Best Movie of 2006

If you've read real fairytales, and I mean those written by the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, not that pantywaist Perrault, you know that they're not pretty. Fairytales are dark, gruesome, brutal stories. Sex, death, gore, hatred, vengeance, cannibalism, and uberdysfunctional blended families abound. Hot chicks in glass shoes do not flit around in pumpkins, getting their every wish granted by some flying biddy. There are few happily ever afters.

If you like real fairy tales, you will love Pan's Labyrinth. If you like Disney's Snow White, you will freakin' hate Pan's Labyrinth and I advise you to go to the latest Jennifer Garner movie. 'Cause this is not Labryinth. It's not even The Brothers Grimm. This is some seriously dark sh**, and you will not walk out of the theatre with a tummy full of popcorn and a dreamy smile on your face. It's more in line with Pasolini's Salo or Bertolucci's 1900 in its grim portrayal of the clash between fascism and childhood. The fantasy elements are reminiscent of Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves, another treatment of old-school fairytales.

Ofelia is a girl on the cusp of adulthood who immerses herself in fairytales to cope with life in 1944 Spain. Her new stepfather is a captain under Generalissimo Franco. He's a tyrant who carries around a memento mori: The pocket watch that stopped when his father died. He has summoned his very pregnant, ill wife to his mountain fortress so he can oversee the birth of his son, but he's too involved in exterminating the Resistance fighters holed up in the dense mountain forests to pay much attention to her. Ofelia is left to fend for herself, and she re-imagines her surroundings as a place of extreme menace and supreme promise... if she obeys the commands of a creepy old faun (Pan himself), she will take her rightful place as princess of an ancient, subterranean kingdom. The tasks she is given are anything but pleasant.

Pan's Labyrinth has some superficial similarities to Terry Gilliam's most recent film, Tideland. In both, a young girl copes with desperate circumstances by retreating into outrageous, disturbing fantasy. But Jeliza Rose of Tideland is oblivious to her surroundings, incapable of discerning reality from make-believe. Ofelia merely gives different forms to a reality of which she is fully, painfully aware - though the adults around her are too thick to grasp that. Of the two films, only Pan's Labyrinth truly captures both the enchantment and the desperation of childhood. Stunning visuals portray the beauty and darkness of the forest equally well. And its tale of psychotic fascists bent on total control at any price is all too timely.