A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamt of the human world. She dreamt of blue skies, soft breeze and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory . . .

Thus, begins the premise for Guillermo del Toro's wondrous Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film (and rightfully should have also joined the Best Picture category). Del Toro's dark fantasy is remarkably visionary, as he creates haunting images that indelibly paint Franco's Spain as never before. Building on Bunuel's surrealist traditions and Goya's "Black Paintings," Del Toro crafts a film destined to live on for generations--a new mythological universe for our time. It's a fairy tale for adults that works due to its fine enemble acting and because Del Toro deftly interweaves childlike fantasy with stark adult reality for astonishing effects.

A courageous young girl embarks on a journey with her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) in 1944 to live in rural Spain with her mother's new husband, an exceptionally vile captain in Franco's fascist army. With a cold-hearted stepfather only concerned with wiping out Republican resistance in the hills and eagerly anticipating his son, it's no surprise that innocent young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) finds refuge in fairy tales.

Before long, Ofelia's fantasy springs to life. A large flying insect "fairy" leads her through a garden labyrinth down a winding staircase into the magical cave domain of Pan (Doug Jones). Believing that Ofelia could be the lost princess of the fairy tale, Pan declares that she must complete three tasks, each growing successively scarier and more difficult. Her perilous journey to the kingdom is akin to mixing Lewis Carroll's Alice with heroic Greek myth, as innocence takes sharp blows by the wicked realities of the human world.

Just as Ofelia battles gluttonous giant toads and flesh devouring beasts, her adult counterpart Mercedes (Maribel Verdu) treads a tricky path around sadistic Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), who makes Hitler look like a choirboy. Indifferent to his surroundings, Vidal doffs his black leather gloves and exterminates captured prisoners gleefully--so over the top that the wicked stepfather is either a complete psychopath or an ultimate fairy tale villain. His first outburst with shattered beer bottle was so savage that I had to avert my eyes during both screenings I've seen. No less horrific is his fondness for torture implements used for extracting the "truth" from captives.

Ofelia quickly bonds with Mercedes, startling her with her immediate sense that she is helping the guerrilla rebels in the woods. Their parallel stories intertwine seamlessly and are joined on several levels, including the haunting melancholy lullaby Mercedes hums to her young "sister" that serves as the film's primary musical theme. Both selflessly devote themselves to serve a righteous cause, and Ofelia is taught an unforgettable lesson when she neglects her instructions and gives in to temptation and later must suffer personal tragedy. But she recovers in time in an act of self-sacrifice that indelibly establishes Pan's Labyrinth as a film for the ages.