Pan's Labyrinth

Warning: don't read this if you don't want to find out that the girl dies!

This was a really unusual and atmospheric film, made even more sublime by the fact that I saw it in Cineworld Haymarket, which is an old and very enigmatic building.
At first I thought that the film was a fairytale and certainly it starts off as that but at the end it all ties together.
It has disturbingly serious theme, set in time of Franco's regime and it uses amazing countryside with spooky and somewhat sad quality to it, depths that are so vivid that one can almost feel it.
The story goes somewhat like this: Ophelia is a long lost princess, a daughter of the king and she now must do the task set by the faun to be able to enter her father's eternal kingdom and live forever .
Upset by the fact that her mother married a cruel captain after her father's death, to escape poverty and loneliness, she gets caught up in the fairytale.

It is only at the end, that you realise that there was never any faun, that the whole thing was way of escapism from sadness and alienation she felt.

Even as she lies dying, she imagines she enters the kingdom and is reunited with her mother, which tragically dies giving birth to her brother.
The whole mood oscillates from serious to magic to violent and sadness again, with atmospheric surroundings that really make you dream.
Most beautiful movie I saw this year I think.