craigmcn

I was downtown and had nothing better to do with my time, so I went to see Pan’s Labyrinth. An very good movie, but I was wholly unprepared for the subtitles through the whole movie. Nobody told me it was in Spanish. Now you know. As I was leaving, I overheard some girl say, “So the moral of the story is to not read fairy tales.” Whaa? The story is all about fairy tales. The main character, Ofelia, is essentially Snow White or Cinderella. She meets fairies, fauns and giants. She has to battle monsters and go on secret missions to magical places. How does not reading fairy tales fit into this? Unless, as my dad said, it would have never happened if she hadn’t read the fairy tales. I guess.

The story is set in the summer of 1944, amid the lingering remnants of the Spanish Civil War. This adds a very real context to the fairy tale. It also sets the movie in a world where the fairy tale is believed by a very small few. This puts our heroine in a very difficult position when trying to accomplish her missions and care for her ailing mother. Political and personal intrigue in the 20th century added to a dark fairy tale makes for very entertaining time.

7 out of 10 saltines. The subtitles brought the experience down a notch.