Guillermo del Toro, which we are about to discover, Wednesday January 19 indoors, Nightmare alley, is part, with Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, of this cinematographic battalion which planted a Mexican flag in the heart of Hollywood. A master of fantastic cinema and a fine scholar, he has alternated there for twenty years, without ever losing his elegance, with large-caliber productions (Blade ii, Hellboy, The Shape of Water) and more personal films.
Among these, The Devil’s Spine, produced in 2001, earned him the admiration of all moviegoers. The present reissue – beautiful object, numerous and fascinating bonuses, 200-page booklet – will allow you to re-examine in the best domestic conditions this twenty-year-old film, which has not aged a bit. In an isolated and dry landscape, under a light that hurts, here is an orphanage. 1930s, Spanish Civil War in the background. Carlos, a young boy, is taken there. A gigantic bomb, which did not explode, is stuck half-bodied in the earth of the courtyard. The ghost of a bloodied child appears behind a door. In a few shots, the scene, both physically and mentally, is set. Civil war. Childhood sacrificed. The monstrosity. The putrescent evil of fascism. “What is a ghost? “, wonders the voiceover in the film’s prologue. “A terrible fact that will repeat itself over and over again. “
Here there is Carmen, a woman in black with a hypnotizing wooden leg and a clicking bunch of keys, director of the institution and a secret friend of the Republicans whose war chest she hides. Jacinto, a former student of the institution, brutal and greedy boy who gives pleasure to the headmistress by peeping at the keys of the safe, and also abuses the pupils. Casares, Argentinian doctor and poet, meek helpless who covets Carmen. The bloody corpse of a young boy languishing in a brackish washhouse. And, of course, the cohort of orphans, sufferers and avengers.
Tragedy of history
This very beautiful film, which brilliantly mixes the taste for the fantastic and the tragedy of history, thus seems to dialogue from a distance with The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), a masterpiece by Victor Erice which portrayed, under Francoism, a young girl in love with Frankenstein’s monster. The indignation against barbarism, the hatred of death, the refusal of separation with the loved one are never hammered here, always romantically evoked.
See this moving passage, which finally brings Carmen and Casares together at a time when they are lost forever. These wormsIn memoriam AHH (1850), by the English poet Alfred Tennyson, then said by Casares go straight to the heart: “Stay by my side when my clarity dies, when my blood crawls, when my nerves break down in throbbing pains, when my heart falls sick, when the cogs of my being idle.” Stay by my side when my fragile body is tormented by pains that reach the truth, when manic weather continues to spread dust and furious life to launch flames. Stay by my side, when I gradually die off, you will be able to indicate to me the end of my struggle and the twilight of eternal days at the low and dark edge of life. “ When sorrow is poured out at this height, it would seem that the joy of the spirit remains.
You have 5.66% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.