Interesting mix of fantasy and war/politics

Rating: 6/10 (16 April 2017)

"El laberinto del fauno" is a Mexican/Spanish/American movie from 2006, so this one had its 10th anniversary last year. It is all in the Spanish language, so you will find no Hollywood actors in the cast here. Even with the Hellboy duology in his body of work, this is probably still the most known work by writer and director Guillermo del Toro, unless you count his writing credit for the Hobbit movie. Anyway, this one we have here runs for slightly under two hours including credits and it is a mix of fantasy movie and politics movie. It is set in Spain in the year 1944, so times were tumultuous, even if there is no real focus on the current global or European political climate from that time outside Spain. But that is perfectly fine. There are probably a 100 well-known films (from abroad) out there about the consequences and direct effects of World War II in Germany and probably another 1,000 that are not so well-known, so it is perfectly fine for once to have one that focuses on another country that we virtually know nothing about from films what the situation was like.
This is the story of a little girl whose mother is pregnant again and her father is dead. Her mother is seeing a violent general who keeps killing everybody that gets in his way, especially those with a different political opinion than him. There is one quote where he says basically that the political enemy lost the Civil War and therefore they have no right to think they are equal and he proves that on several occasions throughout the movie. He is definitely one of the most inhumane characters of the film year 2006. In addition, the girl loses grip to reality when she repeatedly enters a world of fantasy where she meets a faun (the one in the title), who tells her she is a princess and that in order to leave the human world and return to her royal form, she needs to complete three challenging tasks. I will not go into detail about these any further. Lets just say that the visual side of this fantasy world is probably the main reason this movie did so well at the Academy Awards winning three while scoring more nominations. Maybe a bit surprisingly, it lost Best Foreign Language Feature, but honestly I think the Academy got it right there as this one here is not on par with "The Lives of Others". But I still can see where the praise is coming from, even if I think it is a bit on the overrated side. I enjoyed the watch and I think the film works in most areas, some of them even pretty great. The only reason I do not give this one a higher rating is because it did not really leave an emotional impact on me. Nonetheless, it is an extremely strong achievement how del Toro managed to succeed with a successful combination of two genres here that are certainly among the most difficult to combine for a quality product. "Pan's Labyrinth" is not my new favorite from the director as I still prefer Hellboy (2, I think), but I give it a thumbs-up nonetheless. Recommended.