Pan's Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro's Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth is an astonishingly inventive portrait of childhood fears and hopes, an eerily beautiful modern fantasy that truly merits the overused adjective magical. But it's not a fairy tale in the Disney sense, but one more worthy of the Brothers Grimm—i.e., a dark, frightening, and violent story for adults. A hallucinatory variant on Alice in Wonderland, the film stars Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, a young bookworm devoted to fantastic tales, who travels with her ill and pregnant mother to a remote outpost where her brutal stepfather is leading a troop of fascist soldiers against continuing guerrilla resistance in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war in the 1940s. Ofelia discovers an ancient labyrinth, where she meets a faun who informs her that she is a princess who must complete three dangerous tasks to return to her underground kingdom. These tasks take her into a phantasmagorical world populated by malevolent creatures, although developments in the “real” world prove to be equally monstrous—if not worse. Del Toro shifts between the two realms with amazing dexterity, drawing viewers effortlessly into the film's strange, bewitching ambience. A visual feast that also carries surprising emotional weight, Pan's Labyrinth is a work of such stunning imagination that it leaves most Hollywood spectaculars in the dust. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. [Note: Available in either a single or two-disc version, DVD extras on the two-disc Platinum Series edition include a brief video prologue by writer-director Guillermo del Toro, audio commentary by Del Toro, an episode of The Charlie Rose Show featuring Del Toro and filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu (50 min.), a “Pan and the Fairies” visual effects documentary (30 min.), “The Power of Myth” featurette on mythology (15 min.), 11 minutes of multi-angle storyboard comparisons, “The Lullaby” featurette on the theme music (5 min.), “The Color and the Shape” (4 min.), a brief “VFX Plate Comparison: Guillermo del Toro and the Green Fairy,” the “Director's Notebook” section (including interactive pages that provide access to various clips and interviews), four animated DVD prequel comics (for “The Giant Toad,” “The Fairies,” “Pan,” and “The Pale Man”), art galleries (poster, production design, creature design, and production scrapbook), and trailers. Bottom line: a fine extras package for one of 2006's best films.] (F. Swietek)