, but we are constantly torn back to an adult viewpoint. As a result, we never see this young girl grow and understand (and the evolution of a character is a prime force in cinema). If the director had kept us looking through her eyes, our sympathy for the character would be larger.
I think that last paragraph was quite convoluted, so I'll try to re-phrase the main problem of this film. "Pan's Labyrinth" does not maintain the cohesive point of view throughout the film. Is this film about a bad world shown through the eyes of a child, or is it a film about the fantasies of a child shown through the lens of the real world? It's this lack of viewpoint cohesion that leaves me cold.
8 out of 10.