THE adult fairy tale.

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2016)

El laberinto del fauno (2006)
This film, directed by Guillermo del Toro based on his own original screenplay is set in mid-twentieth-century Spain, which was under the rule of Francisco Franco and his dictatorship. Stared by Ivana Baquero in the lead role of Ofelia, it tells us her story; a girl that loves fairy tales and lives absentminded in her own fictional world, while her mother faces the cruel reality of being subjugated to her husband, a Captain in Franco's sadistic army. Ofelia is met with some whimsical yet arduous challenges. Meanwhile horror keeps spreading in the side story between her mom and her uncle, a renegade soldier who created a rebel faction in furtherance of planning an uprising against the regime.
The cast, just like in every other critically acclaimed film, seems to be full of faultless picks for each position, even though it's mainly Spanish. Parts like captain Vidal, portrayed by Serji Lopez, offer stunning performances that leave us wondering how these actors are not a-list celebrities. It blends a variety of different film genres into a beautiful cinematic cocktail. Fantasy and drama with a little bit of historical nuances on the side. It's a fairy-tale for adults. Fanciful but nevertheless gory, as could and should be expected by a proper del Toro fan. Do not watch if you are prone to vomiting as there are some harsh scenes in this flick, but do watch if you like adrenaline, since the film uses childhood innocence for face value but maintains an underlying tone of suspense that is guaranteed to put you regularly on the edge of your seat. Costume designers and editors must not be forgotten considering they merged real props with special effects in such a balanced way one could start questioning whether or not some mystic beings are in fact only a product of medieval folklore. As the plot thickens we start seeing how things aren't as simple as they once seemed and the world Ofelia lives in starts to feel real to us viewers. Or maybe we just start using our minds as a defence mechanism against the chaos and sorrow of the "real" world we are presented with, so dispiriting it makes us want to escape it. The film revolves around this idea of what's real or fake without ever being conclusive. So it's up to you to decide what to believe in. I consider this to be a film like no other in the sense that it unpretentiously delivers a dichotomy of strong feelings and seemingly incompatible genres all mashed up into 180 minutes of jaw - dropping cinematography. So, for me, whether you are a film buff or a just casual viewer, this is indisputably a must watch.