ultra-violence

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2010)

I thought the film was superior on many levels - the depictions of fantasy, myth, the seldom told true story of Spain's all too recent dark past, the acting, the editing, the script, etc. etc. etc. What saddened and disturbed me was the graphic depiction of violence.
While the sadistic cruelty was undeniably accurate as to what occurs during the playgrounds for psychopaths that we generally refer to as wars - and thus not gratuitous - I wonder if the presumed anti-cruelty message is not diminished, due to the inevitable desensitization to violence, which also undeniably occurs when Filmer's see such obscenity depicted not only in trash horror exploitation films such as Saw, but in works of art such as El Laberinto del Fauno as well.