Mar 102001
 
two reels

During the Spanish Civil War, Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is left at an isolated orphanage with an unexploded bomb buried in its courtyard.  There he must deal with aggressive students, a violent handyman named Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), and the ghost of a boy who disappeared the day the bomb hit.  The orphanage is a place of intrigue, as Jacinto searches for hidden gold, and sleeps with both the local beauty and the older, one legged, headmistress, Carmen (Marisa Paredes).  Dr. Casares desires Carmen, but settles for helping her run the institution.

Director Guillermo del Toro is one of the best working directors, and may be the most exciting talent to appear in the last fifteen years. He is a master of his craft, making intelligent, thoughtful, and atmospheric films, even when he’s working with action horror comics (Blade II, Helboy).  His lighting, sound, camera angles, and production design are always artistic while making the movie accessible. Plus he can get a great performance from anyone.

But as a writer, he loses touch with pacing.  His work is too leisurely.  The Devil’s Backbone displays both his skills and his failings.  This is the sort of film that leaves you discussing its quality, but then hoping it will hurry up and end while watching.

A great deal of the time is spent with children I neither liked nor empathized with.  Carlos is a generic film child.  This is a very personal film for del Toro, and Carlos undoubtedly stands in for the director in his youth. But while the director may be invested in the character, he gave me no reason to be.  There is also a school bully, who is easy to hate early on, but whom we are supposed to learn to like and respect by the end.  The film depends on us changing our feelings about him.  But I didn’t.  A writer can get too close to his characters, and that is the case here.

The ghost story feels tacked on. It would take me ten minutes to remove the ghost from the script, and it would change nothing.  If I need to suspend my disbelief enough to accept a ghost, it would be nice if the ghost did something. As long as Carlos attributes what he hears to a ghost, the spirit itself is unnecessary.

Perhaps The Devil’s Backbone’s greatest flaw is that it requires acts of stupidity to move the plot along.  When Casares and company find they must toss a particularly vicious man from the grounds, he forces the man at gunpoint about ten feet into the desert, and then turns around and goes back inside.  No one could be that stupid.  The orphanage has many entrances, and the maniac has nowhere to go.  Of course he’s going to come back.  There’s no other option, yet Casares and the others go about their business as if the issue is finished.  I’m willing to believe in ghosts, but not in that level of foolishness.  It pulled me out of the film.  And such plot-oriented behavior continues when a large quantity of gasoline, much of it in cans, is set ablaze.  No one is so ignorant as to attempt to beat out the flames, but here a character does just that.  Watching this act, what motivation am I supposed to grant this person?  That she wanted to commit suicide is the only one that is possible.

The film is stuffed to overflowing with symbols.  It’s a fun game to try and spot them all and put meaning to them.  Some, like the bomb in the yard, are easy.  Others are a bit too vague and can only be deciphered with aid from the director.

This is a well made film I really wanted to like, but with little tension, unlikable and unbelievable characters, and a plodding pace, I was left only with del Toro’s style and the professionalism of the crew, and that isn’t enough.

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