deltoro_backbone

Guillermo del Toro: The Devil’s Backbone Interview

Q: When you first come up with a story do you think of an image, an idea or a character?
GT: Usually the first thing to come is an image, then, after that, the second thing to come is a character and the final thing is the story. I think the moment you become pregnant is when you become pregnant with an image. And then eventually the gestation is the character and the birth is the story [laughs]. In a strange way we -- meaning the people on the film -- could not work if it was not for the images. That’s a primordial thing.

Q: In this case was the image the ghost or was it the location?
GT: The ghost. The ghost was...just like in Cronos the thing that kept me interested in doing that movie for eight years was the image of Federico Luppe licking the blood off a floor in the bathroom for a drop of blood. I thought that was a unique vampiric image. The thing that kept me going with The Devil’s Backbone for sixteen years was that I thought that I needed to do that ghost and make it beautiful and eerie but not scary so much as sad. And I very much was enamored with that image. The second image I was in love with -- and it was much, much later in the last years of pre production -- was the bomb: The bomb in the middle of the patio. That was the second biggest iconic thing in the movie. And the third was the children with the lances.

Q: That’s almost a ‘Lord of The Flies’ type of image.
GT: It’s inevitable that if you put a child and a lance together it’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ [laughs]. It’s not intentional. I mean, I love the novel but actually the novel is as far removed from what I tried to say as possible. Except in the essence that in the novel you also have a microcosm of a war.

Q: There does seem to be a parallel between the children in the orphanage compound and the outside world and war.
GT: Yes, the idea was to create a world that felt...that the people inside felt safe from the war and in logic consequence they got to reenact the war from the inside step by step almost. They get an aftermath of a bombing kind of moment within the walls of the orphanage. What I wanted to do essentially is say, ‘war is not a matter of geography: war infects everything no matter how far away the battlefield is.’ Eventually if war makes its presence known through that totemic bomb in the middle of the patio eventually it will demand a sacrifice. And what I find is that the people who avoid something the most and that feel the furthest and the safest from something are the people who ultimately suffer the most. And that I think is not only a Catholic principle but also a fact of life. I think the way we deal normally with something is to try to avoid it if is difficult. But the truth is that if it is difficult you should do it immediately or it will grow. And that’s what happens in the movie. It’s like – some of us were joking earlier – children and violence. I don’t think children should be shielded from the knowledge that there is violence in the world but they should have an adult at hand to explain it to them and make them aware of it. I think we learn more from that than from telling the children that the entire world is a Care Bear cartoon. No.

Q: How was it working with the kids? Were any of them professional actors?
GT: For the main character and many of the other kids this was the first movie that they did. But what I did was for the two main kids I had workshops and rehearsals for three months prior to the shooting of the movie. I worked with them in theatre exercises and doing little stagings and rehearsals and all that. And we got to know each other as director and actor. And it was great but a lot of children were non-professional they were just children.

Q: You have a great combination of gothic horror and something new like The Sixth Sense or The Others where we actually try to get to know the ghost and what it wants rather than just being afraid of it.
GT: What I find is that The Sixth Sense and The Others are essentially movies -- especially The Others -- that depend solely on the ghosts as a plot-moving device. Meaning [The Others] is a pure blooded, pedigree certified, great-Victorian-feel ghost story. I think The Devil’s Backbone is something different. It is a story with a ghost not a ghost story. In The Devil’s Backbone you have all the other melodramatic and dramatic engines going and one of them – the track that starts and ends the movie – is the story of the ghost. But in the meantime you have all those things going. That’s why I feel... The Sixth Sense was more a melodrama about an unresolved relationship between a mother and a child and a husband and a wife. And then there were all those ghost elements. It was still a ghost story. This is – and I say it jokingly – a ghost story for people who don’t normally see ghost stories. It isn’t Thirteen Ghosts.

Q: Who are some of your favorite directors?
GT: The fantasists that I adore are Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, James Whale, F.W. Murnau and George Romero – I think his “Dead” movies are very political satires of America. Another of my favorites is Mario Bava.

Q: Can you talk about why the film is set during the Spanish Civil War?
GT: I felt that I needed a war that could be as black and white as I could possibly have it. Wars are never black and white - including the Civil War but from an outsiders point of view the Civil War of Spain can be characterized as being the Left against the Right. I mean the Fascist against the Left of Spain - the Republicans. And I found that that kept the war just anecdotally enough in the background as a clear devise and did not intrude on your enjoying of the movie as a tale about war with capital letters. Meaning it could be another war but if you’re true to the detail then no other war that I know of could be kept in the background with so much clarity as the Spanish Civil War. And on top of anything the Spanish Civil War was essentially a war that was waged indoors - into the family. Brother against brother, father against son and so forth and I wanted that type of war to occur within the walls of the orphanage. So if one war was going to be the reflection of the other it was perfectly suitable. On top of that the movie tries to talk about what a ghost is; beyond an apparition. It tells you a ghost is a childhood that you lost, a leg that you lost, a love that you never declared. The Spanish Civil War, in a strange way, is a ghost that will haunt everybody because it’s a prelude to World War II. The countries that do not invest politically in stopping the Fascist advance in Europe --which are the United States, France and England -- are the exact same three countries that will pay for that in the second World War, which occurs barely six months after the Spanish Civil War finishes. So essentially it is a ghost that will haunt history forever.

Q: What about the production design and special effects? I know you have a background in these fields so I’m sure you still have a big hand in them.
GT: Yes, absolutely. I always say I have my drawings to fall back on if nothing better comes up. But if anyone on the team can think of something better...I tell them that 90% of the time they do [laughs]. But it’s a guideline it’s useful to know effects and production design as a guideline but not as a dictatorship. Not like, ‘It’s mine!’ I run a really democratic dictatorship [impish grin]. I listen, I want opinions I encourage opinions and I encourage people to tell me how it could be better. I like people to telling me how it could be better.

Q: You have an idea of what you want but you’re willing and open.
GT: I’m more than willing. I’m eager to hear what people have to say. If it’s a good idea I’ll take it and it doesn’t have to be mine.

Q: Can you talk about the production design and working with your DP Guillermo Navarro?
GT: We have an almost supernatural empathy at this stage. We almost only need a look to know what I want. We worked together to enclose the movie in Romanesque arches and round forms that remind you of amber encapsulating an insect. We went with three main colors: amber, dirty white and moss green, which gave it an almost monotone feel like old photographs. And then we filtered the movie with sepia tones. We also used a digital medium to create an underwater, floating ghost.

Q: The character of Jacinto at first seems empathetic but by the end we are scared of him. On the other hand we are scared of the ghost in the beginning but empathetic to it by the end. He’s mean but are you saying something about being brought up an orphan.
GT: He’s a guy who has a huge conflict having been an orphan. He’s a guy who would have loved to have a normal childhood and he hates being an orphan. He hates everything about being an orphan and he hates the orphans as a consequence. Like a gay basher inside he is afraid of being gay, or a racist feels inferior to the race that he is attacking. Jacinto is pretty much the same way - he hates the orphanage, he hates orphans and he hates his origins. He says it in the movie, ‘I would never want anyone to know I was here for fifteen years. I dreamt, as a kid, of coming back a rich man and tearing this whole place apart.’ He is a character -- and there are many that I have come in contact with…. Evidentially, during my years in Hollywood, I have come in contact very often with people that can only get what they want through pain and anger. And [Jacinto] is one of them. This is just an absolute asshole. And there are people like that. Is he the bad guy? If you look in the text he has a reason, he has a motivation but he is evidently a guy that does not have the tools beyond pain and anger to articulate what he feels. He’s a guy without breaks - that’s how I explained it to the actor.

Q: The ghost figure represents the past but he is also something we have to get over. That is a good metaphor.
GT: The ghost represents a thing that you think is over but it isn’t. In the end of the movie the bomb is still unexploded and the ghost is still there. Casares is incapable of ever telling Carmen he loves her, incapable - even though he is a revolutionary – he’s incapable of firing a shot. All those things are ghosts. What the ghost essentially is, is an unfinished business. If in your childhood you never kissed that girl that you wanted to kiss so badly - that’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life no matter what you do. You may deal with it but still it’s a ghost.