El Labertino Del Fauno (2006)

Pan's Labyrinth is the story of a young girl who travels with her pregnant mother to live with her mother's new husband, a Captain and a ruthless leader sent to a rural area up North in Spain in 1944, after Franco's victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own. Hilarity ensues. Alan Quartermain in...

Trivia: Doug Jones (Pan, the Faun, and the Pale Man) had to memorize not only his own lines in Spanish (a language he does not speak) but also Ivana Baquero's (Ofelia) lines so he knew when to speak his next line. Because the servos in the head piece that made the facial expressions and ears move were so loud, he couldn't hear her speak her lines. It took five hours for Doug Jones to get into The Pale Man costume and once he was in it, he had to look out the nose holes to see where he was going. Guillermo Del Toro is famous for compiling books full of notes and drawings about his ideas before turning them into films, something he regards essential to the process. He left years worth of notes for Pan's Labyrinth in the back of a cab, and thought it was the end of the project. However, the cab driver found them and, realizing their importance, tracked him down and returned them at great personal difficulty and expense. Del Toro was convinced that this was a blessing and it made him ever more determined to complete the film.

This was an interesting mix between a fantasy and a 40's Spanish period piece. The girl who played Ofelia is pretty good and the Captain was good at being mean. The Pan character was pretty creepy and the Pale Man character (if you see the commercials for it, the Pale Man is the guy with eyes in the palms of his hands) was a little creepy too. This was actually the first foreign language film that I have seen in a theater, so that was a little new experience. Anyway, it was a good film.