Pan's Labyrinth | Guillermo Del Toro's | English Subtitles | NON-USA Format | PAL | Region 4 Import - Australia

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Very good plot, photograph and acting.

Was unaware this was ENGLISH SUBTITLES and not English 🤦🏼‍♀️ Just FYI. But I love thos movie

Loved This Movie !

Let me start this review by giving some details about the genre of story telling we know as "Fairy Tales". This genre of known as "Fairy Tales" was never originally intended for children. In fact there is a lot of historical evidence which points to the fact that most of these old stories were written by adults and meant only for adults.The original nature of "Fairy Tales" was not meant to make you feel all good inside and nor were they to always end with "And they all lived happily ever after...The End". As others have pointed out we can all blame Disney for "dumbing" down this type of genre of story telling. Neither was this form of story telling meant to always include "High Fantasy". A lot of "Fairy Tales" actually have only bits and pieces of fantasy in them to help further a story along and to draw in the listener/viewer/reader further into the plot.I wont go to deep into the plot of this film but the director Guillermo Del Toro seems to go back to the roots of the original and lost art form of "Fairy Tales". Guillermo Del Toro in my honest opinion does an outstanding job of interweaving fantasy with reality. Yet he does not allow the fantasy portions of this film to overwhelm the reality based portions or the viewer. The fantasy portions are meant to force you to make that extra emotional leap. To engage you further into a main story which is all so cruelly based in reality. The reality being the post-Spanish Civil War era in Spain and a little girl with a cruel and self-absorbed step-father who is an officer in the Franco's fascists military. Guillermo Del Toro then wraps it up with a great group of actors and a hard hitting ending.My only complaint is that as others have noted the fantasy portion at the end might have been added to appease American audiences. You'll know what I mean when you see the movie and get to that part. The reality portion of the ending stood strong without the need to include a semi-happy ending if you can call it one. The movie does hit the viewer very hard emotionally. Frankly speaking I'll be honest and admit that as a man I did cry at end.I couldn't help it because maybe I just have a heart and a soft spot for kids. I feel that any movie, book, song, poem, etc that can draw out a strong emotional reaction has reached the apex of its art form in its given genre. Oh and yes there are portions of this film that are extremely violent and should not be viewed by younger children. As others have noted this move has an "R" rating for a very good reason as it's meant for adults only. Besides I'll doubt that many young children could keep up with a foreign film done entirely in Spanish let alone understand the slight and subtle plot twists of this movie including the ending.P.S. This is a master piece of a film. To dub this film into English would be like dubbing Karl Orff's vocal portions of "Carmina Burana" into English. For those who are angry that this movie is done entirely in Spanish well all I can say is that you should learn to speak a second language for goodness sake! Or just learn to deal with subtitles in foreign films and try to follow along with the story as best you can.Our society is going to become increasingly more globally oriented as technology and time march onward toward the future. The very nature of our increasingly global economy will demand that you if not your children learn at least a second language. This will grow increasingly true for every other generation hence afterwards when you, I and your children's generation are no more.If you had no idea that this movie was a foreign film then I can understand and forgive the confusion but at least try to give this film a chance.

This is one of the most imaginative and unique films I have seen in years. It is a dark fairy tale for adults and is not a children's movie. The film is a mixture of fairy tale and dark realism since it combines images from the Mediterranean's pre-Christian mythologies with the horror of Fascism in Franco's Spain. The overlap between these two concepts, classical mythology and fascism, is violence and threat as well as unreasonable power over the powerless. Myths often involve heroic action, often taken by an innocent person or child, that helps overcome the forces of evil. The film is very skillful in combining these concepts where they are verbalized by the mythical creatures but we see a parallel world in reality as the rustic peasants develop resistance to the forces of fascism.The transitional character between the fantasy world of mythology and the harsh world of fascist reality is a little girl, the daughter of the new wife of a Fascist officer. She travels between these world through an ancient labyrinth hidden in the woods outside the fascist compound. Here she meets mischievous fairies but also a somewhat threatening and mysterious faun who is ambiguous as to his full intentions. The faun is identified as Pan, the child of the god Hermes, who was the god of transitions and doorways. She is told she is the Princess Moana and must undertake 3 tasks to gain her rightful throne. As in many myths, this child is given three tasks to claim their rightful position with the gods. This puts our young heroine into danger not only when she is in the labyrinth performing tasks but also when she is with her mother and step-father among the fascist and hidden resistance fighters. The adventures within the mythological world with a giant toad full of slime to an amazing monster who is awakened when someone eats from his table and who sees through eyeballs in the palms of his hands.To achieve the tasks prescribed by the gods and to overcome the evils of fascism, resilience and creativity are required and so once again we see overlap between the two worlds. Monstrosity can be reflected in the world of imaginary monsters but also in the acts of the fascists as they torture and kill innocent villagers as well as resistance fighters. The young female protagonist is not fully protected from the evil of her step-father by her weak mother, suffering with a difficult pregnancy and childbirth. She does not feel fully protected and she is indeed vulnerable to the dark gaze of her dark murderous step-father. She is most protected by the housekeeper who plays many roles in this complex film. Children may retreat into fantasy when threatened but this poor little girl finds a fantasy world that demand much of her and a real world full of real dark threats. This film has some of the best integration of fantasy and reality since A.S. Byatt's the Dijin in the Nightingale's Eye or the works of Borges. This film has a different feel to it from a Hollywood production, since it has some ragged ends and images that are more European than North American. This is part of the film's strength. The Pan creature for example would have probably been more of a Santa Claus with goat legs if the film had been made in Hollywood. Instead, he is mysterious and ambiguous in a world with little clarity.The child actress Ivana Baquero plays the child Ofelia. She does a super job. Sergi Lopez plays her evil, cruel, fascist step-father Captain Vidal. He is an excellent actor and he has the ability to radiate threat on the screen. All scripts, sets, costumes, special effects, and cinematography were excellent. It all comes together into a great film.

This film is in Spanish. It has subtitles. It's not for kids. It's appalling looking through the 'reviews' on here to find the amount of 1 star reviews for people that complain they didn't know it was in Spanish, or they didn't know they'd have to read subtitles. Some guy gives it 1 star because he played the directors commentary instead of the correct audio track and had to contend with "some guy talking all over the top of it." Lots of 1 star reviews from people who sat down to watch it with their kids too. Amuse yourself, have a browse through them.This film is an outstanding work, with a multi-layered plot that fuses the grim everyday life of a young girl with a mystical place she can escape to. Very very good stuff.

First off this is on great looking film, on Blu-ray this looks magnificent, with a 16:9 aspect ratio it just looks superb, there’s so much colour and depth to each frame, it’s like you could reach out and touch it, there’s never that flat digital look either you get with many modern films. This could be up there with some of the best looking films I’ve seen, The way the woods alone is shot with so much colour and light is wonderful, its like you can see and feel the beams of light, the pollen in the air. The film follows heavy themes of death, life, fascism, obedience and disobedience, as well as fantasy v reality. The casting, acting, camerawork and editing is fantastic. Rather than having monsters as a metaphor for humans or fascists in this the fascists literally are the monsters and the fantasy monsters are more imaginary than real perhaps. At night the creaky old house we find ourselves in seems to come to life with magic and noises. The plot involves a girl brought to a house in the woods by her mother, pregnant and unwell with her new stepfather, a captain in the Spanish army trying to defeat partisans in the area who he suspects locals may be aiding. The film’s cinematography deserves huge praise, the way the camera moves and spins and glides through the locations in a way which might normally annoy me but absolutely works in this genera. The film has some very heavy violence, swearing, scenes of torture, it’s not a film for children to be clear. The step father is a complete pig, there’s no attempt really to soften his character, he’s obsessed with simply ruthlessly destroying his enemies and making sure he has a son, everything is just a means to an end. That’s not to say he’s not an interesting or complicated character though, you spend a lot of time with him in the film and the acting is all round excellent, especially from such a young talent playing the lead. Scenes in the rain somehow look even more dazzling than in the sun, while the film has a very strong sense of fear and distress to it the ending felt slightly forced though with a few things happening I didn’t quite believe even though our main antagonist describes pride as being his weakness, characters happen to be exactly where they are needed to be when it suits the story, otherwise though it’s a really excellent film.

Pan's Labyrinth is a real treasure.It follows the story of a young girl, Ofelia, who along with her heavily pregnant mother, are moving in with her mother's new partner, a captain of the military. The story is set during the Spanish Civil war and as such the story unfolds in and around the military outpost where the captain, Ofelia and her mother are stationed.Ofelia is an inquisitive youngster and she soon starts to see things around the camp that are not what you could call normal! Eventually she meets the Faun, Pan, who gives her three tasks and this forms the real backbone of the story. As Ofelia works through her tasks her situation becomes more desperate as her mother becomes ill during pregnancy and the camp comes under threat from rebels...The film is very dark and fantastical but with a more adult tone; it's a fantasy of awesome imagination but not for the smallest children. Which leads me on to my next point - the Captain is one of the best villains I've seen in ages. He's thoroughly ruthless and you see pretty early in the movie what he's capable of and from that point on you want him to get his!A mention should be made of the picture quality of this disc which is outstanding. I recently bought a full HD TV and have been enjoying watching my DVD collection upscaled through my PS3. I noticed as soon as this disc started to play that the picture was utterly superb - the best DVD I've yet seen in terms of picture. Having been getting used to bluray recently most DVD's are almost immediately recognisable as a DVD but Pan's Labyrinth looks awesome. It's a shame they didn't manage to get a DTS soundtrack on there too!Anyway, I don't want to reveal too much of the story which is very well told. It's nothing particularly new but is told so well it works wonderfully. If you like fanatsy you'll love this. There's a good twist at the end too.Thoroughly recommended.

Anyone liking magic realism, a genre popular in South American writing but here transplanted to Europe and to the bloody and brutal aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, will be won over immediately by this exquisitely crafted film. There are continual echoes in the film of the writings of Isabel Allende (or of a European counterpart such as Louis de Bernières). If they're for you, then so is this film, dare I say?Mixing magic and reality as per the genre you have in one story a fairy tale being told of a young girl who escapes into a private world away from the dreadful daily horrors of the real world at war. Her fantasy world contains all the creatures of mystery and the best that cgi and animatronics can offer. In the other real world the film tells the absolutely brutal story of a unit of the fascistic, utterly cruel Nationalist Army fighting the last stragglers of the defeated republican government `army' in the rain-drenched hills of Northern Spain.What has the film got? The cinematography is superlative and the palette of the film, the cold greys, greens, browns and blues of the `reality' and the warm golden oranges of the fantasy world, is entirely convincing. The acting from the mesmerizing performance of the child actress playing one of the leads - what a find she is! - (effectively the film has several 'leads') to that by the minor role players could serve as a template of how to act full-stop. The action itself is beautifully directed whether the scenes are of quiet pathos or stomach-churning violence, by the excellent and sure-footed Guillermo del Toro. (By the way, the `15' certificate is a bit of a surprise for me - I've seen less violent `18' films.)Both stories of the film work very well. Do they work together once the director has put them together in one place side by side? Well... almost. I enjoyed, if that's the right word, the reality scenes more than the fantasy ones but I've never been a fan of fantasy and its paraphernalia so that's probably why. Hence the four stars above instead of five.N.B. It is not a film to see if you're feeling low. It's unremittingly sombre and sad with no comic details whatsoever. The relief for a viewer comes rather in the form of the fantasy world visited by the young heroine (for us just as it does for her). There could be no happiness and laughter in this film and this makes it tough-going. It's never boring but it's certainly tough-going and this is something to bear in mind before you sit down cheerfully to watch it.All that said the film stands head, shoulders, torso what have you above most of the films released in 2006 and deserves the plaudits it has received.

Pan's Labyrinth is one of those films that starts so well that you hope it will stay that good only for it to actually surprise you and constantly improve. It's a remarkably layered work about the importance of choice even in an emotional and political dictatorship and about the fictions and fantasies that sustain people through the worst circumstances. On the surface this appears to be little more than a more fantastic spin on The Spirit of the Beehive, sharing its post-Spanish Civil War setting as well as the broken family setting, but this is a far superior film in every way. Although marketed largely as a fantasy, its real power lies in the scenes set in the real world where Sergi Lopez's all too believable Fascist monster is mopping up the few remaining communist guerrillas in the hills while waiting for his sick wife to give birth to his son while her daughter from her first marriage tries to reassert her own identity rather than submit to the Captain's idea of family.The challenges of the mythical world are far less disturbing - or violent - than the real one, and it's all too easy to see why she wants to escape into the darkness of the labyrinth where at least the hope of something better exists. But then she's not the only one escaping into the imagination, as her mother sustains herself with a romanticised view of her meeting the captain that he has no interest in whatsoever. To him stories - even a part of his family history that has passed into local legend - exist only to be denied. Lopez's greatest sin isn't the pride that he admits to, or even that he is so pitiless, it's that he chooses to obey without question: the girl's small triumph is that she does not. And the triumphs in the film are generally small, quiet ones, where courage and fear go hand in hand, making the few acts of decency all the more important when they occur. There is one "saved by the cavalry" moment that at first doesn't convince but does prove to be there for a definite purpose that makes the ending all the more powerful.But while there's a lot going on underneath the surface of the film, it doesn't crush it with the weight of its ideas. It's directed with a visual assurance and, at times, playfulness that sweeps you along, sometimes with delight, sometimes with apprehension, but never simply for the sake of a nice shot or a neat special effect (most of which are incredibly well integrated for such a low budget feature). The performances are superb, with Lopez somehow managing to avoid turning his irredeemable character into a caricature: this is an evil without conscience that is all too recognisable. Javier Navarette's beautiful score is also adept at walking the fine line between magic and emotion without crossing the line into schmaltz.It's a remarkable film, the only new one that I saw last year that I'd genuinely say is one of the greatest of all time. It's been years since I was so affected by a movie that I had to see the very next show. Practically perfect and definitely one for the collection,especially in the two-disc edition which boasts surprisingly good extras that aren't just the usual self-congratlatory promo pieces.