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Once Upon a Time...

Dark and brilliant, like a black diamond, Pan's Labrynth ( or El Laberinto del fauno) is a foreign film treasure worth digging for! Here we see two stories entwined. Somewhere in Spain around the year 1944, fascist soldiers are hunting down rebels in the hills. A young girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her pregnant mother, Carmen (Araidna Gil) are coming to join her step-father, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez) a sadistic officer in the Spanish army. To still her bright and tender daughter's worries about herself and her unborn brother, Ofelia's mother encourages her to loose herself in the wonder of the written word and to tell her stories. So violent and cold is the Captain that sympathizers among the villagers, like the doctor and the servant Mercedes, go about their furtive endeavors with hearts beating like frantic birds in a cage.

On the flip side of this tale, is another which seems at first but a distant hope, a means of escaping the harsh realities she that have been thrust upon her. Yet so vivid and rich in its colors and complexities is this fairy tale realm that sullen and bleak Reality looks seems lifeless beside this new world that opens for our heroine. We see young Ofelia wander off a bit as her mother is ill at the side of the road to replace a stone eye in an ancient carving along the road to her new future. This act appears to turn a forgotten key in a timeless door. Fairy creatures are soon making their way deeper and deeper into her life as Ofelia finds herself living at the edge of a strange maze and mossy ruins. Pan, an elderly but powerful faun, Guardian of this mystical place, tells her the story of a most beloved Faerie princess who's soul was accidentally released into the Mortal world.

"A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning..." They have, Pan tells her, been searching for her for a very long time...
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