the devil's backbone (spine 666)

The Devil's Backbone
Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro
2001
​Spine #666

“One for them, one for me” is an adage that many filmmakers have lived by, as a means of navigating the tricky creative vortex of Hollywood… and it’s one that Guillermo Del Toro exercised to particularly fascinating effect early in his career. Not that any Del Toro film - even an obvious studio “for hire” job such as Blade II - could ever truly be termed “for them”… the director feels his work far too deeply and sincerely for that… but the interplay between the frenetic, bursting-at-the-seams pop enthusiasm of a rambunctious comic flick like Hellboy with the elegiac sadness infused deep within the trilogy of Spanish-language allegories he made between 1993 and 2006 is almost jolting in terms of its artistic whiplash.

Pan’s Labyrinth is, of course, the best and most beloved of these films, but its 2001 predecessor The Devil’s Backbone is, perhaps, the most fascinating. Set in the waning months of the Spanish Civil War, it follows a 12-year-old boy named Carlos (Fernando Tielve) who’s deposited at a remote orphanage for what he believes is just a temporary stay - unaware that his freedom fighter father died on the front lines weeks ago. Within moments of his arrival, Del Toro establishes the film’s most iconic and evocative image - a bomb, dropped from the sky, that failed to detonate on impact and now remains permanently-lodged in the courtyard, its tail jutting skyward at a slightly askew angle… supposedly defused, yet a constant, eerie reminder of the war still raging beyond the orphanage’s walls and the omnipresent threat of death. “They all say she’s switched off. But I don’t believe it. Put your ear against her, you can hear her ticking. That’s her heart… she’s still alive, and she knows we’re here,” another boy named Jaime tells Carlos.

Contrary to what you might assume, the orphanage isn’t a particularly awful place - run by the maternal, one-legged headmistress Carmen (Marisa Paredes) and the kindly Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi, like an Argentine Christopher Lee). In fact, the only significant downsides to be found are hot-tempered handyman Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega, who looks like a matinee idol version of Eli Roth’s character from Inglourious Basterds)… and the apparent specter of a young boy who roams the hallways at night. The ghost in question - known as “the one who sighs” - is a particularly splendid visual creation - a pale-faced wraith, his skeleton partially visible beneath his translucent skin, forehead cracked like porcelain china, leaking blood that unfurls from the wound like plumes of red flare smoke. Carlos, the only one to actually lay eyes on him, comes to believe this restless spirit may be Santi - a boy who supposedly ran away months earlier - but remains uncertain of his intentions… sinister or otherwise.

Del Toro, more than any other contemporary filmmaker (save, perhaps, Spielberg), understands intuitively how to craft a story from a child’s perspective (perhaps because the artistic relationship with his own inner child is so clearly deep-rooted and symbiotic)… and only Del Toro could deliver a ghost story this profoundly melancholy. Many have described the film as terrifying, but it really isn’t. There are some effective, goose-pimpled scares (peeking through a keyhole only for a magnified eyeball to suddenly appear rarely fails to deliver), but there’s never much sense of danger - at least from a supernatural standpoint. What the movie does particularly well (Pan’s Labyrinth to an even more heightened degree) is utilize fantasy and horror to dramatize how children process real-life terrors just beyond their grasp. The orphanage, literally miles from anywhere, would appear to be a safe haven from the war, but it’s illusory - we know, because Carmen and Casares are Republican loyalists who are safeguarding a large cache of gold  that might as well be radioactive - and there’s only so long that its walls can realistically keep the nightmares at bay.​

The Devil’s Backbone is such a nuanced and emotionally felt drama, it’s somewhat surprising that its shakiest component is actually the gothic spook-show Del Toro conjures up. Once the puzzle pieces snap into place, the resulting picture is almost rudimentary in its conception (it’s a low-key achilles heel within Del Toro’s work - applicable to the likes of Crimson Peak and Nightmare Alley… stories whose narrative facets come across as a lot more simplified than they probably should). The film feels self-consciously allegorical in a way that Pan’s Labyrinth doesn’t. Part of the problem is the character of Jacinto, who’s established as a former ward of the orphanage and - perhaps - as a tragic, lost soul with little place or purpose in the world… but unravels into increasingly teeth-gnashing villainy, until there’s no real dimension left (in some respects, Issa Lopez’s 2017 film Tigers Are Not Afraid is the better, scarier version of what Del Toro seems to be going for). Nonetheless, the movie has a mournful wisdom that stays with you; in Del Toro’s view, ghosts aren’t to be feared… not when the real world is already so full of monsters.