And the gift is .. .

Rating: Null/10 (5 March 2007)

Whether it be Alice going down the rabbit hole or, in Pan's Labyrinth, little Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) descending a labyrinth in an imaginative flight from Franco fascists in 1994 Northern Spain, the escape of a girl into a fantasy world cries for allegorical interpretation. In the case of Pan's Labyrinth, no interpretation is difficult because the visuals are so strikingly Beauty and the Beast-ish (original version) that the oppression of good and the expression of love are self-evident.
Capitan Vidal (The excellent Sergi Lopez) embodies Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin as the indomitable tyrant who hunts rebels like annoying flies. When the real worlds of fascism and imagination collide, there is a price for both sides to pay. The gift of the film is to make us wonder how this could have happened and how we could avoid it again.