A heart darker than Conrad's intermingled with beauty and hope ...

Rating: 9/10 (13 March 2007)

Wild, strange, brutal, beautiful and memorable. It is impossible to sum up the multi-faceted Pan's Labyrinth in a few sentences ... but I'll do my best.
Spain, 1944. The Civil War is over and Franco's army are occupied in hunting down and killing the rebels still in hiding in the countryside. Into this volatile situation come young Ofelia, and her frail, heavily-pregnant mother Carmen. Married to Captain Vidal of the Fascist Army, it is evident that Carmen hopes her marriage will provide security and stability for herself and her daughter. But Vidal is sadistic and unfeeling, concerned only about the son he is sure Carmen is carrying. Moreover, with the rebels getting ready to launch an attack on his outpost, Vidal is quickly losing whatever vestiges of humanity remain within him and is becoming more beast than man in his brutality, something Carmen refuses to see but which Ofelia is acutely aware of.
Cut off from the world, her only ally the housekeeper Mercedes (who is secretly passing information to the rebels) Ofelia gains a chance at escape when, in a ruined labyrinth behind her new abode, she encounters a Faun, who tells her she is a long-lost princess from an underground kingdom that knows neither sickness nor pain. To return to it, she must complete three seemingly simple tasks before the next full moon ... but as Mercedes tells her, she must be wary of the Faun and what he is asking her to do ...
None of this does justice to the sheer wonder of Del Toro's vision. It is often violent (shockingly so - a man is stabbed in the face with a bottle within the first half-hour, the results of one of Vidal's torture sessions are graphically displayed and Vidal himself suffers terrible injuries at the hands of Mercedes) dark, bloody, brutal and yet wildly imaginative. My absolute favourite moment is when Ofelia comes face to face with the Pale Man - a horrific being worthy of Goya and Bosch. Be warned, this inspires genuine fear! Nor does it sum up the many themes embodied within the work ... but suffice it to say, watch this, no matter how dark or scary. Your imagination will be the richer for it.