Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

It didn't help that I thought this was the one with David Bowie and his codpiece, but I really didn't like this film. Ridiculously dark for the sake of being so, I found the mixture of fauns and the violence of the Spanish civil war to be incredibly uncomfortable. Although, the initial concept of del Toro's work would suggest a beautiful film, juxtaposing elegance and bloodiness, man-made religious symbols with supernatural insect-like creatures, I found the combination to be far too ridiculous to have any significance.

The acting, however, was brilliant. Ivana Baquero plays the character of bookish Ofelia fantastically, a young girl who moves with her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to live with her new sadistic stepfather; a captain during 1944 in falangist Spain. On the journey to her new home, the convoy carrying Ofelia and her mother are forced to stop due to her mother's sickness. The inquisitive Ofelia wonders away from the cars and finds a stone, that appears to have fallen from a break in an old stone monument. When she places the stone in the eye of a beast that is carved on the statue, a large stick insect (though I'm sure del Toro would not approve of that description) or fairy as Ofelia names it, climbs out of the other eye. That night our protagonist finds this fairy in her room and follows it, naively, through an ancient labyrinth in the grounds of her new home, a military base set up in an old mill. At the centre of the maze, Ofelia walks down a spiral staircase in a hole in the ground. At the bottom she is accosted by a faun who claims she is the lost princess to the underworld and to claim her rightful place she must complete three tasks.

I understand what del Toro was trying to do here with his use of extreme violence and fairytales, unfortunately I just couldn't find any sympathy with this film. The faun is, frankly, quite disturbing. Forget your C.S. Lewis' Mr Tumnus; del Toro's creature is a predator. Perhaps it's with the new exposure of sexual grooming, but I find the fact that this creature turning up in Ofelia's room at night whilst she sleeps, behaving aggressively to be extremely disturbing, hence making my lose sympathy with this haven of an underworld that the characters hold.

Besides from the uncomfortable portrayal of characters, the acting was a masterpiece, as well as the cinematography and set-up. Maybe this is what del Toro intended to do, and maybe I will grow to understand it but, overall this film made me far too uncomfortable for me to see it as a success.