After the disappointment of Mimic, Guillermo felt certain such a distinction was a moot point for him. His career, he thought, was over. “Pedro Almodóvar resurrected me from the dead after Mimic,” Guillermo says. “He gave me a chance at life again.”
They had met some years earlier during the Miami International Film Festival. “I was standing on a balcony near the pool at the hotel, when I heard a voice from the next room over saying to me, ‘Are you Guillermo del Toro?’ I turned, and he said, ‘I’m Pedro Almodóvar. I love Cronos, and I would love to produce your next movie.’
“Years later, I called him to do The Devil’s Backbone, and the movie saved my life. Pedro Almodóvar gave me a second chance in film and in life. He was absolutely hands-off, protecting me, giving me everything I needed to make the movie I needed to make, and not having the least amount of ego.”
Guillermo had actually written a version of The Devil’s Backbone years earlier, before Cronos. He was in his early twenties, learning his craft from filmmaker Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, but Hermosillo destroyed the draft. At the time, Guillermo decided to pursue Cronos rather than re-create the lost screenplay.
In the end, the extended gestation of The Devil’s Backbone resulted in a wonderful film. “Depending on the week, I like it as much or more than Pan’s Labyrinth, never less,” notes Guillermo. “I seriously think it’s the best work I’ve ever done. It is not a visually flamboyant movie, but it’s incredibly minutely constructed visually. Pan’s Labyrinth is more like pageantry; it is very gorgeous to look at. But I think Devil’s Backbone is almost like a sepia illustration.”
In The Devil’s Backbone, Guillermo explores his personal past and present, coming to conclusions about where he has been, who he has been, and who he chooses to be as an artist. Some of Guillermo’s core themes come to stark clarity in his third feature: heroes and villains defined by their actions, their choices, and how far they will go; restraint as a value held in high esteem, as in Cronos; and holding on to one’s sense of self in the face of evil, desperation, and despair, as later epitomized in Pan’s Labyrinth.
In addition, a fascinating breed of villain specific to Guillermo’s films emerges. “I love the character of the fallen prince. Jacinto, the villain in The Devil’s Backbone, is a fallen prince. I can completely relate to Nomak in Blade II, because he’s a fallen prince. In Hellboy II, the main villain is a fallen prince. And I think, to a certain degree, the captain in Pan’s Labyrinth is a fallen prince. He’s a guy that has the shadow of his father suffocating him.”
Exiled princesses also figure in Guillermo’s films, but as heroines, not villains. This figure is exemplified by Ofelia in Pan’s Labyrinth, Nyssa in Blade II, and Princess Nuala in Hellboy II.
Guillermo’s ability to sympathize with his villains in no way mitigates or excuses their actions. “Because, the fact is, there are people in this world that are fragile inside, God knows, but 100 percent of their actions are antisocial,” Guillermo adds. “There are guys that truly may have a hurting child inside, but they’re stabbing, gouging, raping, and robbing everything that crosses their path. And whoever thinks that’s not true has probably encountered evil a lot less than I have.”
Guillermo’s notebook pages show him working through some of the most iconic images in The Devil’s Backbone, in particular the murdered ghost. This starts out as a dead caretaker who looks rather like Lurch in The Addams Family and ends up a sad child with white-irised black eyes and cracked porcelain skin—perhaps the most beautiful, disturbing ghost in all of cinema. We also find the unexploded bomb and the supersaturated gold and blue lights illuminating the long stone corridors.
These pages also reveal a rare personal note from Guillermo, who takes pains to point out that these notebooks are “not really diaries.” However, bits and pieces from his private life do creep in occasionally. Guillermo writes of his parents, “I’ve found that simply being with my father is two hundred times better than speaking with him. My mom, on the other hand, is extremely intelligent. She’s my soul mate. Even in her sins.”
And as usual, the notebook contains Guillermo’s ruminations on a number of other ongoing and future projects, most notably Hellboy. “People say, ‘You juggle too much stuff.’ I tell them, ‘It’s always been like that, except now it’s public.’ Back in the day I was doing Devil’s Backbone, I was preparing Hellboy, and I was working already on ideas for Blade II. At the same time I was trying to polish a screenplay called Mephisto’s Bridge, and I was writing The Left Hand of Darkness.”
Through all this juggling of images and notes, some destined for other projects and some left to dwell in the realm of private reverie, the notebook pages for The Devil’s Backbone chart Guillermo’s return to himself—to valuing his own beliefs, his aesthetic, his voice. With The Devil’s Backbone, Guillermo moved beyond the removable pages of a Day Runner. He self-consciously recorded his thoughts in a more permanent fashion, turning them into works of art within the pages of a totemic book marked by his signature style.
G* He was a doddering, sickly old man. With the crisis he gets better and moves up in the world.
G* Someone is watching soap operas and reacts to everything he sees (it would be better if this character is a villain).
* A hand shaped like a crab’s claw.
G* Speak with the portrait of their departed.
G* Where did I put my glasses? They’re on your forehead.
* THE OLD MAN WITH THE NEEDLE
*The Scene of Christ
E* He who made an offering and merged with the tree saw the dead ones pass by as they returned.
E* In the middle of the night, he looks to one side and prays, whatever they do to you don’t turn around or answer them. (The one who’s listening is hidden)
E* Beings who are red from head to foot.