Review: El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)

Review: El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) (Guillermo del Toro, 2006, USA).

Looks like I'm going to be towing the critical line on this one.
I'm not even sure I can really write a review after one viewing, this is a film you could watch 20 times and not fully absorbed all there is to it.But, I'll try! Ofelia (Ivanna Baquero) and her mother Carmen (Adriana Gil) are being driven to stay with Carmen's new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergei Lopez) when they stop because Carmen is feeling sick while carrying Vidal's child. While stopped Ofelia finds a rock and places back in a statue where it looks like the rock should be. Doing this, she unleashes a force which could take her to her rightful place, a Princess of the underworld, or damn her to a mortal's life on Earth.
To even tell anymore of this film would ruin it. You need to go in as fresh as possible to fully get everything out of the film. I knew certain things and I feel like it made it less fresh for me and for that I am a lot sadder. All there is to say is that there are twists and turns. Aspects of the Spanish Civil War come into the picture in surprising, disturbing, and moving ways. The film is technically perfect. The art direction, writing, effects, practical make up (Doug Jones does an astounding job as the mysterious faun Pan and as the Pale Man, of who I will say no more), and performances are nothing short of incredible especially based on the small budget del Toro had to work with. Speaking of del Toro, it feels like all the films he has made before have led up to this being his seminal work and he knocks it out of the park. This film, like Cars, is the director's most personal work, and yet it doesn't feel self- indulgent at all. del Toro has things to say to all of us and does them in amazing ways. To say this is the best film of the year feels almost like an insult to the cast and crew, it is certainly the best film of the century so far and I say that with a straight face. That's all I can say.