Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

I went to see Pan’s Labyrinth today. I didn’t have any expectations for the movie, and it blew me away. From the start the fact that it was a movie entirely in Spanish was almost unsettling, except that I speak Spanish. I had expected it to be in English, but somehow the pain and suffering in the movie was more poignant for the fact that it was foreign.

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro, of Hellboy fame, the movie has garnered an amazing 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.5 on IMDB, and six academy award nominations. John Wirt for the Advocate wrote:

Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth brilliantly melds the realms of fairy tale and brutal 20th-century history. Beautiful, horrible and deeply affecting, it’s the 21st century’s first film masterpiece.

Here are a few of the movie posters, to pique your interest:

The plot, without giving too much away, is about a young girl who’s lost her father. Her mother has married a Spanish military officer to escape her loneliness, but they both hate him. The girl is swept up in magic and prophecy as the real world around her plunges into chaos and violence. At the end of it all, you’re struck with two options–to believe that what the young girl experienced is true, and redeem the story, or to deny it to her imagination, and realize the stark reality of the world. There’s no way to choose between the two because the story is told in such a way as to make both equally possible.

If you want to see more, Apple has a trailer you can download! While unsettling, the movie’s grandiose themes and visions overcome its horrors. I highly recommend watching it.

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