I liked this better when it was called...
... Spirit of the Beehive.
Next.
~ I've been very lonely in my isolated tower of indecipherable speech.
As you might remember, at the time the spirit of the beehive was made, Spain was still under Franco's dictatorship. Therefore, the message had to be more subtly transmitted. (e.g, Frankenstein representing the Second Spanish Republic, Ana's sister representing the "old" Spain, Ana representing the "new" Spain, which would need to conjure Frankenstein's spirit to find her way in life, and so on.) Pan's labyrinth takes the subtleness to a new level, as while the critic to Franco's regimen is quite open, the symbols are, if anything, even more obscure than in the spirit of the beehive.
All in all, two very different albeit similar movies to enjoy.