Alice in Wonderland For Grown-ups

Rating: 10/10 (7 March 2012)

Pan's Labyrinth is a Mexican Spanish-language dark-fantasy film,written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro. It was produced and distributed by the Mexican film company Esperanto Films.
Pan's Labyrinth takes place in Spain in May–June 1944, five years after the Spanish Civil War, during the early Francoist period. The narrative of the film interweaves this real world with a fantasy world centered around an overgrown abandoned labyrinth and a mysterious faun creature, with which the main character, Ofelia, interacts. Ofelia's stepfather, the Falangist Captain Vidal, hunts the Spanish Maquis who fight against the Fascist reign in the region, while Ofelia's pregnant mother grows increasingly ill. Ofelia meets several strange and magical creatures who become central to her story, leading her through the trials of the old labyrinth garden.
Pan's Labyrinth suggests that fairy-tale violence helps the vulnerable process and overcome real-life conflicts and that real-life violence permanently smashes the soul and the heart.This magical film from Guillermo del Toro manages that intellectual high-mindedness, even as it resonates on a primal, mythic level.It is Alice in Wonderland for grown- ups, with the horrors of both reality and fantasy blended together into an extraordinary, spellbinding fable. Told through the eyes of a little girl whose imaginary world is inhabited by nightmarish creatures,it also is a visually imaginative and allegorical take on the fears she faced in Spain during World War II.