Films: 2000s

(2001) The Devil's Backbone

Sunday, June 08, 2008

The Devil's Backbone
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Release: 2001

The critical flaw in director Guillermo del Toro's "The Devil's Backbone" is that the film is torn between three slightly different versions of itself -a ghost story, a historical drama, and a children's fantasy.

This is what also lends depth and texture. By no means a failure, it is instead a narrative/thematic crossroads. And like crossroads of folklore, its audience must approach it with bargaining in mind.

"The Devil's Backbone" is a film dense with meaning, with personal touches that illuminate and enlighten, and the kind of whirling psychological currents that come from time spent growing (the film took 16 to complete) on the part of its creator.

In 1939, near the end of the Spanish Civil War, as Nationalist soldiers stamp out socialist rebellion, a boy is delivered from the Republican ranks to an orphanage in the wilderness.

The boy, Carlos (Fernando Luppi), is educated and bewildered by his changing circumstances. The orphanage bully, Jaime (Inigo Garces), does not take kindly to him - and the young men sheltered in the walls of the complex divide along the initial lines of the new power struggle.

However, the orphanage harbors more than orphans, staff, and teachers.

In the main yard towers an unexploded bomb, a monolith of rusted metal and possibly still-active innards.

In the basement is a murky pool, around which revolves a mystery of tragedy.

And in the halls at night, the orphans warn Carlos of "the one who sighs," a phantom that will not rest.

The final moments of the revolution rumble from the Spanish countryside, and allegiances strain. Inside the orphanage walls, while adults separate along fault lines formed long ago-lines of the heart, lines of politics, lines of greed and dreams-Carlos and Jaime form a new and tender bond, bringing together what started as far apart.

With their reconciliation-in counterpoint to everything else happening in Spain-the orphans become a new body; their new mind fueled by Casares, the orphanage doctor.

Federico Luppi infuses Casares with a touch of the wizard, a combination of wise grandfather, and pf the mysterious keeper of lore.

In his laboratory sit jars of fetal children, one ringed with spinal bifida (the backbone of the film's title). Its preservative, Casares alleges, conveys special potency.

Casares further teaches Carlos of old Spain, and foretells the coming of a new country -one less steeped in what went before, and spined by its own toothy triangles.

Opposing the growing autonomy of the orphanage children is bitter Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega) - strapping, handsome, and full of rage at his circumstances.

Jacinto is the last of a generation of orphans before Carlos, and he is locked in fruitless love-an Oedipal dance-with the orphanage matron Carmen (Marisa Paredes).

Jacinto is pulled to a life he cannot have, unless he steals the gold ingots Carmen keeps to finance the orphans' care, and the only life he has known. Grappling with a decision between slowly crushing his soul, and tearing apart his hear, Jacinto drinks his way through a cloudy relationship with beautiful Conchita (Irene Visedo). He is barely ever aware of the alternative she represents.

All of these characters capture choices about transformation, and the willingness to dissolve preconceptions of self to achieve it.  

In del Toro's world, there is the romance of the past (Casares), the agony of the present (Jacinto), and the hope of the future (Carlos), all vying for a place in the world represented by the orphanage.

Children, the film's powerful metaphor, are the sacred responsibility and the potent force of a Spain torn apart by its own unresolved inner arguments. Like Jacinto, Spain would burn itself down to obtain new ideals, but it would excoriate itself for never being kissed full on the mouth by the "mother" destroyed in the process.

Del Toro is not so easy on Spain as to simply toss it on the heap of Oedipal child fiction, however.

Into the orphanage del Toro places a vengeful ghost, the manifestation of anger the agonizing present has wrought.

In the actions of bloodlust, avarice, and thoughtless violence, del Toro condemns the shedding of blood for selfish ideals.

Locked in its water-and-blood grave, the shade of Santi (Junio Valverde) demands repayment for a life cut short.

Santi is the spiritual center of Spain, railing against the wounds and constrictions revolutionaries and Nationalists inflicted. Like the hulking bomb in the courtyard, unexploded but never promising complete safety from a future blast, Santi is the second-hand ticking. Not into the future, as Carlos would lead the orphans, nor from the past-which Casares pickle forever in his laboratory-but marking the unfading presence of inflicted wrongs and violence upon the Spanish psyche.

Only in all this ambition does "The Devil's Backbone" teeter.

Del Toro is so good at history, and the visuals of fantasy, that Santi is at times a distant back-story. And when Santi's role in the movie is emphasized, it seems in places out of synch with the otherwise compelling historical sweep of the script.

In the way the pool in the orphanage basement is murky with secrets, del Toro's movie never fully discloses its insides. It is all too much, and a bit overwrought. Sixteen years of development may have wound "The Devil's Backbone" too tight for the plunge into celluloid.

None the less, like Jacinto, "The Devil's Backbone" does not know what to be, all the way through. There are places its actions does not match its intentions, but it is decisive-and like Jacinto effective-capturing the eye and the imagination for its duration.

James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff

updated 2 years ago