Del Toro made a true piece of movie magic with his “El laberinto del fauno”.
There is so much to be told about great cinematography (Guillermo Navarro won his deserved Oscar), and about the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack.
I am not sure whether intentionally or not, but it is not so hard to recognize his inspiration, or even a homage that Del Toro made to his favorite movie “The Innocents”(1961), by using similar, mysterious humming of little girl Flora, from the eerie scene near the lake, for his lullaby to Ofelia.
However, the most powerful statement this movie makes is with the way the story has been presented to us, the public: as one big Rorschach test.
The film is superbly successful in either choice we, as public, make: Fantasy tale or gritty drama.
This test will nevertheless show who we, as the spectators are, and what most personal choices do we make: to believe or not to believe in the unseen world.
Some of us see a drama, set in Spain, post-civil war, during Franco's fascist reign. There, we follow a young girl and her struggles with a sadistic stepfather, losing her victimized mother too early. Her stepfather, Captain Vidal, is the main antagonist, well portrayed by Sergi López; even sometimes overly two dimensional acting serves the purpose of meeting the demand on the part of fairy telling, where only the contrast of white and black (light and darkness) is allowed to be seen. He is fighting the rebels and trying to preserve the fascist's utilitarian sense of order in the country. This literally means opposing anything that might not align with their impulses, and way of thinking. 
We also meet Mercedes, the sister of one of the rebellion's leaders, whose way of helping is by living as the captain's housekeeper, passing information and necessary medical and food supplies to her brother and his comrades.
There is another positive persona in this drama: doctor, a humble and heroic figure, who in the most fearful moment of his life, bravely confronts the captain with the words: I am not one of you who blindly follow the orders, without questioning their motives.
As a result, he is coldly shot and killed by the captain.
There is no shortage of gruesome violent scenes of torture and senseless killings, performed by the Captain, and representing the dark times in human history when freedom to do evil is in full bloom.
But.
In the darkest times, there is always an opening to the other world..
the spiritual awakening that is secretly visible only to those who seek. The spiritual elevator takes those to other dimensions; not only as an escape but also as an escalator to the heights that gives a different view and understanding of the occurring events.
That is how the other, parallel story in the movie starts: by Ofelia finding the Pan’s labyrinth to the Hidden Kingdom of the Underworld.
This is the story more prominent to the other half of the public, who starting with the first information given about the princess escaping the Kingdom, to the last scene with the little white flower blooming in the, up to that moment dead fig tree, follows girl’s amazing journey of self-discovery, and where this is not part of girl’s imagination, but true existence of another kind, lesser-known to everyday life.
Besides setting this movie as a Rorschach test for us, Del Toro clearly leaves enough traces to show us that he belongs to the second group of viewers of this story: the flower in a dead tree, at the end of the movie, and the scene when Mercedes see a chalk door in Ofelia’s room, becoming ‘our witness’ to the fact that there's no other way than the chalk door to get from the attic to the Captain's office.
The big question: what is the real world that surrounds us, is poised in the most intimate way, while we answer it for ourselves with the secret whisper for our ears only. There is no right or wrong answer; it is just our personal story that we write in our hearts, on our long journey to the Light.
Cinema, being the greatest playground of light, with its moving images, is a perfect setup to move us in the right direction to unfreeze the most essential questions that life poses. Who are we, where are we heading, and where are we coming from?
The one question, which Del Toro is especially keen on answering, is the question of our actions while living on this earth, telling us that those actions will undeniably determine our ultimate destiny. Ofelia is the only character in the movie that does not perform any violence. She also decides not to take any lives (even the doctor takes it, out of mercy). Ofelia understands that "I will not take any life because I own only mine". That's what will determine her ultimate destiny: she is the only one that survives, spiritually. Here we have Del Toro’s clear familiarity with famous philosopher Kierkegaard’s thought: "The tyrant's rule ends with his death. The martyr's rule begins with it."
The captain dies, and his legacy dies with him. Mercedes states to him that she will not even inform his son who his father was, something of great importance to man, who only values material, visible, blood bond, in his eyes necessary to continue his life of reign. Right there we have the victory of spiritual over earthly laws.
There is a very interesting meddling between these two parallel stories, which reminds us of the symmetry of the left and right side of the Rorschach test.
Mercedes and Ofelia have so many similarities, and their actions, in roots, also have many common traits.
However, Mercedes is the one who lost her faith in “invisible”, and who chooses to attack the captain with the kitchen knife. Ofelia chooses not to use the knife that she acquired after fulfilling her second task, at the house of the Pale Man. Imagery on the wall in this eerie room is one of the most scary in the movie, with the Pale Man portraits of eating and killing small children. It was a reference to the sacrifices of the innocents to the Evil One. 
One of the most interesting parts of the movie are the tests given to Ofelia.
In this second one, she defies the orders of not touching anything in the room by eating two grapes. In this most human characteristic to say No, and not only Yes, lies the Mighty Free Will, which has the necessary part of the training in disobedience, too. In that feeling and understanding that we are alive and free to do what we believe is right, not worrying what anyone else thinks or do, that and only that gives us the ability of turning to (do) good, to be brave and honorable. The blind following of others and blind obedience does not have in itself life, but death, because there is no space there for our own decision to live this life, but only to perform an imitation of it.

It was so engaging and delicate to see how on one side, grown-ups are trying to find the best way to fight the evil, while during those very moments a little girl in the tree is fighting a big frog. It was joyful to conclude that those tests she had, however naive and not serious enough they might appear to grownups, were the ones who gave final solutions to the problems.
The world and life in its fullness is always hidden away from the eyes of many spectators, and truly important things usually never have a label on them that states ‘important’.

Del Toro gave us a visual masterpiece, as well as a philosophical and ethical story of everlasting question that one other great director wanted cinema always to ask:
“The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.” (Tarkovsky)

Since the greatest hero of our story is a little girl, it would be nice to recognize one more similarity that this movie has to another great piece of art: Hans Christian Andersen and his magnificent fairytale: “The Little Match Girl”.  
“In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little one, with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall; she had been frozen to death on the last evening of the year; and the New-year’s sun rose and shone upon a little corpse! The child still sat, in the stiffness of death, holding the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was burnt. “She tried to warm herself,” said some. No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her grandmother, on New-year’s day.”
Ofelia’s last breath gives a smile to her face, while we see her back in the Kingdom of her Father.
Mercedes with others cries over her dead body, not being aware of Ofelia’s eternal happiness.

I was never too fond of the Rorschach test. This movie has made me rethink it all.

 

And what a power quiet humming has.