DVD Tuesday: Before Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
This week's DVD Tuesday spotlighted pick is
The Devil's Backbone, with some virtual-discussion starters to get the conversation going.
Mexican filmmaker
Guillermo del Toro is everywhere right now: His
Pan's Labyrinth (2006), which opened on Dec. 29 in limited release and is about to expand distribution, is turning up on numerous critics' 10-best lists and being spoken of as a serious Oscar contender. That's no mean feat for a dark fantasy in Spanish. And mind you, it's getting critcal notice for overall achievement, screenplay, cinematography and the performance of 11-year-old star Ivana Baquero, not as the best foreign-language film of the year.
So this seems the perfect time to recommend del Toro's earlier
The Devil's Backbone, which shares many elements with
Pan's Labyrinth, including a Spanish Civil War-era setting (an integral part of both films' stories and thematic underpinnings) and a child protagonist whose youth in no way makes either film a children's movie.
Set in the late 1930s against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, this darkly shimmering ghost story takes place within the confines of a rural boarding school for orphaned and abandoned children, where an unexploded bomb is buried nose-first in the courtyard.
Ten-year-old Carlos, who doesn't know he's a war orphan - his late father's friends tried to spare him the truth - must find a place for himself among equally lost children, scarred adults and the small ghost who wanders the halls at night, sighing sadly amid a halo of water streaked with a single thin trail of blood. The phantom eventually leads Carlos to the source of all the school's dark secrets, precipitating Carlos' transition from trusting childishness to a wiser and warier view of the world.
The Devil's Backbone manages the balancing act of being a sensitive psychological study of embattled childhood and a hugely creepy ghost story. I'd rank it with
The Innocents (1961) and
The Haunting (1963), two other films with power derived in part from the fact that they never come down firmly on either side of the supernatural divide (nor does
Pan's Labyrinth). The hauntings might be real, or they might reflect an inner turmoil so powerful that it affects the outer world; either way, it's a force with which to be reckoned.
Things to consider:
- What's the difference between a film about children and a children's film? The distinction is relatively clear for films like
The 400 Blows or
The Fallen Idol (let alone
Pixote or
Los Olvidados). But what about something like
The Red Balloon, which, if anything, has more profound resonance for adults than for children?
- The notion of malformation, physical and spiritual, underlies
The Devil's Backbone. How and why?
- In both
Devil's Backbone and
Pan's Labyrinth, vulnerable children retreat from real-life horrors into a world of the supernatural. What are the uses of enchantment, and what are the risks?
Remember: Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Previous DVD blogs:
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets / Jack Palance interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
this week's new DVD releases
