One of the most perfectly beautiful movies I've ever seen

Rating: Null/10 (8 September 2011)

Ofelia. She is Persephone, she is Joan, she is Iphigenia.
Miyazaki's Chiro occupies the same space. I can think of no more affecting and effective renderings of the Archetypal Heroine. Actually, gender doesn't matter in this space. These are the greatest of heroes.
Myth's are the dreams of a people; what I like to call Big Dreams. This film shines a bright light into places that exist deep inside all of us. It is a pure distillation of many of our greatest myths.
We are in the hands of a great, great story teller here.
There are elements of so very many giant stories; so many things that make me think of James Frasier, Joseph Campbell, and the Epics that I read many years ago. All of the great tales include, for instance, a scene or scenes in which the hero makes a descent into the under/other world: the world of the collective unconscious.
'Nuff said.
The mere sight of images like the one of Ofelia, dressed in red and gold, in the other-world, at the end of the film: they break my heart every time I see them. Over the course of the film, it becomes apparent that she IS the very character that most of us believe she's dreamt up. It's pure, absolute Magic!
The colors, the themes of under/other world, father/monster; of the conquering power of Seeing...
This movie is perfect. I'm changing my initial 9 rating to a 10: the only one, I believe, that I've given on this site.