Pan’s Labyrinth

If you want to see a film with gunfire, fairies, child protagonists and fantastical creatures, look no further than Pan’s Labyrinth. The plot is so ingeniously written that I was very surprised it wasn’t based upon a novel, but simply upon stacks of notes from over 20 years of writing by the director.

I came across this film in a backwards manner when I bought some of the soundtrack and liked it so much I had to see the movie. The story is set in the 1820’s, based around the young girl Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), who reads fairy stories and is forced to move with her pregnant mother to live with her stepfather, a cruel captain who has made a farm fortress against militant guerrillas. Whilst there, she is led by a fairy into a deep labyrinth underground, where a faun gives her three tasks to perform before she can become a princess.

Before that last sentence makes you scream and run away, this movie is rated R. No Disney here. The faun is a towering creature with backwards legs and a horned head: though he is terrifyingly kind. The rating comes from a few frightening scenes, like when Ofelia just barely escapes the clutches of a child-eating, skeletal monster with eyeballs in his hands. My computer (blast it) locked up twice, so unless something was in those parts, the movie wouldn’t terrify anyone who’s seen Lord Of The Rings. The ending, both sad and happy at the same time, was handled masterfully.

One final, meager note: the entire thing is in Spanish. Fortunately, this only compliments the movie, since it is so masterfully filmed you hardly notice you’re reading subtitles. I only wish they made more films like this one: though not quite rated as high, The Spiderwick Chronicles is looking to be of interest…