"PAN'S LABYRINTH"

Nephew and Roofus have been raving about "Pan's Labyrinth." It was hard to find for a while, but after snagging an Oscar, it re-opened wider. I caught it with a friend over the weekend.

But going in, I knew very little about the film. Nephew said it was a masterpiece; Roofus echoed that sentiment, but warned of its hard-to-watch violence; even The New Yorker failed to adaquately communicate the prominent "fairy" aspect of the movie (meaning: flying magical fairies, not the derogatory epithet favored by Archie Bunker) in a minireview I read. I just knew, from the minireview, that military oppression dominated the plot.

So when the little graphic at the cineplex resembled that of a Tim Burton movie, I joked, "What IS this, a Tim Burton movie?"

I can say this: If I had been watching "Pan's Labyrinth" on DVD, I never would have finished it. But I saw it through, and I'm very glad I did.

You see, I'm not big on modern fairy movies, and a little less than halfway through the movie, the fairy stuff seemed to be taking over the film. I was relieved each time the film returned to the reality part of the story, which concerned a sadistic Captain in World War II Spain (Sergi Lopez), an underground movement to overthrow him, and an imaginative little girl (Ivana Baquero) whose mother (Ariadna Gil) has married the Captain and is carrying his son.

(SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON OUT)

As the fantasy and reality begin to crossover, it dawns on the viewer that it's all in the little girl's head. (This is made clear in a clever scene in which the girl sees a Mandrake root as a squirming baby, but adults see a dried root.)

So I thought one shot in the movie was badly played. When the Captain finds the little girl delivering her baby brother to a creepy fawn, the girl sees the fawn. But in a POV (point of view) shot, the Captain does not. Alas, director Guillermo del Toro underestimated his audience. It was like: "Attention, audience! It's all in her head! Get it?" It would have been better if they had blurred the Captain's POV shot; after all, he had just been drugged by the girl.

Otherwise, "Pan's Labyrinth" is a beautiful film. But I'm confused about the age group it is aimed at. Sometimes, it is a child's film (and there WERE a couple of little ones in the audience). At other times, the violence is nightmarish, even for adults.