Pan's Labyrinth - Review

Remember how much I loved The Fountain? I loved it for being big and sloppy and beautiful? Well, I love Guillermo Del Toro's film, Pan's Labyrinth, even more, but for other reasons - it's not messily thrilling, it's just, well, I think, fuckin' perfect. Like, I don't much want to give a brand new film, without giving it time to settle, an A+ grade, but it's very tempting here.

At this point, with everyone and their mama saying Pan's Labyrinth is spectacular, it's gotten a bit redundant, and I sorta almost wish I could be that guy who pisses on the party and says oh no, it's being overpraised, it's not that special... but holy shit, this is the best movie of the year, hands down. Best thing Del Toro's ever done, that's for sure, and that's coming from someone who's a big fan of every film he's made up to now (well, not Hellboy really, but almost every one, yes including Mimic).

But instead of me saying all the things that've already been said, I thought this'd be more fun (not to mention delightfully more lazy) - a pastiche of the reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, where the film sits at 100% positive.

"Watching Pan’s Labyrinth doesn’t just deliver the joy of seeing a well-made film. It doesn’t just deliver the wonder of a darkly beautiful fantasy brought to life. Watching Pan’s Labyrinth gives you the excitement of experiencing a filmmaker blossoming into true greatness, a director taking his spot alongside the other genius fantasists of cinema."

"This is a somber, lovely picture, set in Franco's Spain a few years after that country's civil war. It's rich both in metaphorical terms and in literal ones. Del Toro's imagery is so vivid and concrete that it's likely to change the color of your sleep: A writhing, cooing root that's "almost" a human baby; a faceless creature with pale wrinkly skin draped over its willowy bones, its eyes located in the palms of its hands instead of in its head. Those far-side-of-sleep images (and the movie contains many others) can be read as symbols and stand-ins for other things -- a nascent country that might have been; so-called leadership that's howlingly blind -- but del Toro isn't playing a game of allegorical one-to-one matching here. The movie's meanings emerge from its visuals instead of being driven by them. Del Toro has mastered the delicate, difficult feat of using pure sensation to make us think."

"Best of all, it's a fairy tale that has not been prettified or bowdlerized for kids. It stakes out imaginative territory much closer to the fantastic visions of Bergman or Cronenberg than to those of C.S. Lewis or Tolkien. (The R rating for "graphic violence and some language" should tell you something. I think the film earns its R -- though I'm sure there are plenty of kids under 17 who will love it -- but I'd prefer that the R be attributed to "gruesome imagination.")"

"Del Toro's trademark visual flair gets its finest ever chance to shine, rendering the tale onscreen so perfectly that the subtitles are barely needed. Every actor - most notably, Ivana Baquero's wide-eyed Ofelia and Sergi López's vicious, glittering Captain – excels. Compelling from first frame to last, Pan's Labyrinth never misses a chance to wrench, quell or quicken your heart: this visionary project propels Del Toro into the highest league of filmmakers. There can be no excuses. See this film."
.