Prepared the material about the gloomy past and the work of one of the most original, in my modest look, directors. Video version with documentary shots plus longrid for those who prefer text.
Hollywood storyteller Guillermo del Toro – Estet and fanbo with a wide horizons. Mexico left the wounds in his soul, but helped to form an original worldview and unique directorial style. Creativity del Toro proves that cinema can be at the same time entertaining, intellectual and beautiful.
Horrors in cinema and in reality
Most of the paintings del Toro are filled with fears and pain. In the "Devil Range" the soul of the deceased cannot find peace. Girl from "Labyrinth Faun" runs into the world of dreams from a stepfather’s stepfather. And the good-natured demon Hellboy is experiencing all the self-irony because of his dual nature.
Interest in the "dark side" – the result of the gloomy past del Toro.
Guillermo grew up in the Mexican city of Guadalahahar. The region is characterized by such a phenomenon as syncretism: Catholic ideas mixed with the myths of the Aztecs, which is why Christianity gained terrible features. Bloody versions of biblical parables and statues of saints with protruding bones scared a boy from a believing family.
Employed parents often left their son and grandmother. The orthodox Catholic planted her views, telling about purgatory, original sin and eternal torment after death. For disobedience, she arranged exorcism sessions, sprinkling the boy with holy water, and put in his shoes inverted covers from bottles.
The image of Grandmother del Toro can be seen on the portrait of the brutal old woman Beatris Sharp in the "crimson peak"
But the odious woman was not the only source of stress for Del Toro. At four, he saw the consequences of a car accident, which he remembered for life, and later – more than once dealt with street cruelty. In addition, Guillermo was a volunteer in a psychiatric hospital, next to which there was a morgue. Here he lost faith in God.
They shot people with me. Weapons were assigned to my head. I saw burned, cut and decapitated bodies … Because Mexico remains a very cruel place
The greatest shock for Del Toro was the abduction of his father’s Mexican mafia. This happened in 1997, when the director worked on mutants, his debut film in the States. He turned for help to a close friend and colleague James Cameron – and did not lose. He hired a professional negotiator and helped to pay a ransom. When his father was released, del Toro moved his family to the United States.
James Cameron and Guillermo del Toro
After the evil experienced, for him became the same integral part of the world as good. Moreover, Del Toro does not draw a clear line between them, but believes that opposites exist inseparable and complement each other, like yin and yang. So, even a bitter, but useful experience, tempers and learn to appreciate what you have.
I am a Mexican. No one loves life as we, in a sense. Because we know death well.
Such an understanding of the indivisibility of good and evil is reflected in the work of del Toro. He considers to show only light or darkness to be dishonest and always strives for a balance.
When you remove one of the sides of the equation, this is a parody. But if you take into account the darkness to talk about something bright, this is a reality.
Therefore, the director loves gloomy fairy tales so much, whose heroes, like himself, overcome fear and pain, sacrifice, but in the end they become better or change the world around.
Love for high and mass culture
The Del Toro style is an https://richyleocasino.uk/ intellectual phantasmagoria in which religion, history, politics and philosophy are found with elements of fantasy and horror. Complex ideas are adjacent to simple and understandable motives and images for the mass viewer.
Take, for example, the “water form” is a sentimental Love Story of an amphibian person and a dumb American. According to the author, this film is more precise than others reflects his inner world. In the "Form of Water", the director denounces xenophobia, racism and classism. At the same time, the relations of the heroes are permeated by Christian values and the spirit of a fairy tale. And the author calls the film itself Ommage to the classic horror "Creature from the Black Lagoon".
It is obvious that Del Toro loves tall and mass in culture equivalent. The reason for this is a successful combination of circumstances.
In parallel with the Bible, Little Guillermo read fairy tales, Lovecraft and other horror authors that he learned about from his uncle. But the turning point in his cultural formation occurred when his father tore the jackpot in the lottery. He spent some of the $ 6 million on a huge library and entertainment for children. As a result, Del Toro plunged into the world of literature, encyclopedias in medicine and art, filmmakers of the Hummer studio, fantastic magazines, anime and old Mexican cinema.
The interests formed at that time did not fade away, but rather bloomed over the years. This is noticeable not only for work, but also for the hobby of the director. Not far from his house in Los Angeles is a personal museum with a collection of more than 10,000 artifacts. These are paintings, films, books, statues of monsters, comics and other relics of Fanboy.
Del Toro Museum in Los Angeles
Aesthetics of imperfection
Monsters occupy an important place in the work of Del Toro, without which not a single film is complete. Working on monsters, the director pays fanatical attention to the details.
Each feature should characterize the creature: the events experienced by it, its physiology or symbolism. For example, the horns of the elven ruler from Hellboy 2 are a natural symbol of power, emphasizing the legal right to the throne. And the ultra-poker can rule only with the help of an artificial crown.
Elven King Balor (Hellboy 2)
In the films del Toro monsters do not exist on their own. They are visually and semantically related to the surrounding space. So, the ghosts of women at the “crimson peak” have the same bloody color as the clay in which they were buried. And the horns of Faun reflect the labyrinth with their form, where he lives, and the creature literally merges with nature.
Faun ("Labyrinth Faun")
To better integrate their creatures into narrative, del Toro makes them change to the beat of what is happening. For example, the closer the full moon and the more tests the heroine performs, the more powerful and younger the faun looks. And a luminescence man-amphibian when feelings overwhelm him.
Amphibian man ("form of water")
In childhood, passionate about drawing and biology, and later for many years he has worked as a make -up director, the director himself develops a design. It all starts in its notebooks filled with drawings and detailed descriptions of the monsters. Then Demiurge transfers his concepts to the team of performers, which makes editing and embodies the planned.
The most important monsters del Toro trusts Dagu Jones, an actor who specializes in inhuman heroes. On his account is Faun, an amphibian man, a richer monster and other creatures of the director.
Dag Jones and his roles
Del Toro is obsessed with monsters for a reason. They helped him, once an outcast, accept his imperfection and believe in himself.
Guillermo stood out among Mexican children. Strange hobbies, white hair and fair skin made it a target for bullying. He was too thin to stand up for himself, so he began to deliberately gain weight, which then resulted in another problem.
Once the boy watched the film "Frankenstein", shot by James Wale. The monster, doomed by the creator for death, in a children’s imagination looked like the same martyr as Jesus. The monster reminded the child of his own imperfection, but at the same time the boy noticed in him a certain supernatural greatness. For Guillermo, this monster was beautiful in its own way.
The monster of Frankenstein performed by Boris Carloff (Frankenstein, 1931.)
At that moment, syncretism occurred in his head, only this time Christianity did not connect with myths, but with the monsters. Del Toro began to perceive them as saints who embody the otherness, suffer and die for her.
All the dogma and cosmology of Catholicism were filled with monsters from films. I saw in them sympathy and beauty, for me they became the holy patrons of imperfection.
The director loves to repeat that the monsters saved his life. Be that as it may, they influenced his worldview and work. The ability of Del Toro to see the beautiful in strange and imperfect things coincided with the ideas of Japanese philosophy of Vabi Sabi, which teaches not to hide on perfection. Del Toro admits that her principles in life and work follow.
Media inspire us that you need to be perfect in the most ordinary sense: have perfect hair and teeth. You can’t even show that you sweat. No, no, no! Let me sweat, assholes. May I have crooked teeth and imperfect hair. Yes, I don’t care. I just want to be a good person. Therefore, I find the monsters so touching: they best embody an alternative for me to the standards.
The most clearly Del Toro expressed his love for imperfection in the "form of water". The film looks like the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast", only turned inside out. "Beauty" in it is far from Hollywood standards, and her beloved river monster does not become a prince at the end.
The director uses the water that surrounds them as a metaphor for love. No matter how imperfect and different people, true love, like water, take the desired shape to smooth out all the differences and disadvantages. Having loved, the heroes remain themselves and accept each other real.
Magic anarchism
Del Toro’s films not only protect differentness, but also criticize a society obsessed with ideals, standards and order. According to the author, a fairy tale is a very politicized genre that is well suited for such purposes.
The director divides fairy tales into symbolic and anarchist. The former impose the current order and call evil everything that does not comply with the standards. The kings are fair and wise, the princes are beautiful and noble, and the monsters are bloodthirsty and cruel – and nothing else.
Such praise of order is alien to Del Toro. As a child, he suffered from his grandmother and church, then as an emigrant fought with states and, finally, as a director defended his ideas in front of the film studios. After all, he was completely disappointed in social institutions.
Therefore, fairy tales that Del Toro tells are anarchical by nature. They undermine the current order and show that the system itself, with all its external attractiveness inside, can turn out to be a real evil. The moral of his fairy tales is simple: do not blindly obey the rules.
If the favorite heroes of the director are outsiders and marginals, then the villains in his films are usually the forces that manactically strive for perfection, superiority and control. These are the Nazis in Hellboy, and despotistical parents at the Bagrow Peak, and American militarists in the "water form".
Fascist Captain Vidal ("Labyrinth Faun")
The author’s hatred of the system reaches a peak in the “Favna Labyrinth”. In this fairy tale, the director uses disobedience as a leitmotif. The heroine resists the naive mother, the mysterious Faun and, finally, to the fascist captain Vidal – the main system evil. Each time the plot rewards the girl for disobedience.
It is noteworthy that at first del Toro calls for the villain sympathy. The captain has a well -groomed appearance and impeccable manners, which, however, soon come into contrast with his inhuman cruelty. The predicted guttus of Vidal and fascism as a whole symbolizes the faceless monster devouring innocent children.
Faceless creature ("Labyrinth Faun")
One of the dangers of fascism and generally true evil [. ] – this is his attractiveness. It is very attractive in the sense that most people deny. Many make villains ugly and unpleasant. And I think that fascism has a whole concept [. ] capable of charm people with weak will.
