NOT a Kid's Movie!

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2008)

"Pan's Labyrinth" (Spanish, 2006): It won 3 Academy awards. Sometimes that means something. I think it does this time, but I suspect the film leaves quite a few average audience members scratching their heads and feeling disappointed. The story has two strings  one historical, about the end of WWII in Spain, when those in power are trying to clear out the last of the rebels, and, one increasingly fantastic, about a young girl who stumbles into a world of mystery, threats, and very strange events. Watch the movie from this vantage point right from the outset: It will move back and forth from one set of "realities" to the other. Think of one as the ADULT stage for The Struggle, and the other as the CHILD stage for The Struggle. It's political and archetypal. As for the creations, they are pretty interesting, with some wonderfully bizarre, dark, and frightening. THIS IS NOT a children's movie. NO WAY. It's violent and full of visualized nightmares.