An engrossing feat of craft and imagination, Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is among the best films of 2006 and would stand out in any year. The Spanish-language fairytale for adults operates on numerous levels with equal success. The only reaction it doesn't provoke is laughs.

It's a rare movie that offers: stunning visuals and superlative dramatic performances; gripping action that bears on political history and war; suspense involving women and children in peril; snatches of horror courtesy of scary creatures and scenes of torture; and idea-filled fantasy touching on fundamental human tendencies and realized with brilliant special effects. Not only does Pan's Labyrinth give you the willies, put you on edge, and make you think, it also heartens. With a mixture of Christian and pagan symbolism, the movie ultimately functions as a fairytale about salvation.

Trying to encompass so much, and being impossible to pigeonhole, isn't always a positive trait and the narrative and thematic complexity of Pan's Labyrinth  is remarkable because everything is brought together in such a vividly coherent yarn. The Mexican director of  Kronos, The Devil's Backbone and Hellboy combines his passion for dazzling magical realism and darkly triumphant yarns in a legible work pulsing with emotional and intellectual energy. 

In 1944, a ten-year-old girl named Ofelia travels with her pregnant mother to a military outpost in the remote mountains of northern Spain to join her new stepfather, the sadistic Captain Vidal. While his soldiers flush out anti-Franco rebels hiding nearby, and her frail mother takes to her bed so as not to miscarry, Ofelia conjures a faun and escapes into his magical realm.

The malevolent forces in the real world make the dangers she encounters in the underworld seem tame in comparison. The housekeeper and doctor-in-residence are secretly aiding the guerillas holed up in the mountains and her paranoid stepfather is bent on two things: fathering a healthy son and rooting out any challenge to his authority, both domestic and military.  As Vidal, Sergi Lopez makes for a fantastic villain and Ivana Baquero is excellent as the courageous heroine who comes of age by defying her stepfather and the fascistic paternalism he stands for in thrilling fashion.

Above or perhaps beneath the movie's visceral qualities is the driving idea of redemption through bravery and creativity. The way to subvert wrongheaded authority and life's more accidental or natural misfortunes is through imaginative action. The faun, believing Ofelia is a princess with a profound destiny, asks her to undertake a rigorous challenge entailing three tasks. She completes them, choosing to sacrifice herself in the process. Anyone looking for an evolved Christ figure at the movies need look no further.

Somewhat ironically given the setting, it's evident that Del Toro is an artistic dictator at the height of his powers who didn't brook any variation from his vision. The picture has an inexorable quality that effortlessly mixes the exotic and the familiar in order to surprise and delight, and every element and effect is earned. Del Toro overturns the adult world of betrayal and compromise using a fertile young spirit who is innocent enough to conquer fear.

There are many similarities with The Devil's Backbone, Del Toro's 2001 sepia-toned allegory about innocence and passion which takes place during the Spanish Civil War and is part ghost story, part war saga, and part coming-of-age drama. But this masterwork is more resonant and technically accomplished. No description can do it justice and it must be experienced to be understood. Pan's Labyrinth is itself an example of how the human imagination can sometimes do much more than mirror reality. 

(Released by Picturehouse and rated "R" for graphic violence and some language.)