Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

  Also called El laberinto del fauno, if you're interested in such things. Yet another of my weird creepy foreign films, I forced this one on Rob Sunday night.  He was trepidatious at first but grew to appreciate how beautiful it was, which was all I could have hoped for.

Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) travels with her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to an old mill at the demand of her mother's new husband, a Captain in Franco's army, and a total bastard besides.  Once there, Ofelia discovers a magical world just waiting for her, as she is hailed as the long lost heir to the Underground Kingdom.  Her guide to recovering her rightful place is a giant blue faun (Doug Jones, of course) and three fairies.  This is a welcome distraction from the horrors going on around her, as the Captain (Sergi Lopez) is hunting down resistance fighters in the woods and her mother's pregnancy is filled with complications.  The faun sets her to three tasks she must complete before the moon is full.  Can she accomplish them and reclaim her fairy status before her psychotic step-father gets everyone killed?  Watch it and find out.

Before we watched it, Rob asked me if it was a sad movie.  I said "Kind of" which isn't really an answer but it was the best one I could give because 1) I'm not going to spoil the end of the movie for someone who's never seen it.  Are you kidding?  And 2) because it really does depend on which view you'd like to take.  Depending on how cynical you are, the movie is incredibly depressing at the end.  But if  you're a mainly happy person, you'll be able to see the other side, the warm rosy ending.

This is one of those rare foreign films that even people who dislike foreign films watched and liked it.  I think it's because Guillermo Del Toro had already garnered some goodwill with his Hellboy movies.  He is one of those directors whose body of work is distinctive.  I've got a couple of his earlier films in my Netflix queue and I'm looking forward to seeing how his influences have shifted or refined.