Beautiful, visually stunning, and perfectly bittersweet

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2007)

First, off before I tell you how much I've enjoyed this film, let me just state how much I hate people who bash this film because it's in subtitles. If you don't want to read the subtitles then learn the language!
Back to the film...it was a magnificent feast for the eyes and ears. Everything about it was perfect, the score, the cinematography, the visuals, and the acting was all very well done. Most incredibly was the acting of young Ivana Baquero, when she told her little brother that she would make him a prince, I was near tears (Dakota Fanning is terrible compared to Ivana). And of course how can I forget about Sergi López's performance as the tyrannical Captain Vidal? The thing I found most intriguing and indeed the most terrifying about his character is that how is so prim, proper, and polite about everything, he almost seems human.
The only weak part that I found in this film was the fantasy elements (or lack thereof), all the elements can be seen in the two minute thirty second trailer. It's not a lot, but still a wonderful film.
Although, for some who have heard that the film is gruesome, it is. But so are fairy tales. I mean, read the original tales by the Brothers Grimm and Anderson, look back on what happens, grandmothers eaten by wolves! Witches eating children! And you know what happened to "Jiminey Cricket" in Carlo Collodi's Pinnochio? Killed by Pinnochio himself in the beginning! Mix that with Spanish Civil War and thats a lot of blood. And for the people who disliked that aspect of the film, let me tell you this. That's life. Life's gruesome, it's ugly, things don't go the way you want them, people die, tears are shed, but it's also this beautiful, amazing thing and I think Guillermo del Toro has captured those things in this film. There are just so many layers to this film, the only way to view them is to watch this wonderful film over and over.