Pan’s Labyrinth

This movie is a masterpiece! Quite honestly I don't know how anyone could watch it and not get sucked in. This movie was told with the air of a classic fairy tale, the real ones, not the watered down versions we give our children today. There is an atmosphere of danger and suspense that constantly surrounds the girl, and in response to that there is a persistent arousal of hope, or fantasy. The girl's environment is not the best, to say the least. She is in some camp under the jurisdiction of some heartless man who has married her mother, and who only cares about producing an heir. Everything around her is militaristic and hard and cold, and yet she continuously bumps into this other world of wonder and mystery, of fairies and fauns and the like. It's like the metaphor of the flower that grows out of concrete. finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.

It's debatable whether she is actually interacting with this other world and that it exists, or if she's creating this world to escape her less than ideal reality. I suppose your answer would come from what kind of person you are and how you perceive the world. I enjoy the experience of believing it is real with a constant skeptic in the back of my mind nay saying everything the believer says, so I guess my view would change depending on what day you chanced upon asking me. The bottom line is that story is very well put together and whether or not you believe the world the girl is interacting with to be real, you'll enjoy it either way. 

A common criticism I hear circling this movie is that it isn't for children. To these people, I don't really know what to say. I'm not sure how it was advertised to you, but from the advertisements I saw I was well aware that the movie was rated R and was a 'fairy tale for grown ups', so to speak. I did still take my younger sibling, but that's something else. If a parent or guardian is not willing to take the time to research a movie or heed the ratings, they shouldn't be allowed to complain about what their children see, as this unwanted event could have been prevented with a little effort on their part.

This movie is wonderful. I tear up at the end every time. For me it really stands out as a work of art against the back drop of the standard of movies we have come to expect will be playing in theaters every Friday night. I'd even go so far as to say that it's a classic in it's own time, or is at least something to be aware of. But it's definitely awesome.