Movie: Pan's Labyrinth

	Distributor:	Picturehouse
	Release:	December 29, 2006
	Genre:	Art/Foreign, Science Fiction/Fantasy and Thriller
	MPAA Rating:	R for graphic violence and some language.

I was watching the Oscars and the imagery of Pan's Labyrinth caught my eye. When it was shown in local cinemas, I scarcely remembered what it was nominated for and what it won ... I just remember the beautiful images and the promise of a beautiful story.

The story is about a stubborn girl who find herself in a less than ideal situation that she hates, an encounter with creatures of fantasy, followed by quests and secrets to be kept.

This is not an American, Hollywood movie. There is a good ending, but it's not a corny, happy ending like those usually found in recent fairy tale movies. The girl here dies.

This movie reminds me of a lot of other stories. The girl escaping from the realities of Spain caught in a civil war to a fantasy world where alas, it is not all fun but a series of tasks from which to learn lessons from is reminiscent of Charles Kingsley's "The Water Babies". The fascination of the underground creature for the girl is a theme found in a lot of stories ... you even find it in the Hollywood movie with a similar title: Labyrinth (the one with beautiful Jennifer Connely). Also, like the Labyrinth movie, this movie has the older sister saving her younger brother. Like Jean Cocteau's Orphee, it is sometimes hard to distinguish when the lead character has drifted in or out of the fantasy world. Getting from one world to the other is a simpler matter than one would initially think...Orphee had mirrors, this one used magic chalk (oh yes, shades of the cartoon Chalkzone there). As in Orphee and the movie Mirrormask, the otherworld in Pan's Labyrinth is a place of wonder but not necessarily a happy place, and sometimes it mixes the strange with the familiar. One also wonders if the vision Ofelia has before dying is real or something imagined like that in Little Match Girl.

For those who do not understand Spanish, like me, there are English subtitles. The translation is not exact for every word though, based on the subtitle of some Spanish terms I am actually familiar with. Since the translation was written by Guillermo del Toro himself, I believe the subtitles are what the dialogue would have been had the movie been filmed using the English language.

If you have to depend on the subtitles, then it is advisable to watch the movie twice. I find that it is easy to miss part of the story if you concentrate too long on either the subtitle or looking at the scenery.