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El Laberinto Del Fauno * Guillermo Del Toro * 2006

The highly aclaimed Spanish film of the director of “Hellboy” and a whole series of films that I have not yet seen. It seems that most (if not all) of Del Toro’s film have a ‘political’ undertone in which the nazis represent the bad guys and the ‘reds’ the good side, the same goes for this film. “El Laberinto” is a strange film. There are actually two films in one and in both cases a war between good and evil. There is the ‘real world’ in which a group of nazi-like people try to free the country of ‘reds’ and there is the fantasy world in which a little girl has to undertake a few tests in order to regain her throne. “El Laberinto” goes from fairyish fantasy for little children to dark fantasy-horror in the fantasy part to very explictly violent parts in the ‘real world’. The film is definately not for little children, not even for people with a weak stomach! The fantasy part shows a spiritual quest, the other a more political one. The dreamlike scenes are indeed awsome. Magnificent costumes, great stages and weird characters. I don’t really understand the ‘real world’ part, but I guess the director really wanted to have a political twist to the film. “El Laberinto Del Fauno”, I also fail to see the international title “Pan’s Labyrinth”. The faun may look a bit like Pan (but a faun is supposed to have horns and goat hoofs), but he introduces himself as “a faun”. Pan is by far no faun and the director agrees that the two cannot be equated. A silly mistake of the distributors I suppose.
In any case, the film is nice, the fantasy parts are wonderfull, but I prefer “Hellboy” as ‘total concept’.
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