Guillermo del Toro's One-of-Kind masterpiece Combining Amazing Visuals with Historically-relevant Morality-play

Rating: 10/10 (10 December 2017)

Guillermo del Toro's 'Pan's Labyrinth' (originally released circa2006): a multi-Dimensional horror/fantasy plus historically-relevant morality-play reflecting an original work of genuine artistry and boundless imagination! Presenting a one-of-a-kind cinematic combination & inspired merging of multiple genres that works perfectly as part atmospheric escapist entertainment (delving into the horror-Fantasy realm) but also incredibly containing and effectively communicating a deep empathy = leaving the viewer profoundly 'moved' by film's end.... by dramatic-revelations and sacrifices that seem to carry genuinely spiritual 'weight'
Guillermo del Toro's fantastically-effective admixture is quite astounding: being part Gothic-horror, part historical-drama, part political-thriller surprisingly also imbued with a significant dose of Latin/Spanish 'Magical-Realism' within the fantasy-World created as both sanctuary/refuge & eventual pathway to navigating the darkened, unsympathetic, hostile 'real-world' confronting young protagonist 'Ofelia' forced to make fateful choices at the tail-end of brutal Spanish Civil-War.
Pan's Labyrinth is ambitious for its historical scope, philosophical point-of-view, and utterly-fantastic visualizations highlighting the elusive search for compassion and location of faint-traces of genuine 'humanity' (even if only existing primarily in the realm of human-imagination) when confronted by a World of unrelenting violence, cruelty and unabashed Evil, in this case the Spanish Civil War that extracted a heavy, unsympathetic toll on the innocent civilian population of Spain also serving as an ominous precursor to the boundless cruelty + unremitting-horrors of WWII and even the Holocaust itself – although Pan's Labyrinth specifically takes place during 1944 after the civil war had already been lost by the Loyalists, and General Francisco Franco's fascist-forces were consolidating power (and brutally dealing with the last remnants of resistance)
This subject matter could have been a real 'downer' but Guillermo del Toro's masterful film-making and insanely-imaginative visual-arts-wizardry leaves the viewer spellbound as if transported to a darker version 'Oz/Wonderland' filled with magical creatures that appear to alternate between friend and foe = constantly testing the protagonist Ofelia's own deep moral code/core (i.e. forcing her to make fateful choices about life & death, for herself and others that she cares about).
I think it takes multiple-viewings to extract/ unearth the layers and depth of 'meaning' and also for the viewer to 'reconcile' the literal barrage of images & characterizations that are a combination of bizarrely-horrifying, otherworldly-mystifying, emotionally heart-wrenching (and in the final analysis perhaps even spiritually uplifting to a degree) – I don't think there is any other film quite like it, not to be missed (or ever forgotten!)