"How violent could a fairytale be?" I wondered, knowing full well that fairytales are often violent before Disney gets their mitigating little hands on them. Yet still, I wondered.
I watched the movie with a pillow over my face for several of the scenes involving the soldiers of the Spanish Civil War. It was a bit too graphic for me. I really don't need to see someone's face smashed in with a bottle. Up close. With amazingly lifelike special effects. Or someone getting their face ripped open. Up close. With amazingly lifelike special effects. Or the end result of a particularly fruitful torture session simulated with amazingly lifelike makeup effects. I mean, I like violence as much as the next guy, but there are certain things that I'll never be able to watch. This movie had all of them.
It's not the movie I was expecting, but all in all I liked it. Two thumbs up! I liked the ambiguity of the story and how the two realities were juxtaposed so that you never really know which was the true reality. Was Ofelia just a delusional child escaping the harsh reality of life by creating her own fairytale? Or was she really the lost soul of the princess of the underworld?
Tinkerbell knows the truth.
Do you believe in fairies?
