If it weren't for the Spousal Unit, I certainly wouldn't have gone to see this film.
Now it has been several weeks and the memory of it fades like an old story hidden in memory. It was a very good but not great film, entertaining in the way that foreign films give us access to a naive innoncence mixed with a violent and sexual hitorical plot that offers us wise cynics a way to rediscover a simple morality. I'm thinking of Il Postino and The Bicycle Thief as perfect examples, but there are others you know. I don't know, because I quit watching foreign films after grew up and got married. Well except for Kurosawa, but that's different.
In Pan's Labyrinth a girl dreams her way through a sorrowful childhood as her mother abuses herself for the sake of a sadistic army officer. Things get very ugly as they go to stay with him at the last outpost of a fascist military which is on the brink of collapse at the hands of hearty mountain rebels. There are multiple plots afoot and somehow it gets very dark before the dawn and the girl comes of age.
On the whole PL was a very diverting entertainment that was easy to get lost in made easier still by the anonymity of the actors. It was subtitled, if I remember correctly, and though I'm not the type who likes to go out and read a movie, I was pleased by this story. It's not suitable for kids although it would work well taught in a high school AP English class.
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