Viva del Toro!

Last Thursday, the postman brought a package. It was the Guillermo del Toro Collection – the DVDs of three of del Toro’s films: Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). A veritable feast!

 

Cronos is like the eponymous mechanism at its heart – golden, intricate and deadly. It brings a whole new twist to the myth of the vampire. It’s also the touching story of the love between a kindly old man and his granddaughter. I was struck by the fact that the granddaughter often wears a red plastic mac, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a deliberate reference to the great Nic Roeg film: Don’t Look Now?

 

Now, I should have watched The Devil’s Backbone next. That’s the chronology, and also the sequence recommended by the good doctor. However, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the DVD of Pan’s Labyrinth to be released, so that went into the player on Friday night.

 

It is simply a masterpiece. It draws on the deep wells of folklore with the characters of the faun, the fairy princess in mortal form, and introduces the spectacular "pale man". The stories too are recognisable ur-tales: the toad with the golden key at the root of the tree, the fairy banquet. But the monsters in the labyrinth are nothing compared to the monster above: Capitán Vidal. The film has heart-stopping moments of terror, horror and beauty. I look forward to watching its companion-piece, the Devil’s backbone, but I think that I have just seen del Toro’s best work to date.

 

One thing that niggles, however. The original Spanish title of Pan’s Labyrinth is El Laberinto del Fauno (the labyrinth of the Faun). I expect it was some ignorant dork in Hollywood who gave it the English title. It should have been literally translated to The Labyrinth of the Faun. Because I don’t think the faun in the film is Pan, it’s just a faun…

 

For lovers of trivia, the faun and the pale man are both marvellously played by Doug Jones, who also played the aquatic Abe Sapien in Hellboy (another del Toro film that I enjoyed enormously), and Hellboy himself was played by Ron Perlman, who was also the sadistic nephew in Cronos. I look forward to further films from Guillermo del Toro.