Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is a masterpiece of work for Guillermo del Toro. The movie is his most personal and best work to date, with The Devil's Backbone close behind it. The story is executed brilliantly and has the very personal visual style of del Toro all over it; likely due to his filling of multiple journals with drawings and ideas of his for the movie. The fantastical story of Ofelia seems over the top and like a fairy tale but it works very well and handles the subject matter in a more mature way than other movies with similar subject matter. However the things I found most interesting in the movie were Doug Jones' characters, the pale man and the faun, as well as the captain character. Doug Jones did a stunning job in selling his nuanced and very physical performances of the faun and the pale man. Jones has a unique way of being able to manipulate his body and sell a performance with subtle movements, as well as having to learn lines  in Spanish and having his lines dubbed over. And the other thing that I found very interesting was the captain. The captain is portrayed as a very cold and harsh man but was fleshed out and given the interesting back story of his war hero father smashing his pocket watch in order for his son to know the time that his father died. This detail seems to be an important part in understanding his character. The watch and the legacy of his father always seems to haunt the captain. This seems to cause him to feel increasingly dissatisfied with himself and not living up to his father's legacy, he always seems desperate to do something big to measure up to his father's legacy. However, the best part of this legacy haunting the captain is when he tries to do the same thing for his own son, he is shut down and told his son will never even know his name and is shot in the face. Overall, I found Pan's Labyrinth to be a wonderful movie and even better after watching it for the third time.