Is it real?

Rating: 9/10 (24 January 2007)

Seldom will you find a movie that can authentically run the gamut of emotions, and do so in a believable way. Set in Spain during World War II the movie begins with a young Ofelia and her pregnant mother making their way to rural Spain to live with Ofelia's new stepfather, a brutal army captain and Nazi sympathizer. Ofelia, an avid fantasy and fiction reader and enthusiast, is drawn to an ancient stone labyrinth behind her new home, a military fort established in an old wood mill. Believing herself to be the lost princess of an underground kingdom she sets off on a three part quest to verify her origins by the next full moon, guided by a large faun and three small faeries.
The only complaint that I can really argue is my personal disdain for reading a movie. I personally cannot stand subtitles. I believe that the guerrilla rebels in the film, commoners fighting the Captain from their hillside hideaways, could have had more character development. But their purpose is limited, and only made to contrast the authoritarian brutality of the Captain. That being said, this movie is wonderful. Seldom can you find a movie that will allow the viewer to so strongly empathize with a character, but it is absolutely unavoidable for the viewer not to feel the world through Ofelia. The acting on all fronts is so superb in this adult fairy tale that in the end we are left wondering, was it real, or was it not