Powerful, violent, moving...

Rating: 10/10 (27 October 2006)

As a Mexican grandson of Spanish emigrants I felt very identified with this amazing movie, horrorized by the dark smooth and moved by the lovely moments it has.
Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, amazing), is a 13 year old girl who loves fairy tales. While she's going with her mother to a military base in the mountains during the Spanish Civil War, she founds a cricket, who follows her to the military base. In the night the cricket transforms itself in a fairy, who leads Ofelia to a Labyrinth, where a Pan lives, expecting the arrival of a a princess who must achieve 3 task in order to recover her kingdom, before the moon arrives in the sky.
As the days are passing and the tasks are being achieved, the stepfather of Ofelia, Captain Vidal (Sergei Lopez, brutal) has the mission to extingue the rebels in the mountains.
The Art Direction in wonderful, dark, and it could be a serious contender for the Academy Awards. The music could be taken as a dark horse in the nominations, is wonderful and surprising, giving that plus in the most tense moments.
This film is not Narnia, is not a pic for children, due to the extreme violence. It's not also an epic or science fiction film. "Pan's Labyrith" is a Fantasy Drama motion picture, and it's vision, is more like "Turtles can Fly" than "The Chronicles of Narnia". The film provides horror and kindness equal. And the final question that provides me the film is: do the innocence has lost the battle against war and would finish to split blood too? It probably would be nominated as a Foreign Language Film, and the only competition it has comes from "Volver", an Spanish film form "maestro" Pedro Almodóvar.