Worth watching.

Rating: 8/10 (27 September 2010)

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto Del Fauno) is a Spanish Language film from Mexican born writer and director Guillermo del Toro, known for Hellboy, The Devil's Backbone and Mimic. We are told the story of a young girl named Ofelia who has been relocated to the Spanish Mountains with her "heavily pregnant" mother to live with her dictator-like stepfather, General Vidal. The film is set in post-civil war Fascist Spain in 1944 and General Vidal is attempting to root out Spanish Maquis guerrillas.
This harsh setting already shows us as the audience the harsh reality Ofelia has been unwillingly thrown into as she loses her innocence. To perhaps keep her sanity in check, she finds solace in her books of fairy tales. Her reality and fantasy worlds collide with a sudden blow. Fantasy becomes reality when Ofelia meets the Faun, who tells her that she is actually a princess from the Underground Realm, who died many years ago. In typical fairytale fashion, he assigns her three tasks to complete before the full moon so that she can become the princess of her magical fairy-tale land again. Ofelia starts a quest of sorts to complete these tasks, while around the young girl her life is thrown further into mayhem Pan's Labyrinth is a gruesome, thought provoking film that throws the fantasy film rulebook out the window. The base elements from a fantasy film are there: a hero (Ofelia), a villain (General Vidal), an older setting (1944) and of course the staple ingredient, magic. But the recipe is mixed with gore and harsh reality to make a mixture that rarely concocts anything worth watching. One dash of ingenuity behind the film is that it still retains the original theme of a fairy tale, and burrows into the forgotten roots of them, which a majority of people are no longer familiar with. For example, in Cinderella, in the Brother Grimm's version, the stepsisters try to trick the prince by cutting off parts of their feet in order to get the slipper to fit. The prince is forewarned by two pigeons that peck out the stepsisters' eyes, thus sealing their fate as blind beggars for the rest of their lives. The aesthetics of Pan's Labyrinth have a very smart beauty. The film doesn't show off with computer generated imagery at every corner but also utilises make up and animatronics to create a captivating otherworldly story its artistic ability, keeping it at a believable level. This review is from my first viewing of Pan's Labyrinth. I expected it to have a higher ration of fairy tale to real world in fairy tale's favour and I felt as if I had missed something along the way. On the other hand, I realise that this film is almost as if it is Ofelia's life and nightly dreams which gives the film a certain individuality that isn't seen very often. I believe that Pan's Labyrinth is an excellent film but it isn't suitable for family viewing.