Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
For years, Guillermo del Toro was the best kept open secret among genre film fans. Cultishly adored for his gonzo Gothic superhero blockbusters (Blade II, Hellboy) and his spellbinding, nigh-on-uncategorizable (totally a word, shut up) Spanish-language fantasies (including his debut Cronos, and this week’s pick The Devil’s Backbone), del Toro nonetheless has struggled to get his films made. And even when they did get made, the results often confounded audiences and marketing execs alike.
We knew he was something special, it was getting everyone else on board that posed a problem.
Maybe that’s why del Toro’s dual triumph on Oscar night last Sunday was so gratifying. His latest film, The Shape of Water, has rightly been lauded as a masterpiece, and del Toro went home with awards for Best Director and Best Picture. What’s maybe most gratifying about Shape’s acclaim is that del Toro sacrificed nothing of his own voice to achieve such success. There’s no other filmmaker alive who could or would have conceived of such an idea, nor executed it in the manner which he did. Love it or hate it (or begrudge it for winning Oscars you wish had gone to Get Out), The Shape of Water is a truly singular film, from one of the most distinct voices currently working in cinema.
We wanted to honor del Toro’s achievement by taking a look at some of his earlier work. While it is debatable if The Devil’s Backbone is del Toro’s best film, it may be remembered as the single most important feature in his career.
Cronos had debuted to rave reviews and major awards, but del Toro’s attempts to follow it up had largely ended in failure. He wrote screenplays that no one wanted to produce, pushed for jobs that went to others. His dream movies sat, unrealized by an industry that could not understand them. When he did manage to wrestle a movie into existence, it was the heavily compromised Mimic, a movie whose development and production went so miserably that del Toro has since cited the process as one of the two most miserable periods in his life. The other worst? His father being kidnapped.
The Devil’s Backbone is the film that finally fulfilled the promise of that first feature, announcing to the world that del Toro was a world class talent that could not be ignored. Set during the Spanish Civil War, Backbone follows young, newly orphaned Carlos (Fernando Tielve) as he is dropped off at a remote orphanage. Adults and children alike wait in purgatorial uncertainty for the war to arrive or end, but Carlos’ arrival inadvertently awakens all the buried secrets that these people have kept from one another, setting the inhabitants on a collision course for disaster.
And we haven’t even mentioned the ghost yet… — Brendan
Next Week’s Pick:
Angelina Jolie is so much a part of our cinema fabric these days that we probably take her for granted. We know her as an accomplished actress, director, humanitarian, and mother, but in 2001 she had a bad girl image and was just starting to transition as an actress from edgy indies to massive mainstream recognition. As a new Tomb Raider reboot hits theaters, join us in revisiting one of Jolie’s breakout roles as the globe-trotting adventurer and polygonal protagonist of 2001’s video game adaptation Tomb Raider (aka Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), streaming on Netflix and recently released on 4K Blu-ray! — Austin
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guest
I’d seen every Guillermo del Toro film — except for The Devil’s Backbone. Going back and seeing it fresh off The Shape of Water, and fresh off del Toro’s public declaration for his love of monsters, it’s incredible how far he’s come.
I’m not talking about craft or telling a story, The Devil’s Backbone is a confident film that knows what it wants to say. I’m more impressed by how the seeds of del Toro’s entire filmography are laid out here. He has always believed that monsters are “others” who are pointed to as scapegoats, for we are the true monsters.
In Devil’s Backbone, del Toro uses this idea to play with the most famous monsters of all: ghosts. He turns away from using ghosts as malevolent figures out to kill any human that comes in contact with it, instead sketching out a sad story that puts you on the side of the ghost.
I mean, even his explanation of a ghost, as a moment of pain frozen in time, like a blurred photograph, is so heartbreaking that any fear you may have had for ghosts evaporates. (@hsumra)
The Team
Very few people can make me feel such a huge range of emotions within as short a time frame as can Guillermo del Toro. While I’ve yet to see The Shape of Water and a few of his other films, I’ve enjoyed all of his films that I’ve seen. His ability to make me feel sheer terror, heart wrenching pain, and a romantic swoon all within mere moments of each other is nothing short of genius.
The Devil’s Backbone is proof that he’s had this innate ability to capture and manipulate human emotion since early on. The ghostly scares are chilling, the psychological pain is effective, and the heart in the film is truly brilliant.
Not sure why I waited this long to watch, but it’s a pretty great film that I’ll certainly revisit soon. Congrats to GDT, for finally being recognized for the genius he is. (@ThePaintedMan)
Guillermo del Toro’s first true masterpiece (Cronos is great, but it’s not quite there yet. There’s a coldness to that film, whereas his later endeavors are bursting at the seams with heart), The Devil’s Backbone is the sort of ghost story that makes you want to run up and smack all the peddlers of cheap jump scares and shaking cameras and say, “THIS. THIS IS WHAT YOU COULD BE MAKING.” Because while The Devil’s Backbone nails the prerequisite creeps and freaks when called for (including an all-timer sequence where young Carlos is pursued by the ghost through the darkened orphanage) and features violence that still makes me squirm even after several viewings, del Toro is not content with base thrills.
The Devil’s Backbone reaches deeper than that, asking, right from the outset, what even is a ghost? There are ghosts in the sense of memories that will not fade, old hurts that refuse to heal. There are ghosts in the sense of relics from earlier lives that linger onward, informing the present in ways that the living can barely comprehend. And there are ghosts in the sense of tragedies that continue to ripple forward, unanswered, violences that can never be undone. And yes, there is also an actual, literal ghost, and it is a triumph of design and special effects, but that’s only one small part of what del Toro is playing at.
What strikes me anew each time I watch the film is just how beautiful it is, even as it delves into truly ugly places. Most every frame could be singled out and serve as an independent work of art, del Toro’s early mastery of the iconic creating images that are by turns lovely and grotesque and evocative and, yes, haunting.
I could go on and on, but this is meant to be bite-sized bits of commentary. Suffice to say that even in del Toro’s incredible filmography, The Devil’s Backbone is a wondrous standout, unlike anything he’d made before or since. It’s a treasure, to be treasured. (@theTrueBrendanF)
After starting to become familiar with the name “Guillermo del Toro” for his horror-tinged action spectaculars Hellboy and Blade II, it was The Devil’s Backbone that introduced me to his larger body of work. Its incredible trailer promised a beautiful looking ghost story full of moody cinematography and wartime somberness. I blind bought the DVD and fell in love with it, cementing my adoration of del Toro and causing me to declare him my favorite director and seek out his other films, all of them, immediately (including a $30 copy of the then-rare and extremely hard to find Cronos, of dubious legitimacy).
I think Brendan correctly calls The Devil’s Backbone del Toro’s first masterpiece, and it remains one of his most compelling stories (and inhabits a special place as one of his Trilogía of Spanish language films). There’s so much to say about this film but it navigates horror, heart, and human monsters in a way that would come to be recognized as a signature of del Toro’s genius, and effectively utilizes minimal but incredible special effects work to enhance, rather than overpower, its story. It’s also a perfect thematic pairing with my other GdT favorite Pan’s Labyrinth, highlighting the fantastical and terrifying fairy tale worlds of children, set against the even greater horrors of the Spanish Civil War. (@VforVashaw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90o1YhN0vHY
Heartfelt congratulations to Guillermo del Toro on his Best Director and Best Picture Academy Awards!
Next week’s pick: