The Devil's Backbone (2001) Guillermo del Toro

The Devil’s Backbone (2001) Guillermo del Toro [1:48]

Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Spine #666

“And I really think that the most creative, most fragile part of the child that lives within me is a child that was literally transformed by monsters. Be they on the screen or in myth or in my own imagination.”

This quote from Guillermo del Toro speaks volumes as to his films and worldview, and nowhere do we see that evidenced more than in The Devil’s Backbone. From the point of view of Carlos (Fernando Tielve), a 12-year-old boy left to live in a remote orphanage after the death of his father, we see a home run by a sadistic caretaker named Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), filled with bullies, and has an unexploded bomb in its courtyard from the Spanish Civil War (which is in its final days). To top it all off, Carlos is given the bed of Santi, a boy who recently died and whose ghost is rumored to haunt the orphanage.

Yet The Devil’s Backbone is far from a conventional ghost story. The Criterion Collection’s recent Blu-ray release of the film contains a booklet featuring an essay by Mark Kermode, who quotes Roger Ebert’s description of the film as “a mournful and beautiful ghost story [that] understands that most ghosts are sad, and are attempting not to frighten us but to urgently communicate something that must be known so that they can rest.”

Del Toro has a way of taking that childhood innocence, placing it in dangerous situations (usually in the midst of political turmoil), and creeping it into jeopardy. It’s not simply a matter of Carlos having to grow up (and toughen up) quickly to live in a harsh reality, it’s doing so by keeping one foot firmly in the fantasy world while the other is moving into an inescapably ugly world that the adults have totally ruined, mostly by their inability to stand up for what’s right. 

No other director I can think of working today can match del Toro’s visual landscape. His outdoor scenes, though few, are vast and endless, making you think you’re a tiny speck in a never-ending desert. The interiors go way beyond a description as simplistic as “atmospheric,” a word that doesn’t even begin to do justice to del Toro’s masterful blend of ruin, decay and the accumulation of years of hidden secrets and lies. The use of light and shadow conveys the aching hope that lives in shallow breaths of light, longing to expand outward. 

The Criterion Blu-ray is loaded with extras that I’ve only begun to explore. If you love intelligent horror films and especially del Toro’s style, don’t hesitate to pick this one up. 

4.5/5