THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945)

Long before Argentine author Manuel Puig evocatively synopsized The Enchanted Cottage (1945) in his experimental novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman; long before his character Molina's romantic recount was omitted from the film adaptation of the book; and long before Turner Classic Movies began airing the film without commercial interruption so that its delicate ensorcelment could effectively occur, my mother and I would sit mid-afternoon on a Sunday and watch John Cromwell's The Enchanted Cottage, not once but whenever it was broadcast. While the movie played, intimate and familiar as we were with the storyline, Mother would guess the names of actors and actresses, and mull over the little bits of biographical detail she had sifted from magazines. What Mother taught me during those languid Sunday matinees was that some movies are your favorites—not because they were the best movies of their time, perhaps only two stars in a five-star rating system—but because they leaned dutifully into a need for fantasy and illusion. Mother had things she wanted to forget in her life and I was already using fantasy as a defense against what I feared in my life to come. Movies were a way we each held off the world.

I don't even know how many times I have watched The Enchanted Cottage. If I'm channel surfing and I happen to come upon it, I always stop and become involved. As was the case this morning when I drew the blinds against a cold rain storm in San Francisco, lit the lights on the Christmas tree, and turned on the t.v. to watch something while I drank my first cup of French roast. And there it was. The Enchanted Cottage. The scene where Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire)—made to look as homely as taste would allow—has returned home from a failed venture elsewhere. She has answered an ad placed by Mrs. Minnett (Mildred Natwick) seeking a young woman to help with cottage chores. The cottage is to be rented to a young newlywed couple: a handsome aviator Oliver Bradford (Robert Young) and his socialite wife Beatrice (Hillary Brooke) who plan to use the cottage for their honeymoon. It's Oliver's idea, of course. Beatrice is being more obliging to her fiancé than enthusiastic.

Before they have a chance to occupy the cottage, however, war breaks out in the Pacific, Pearl Harbor is bombed, and Oliver is conscripted long before anticipated, before they are even wed. Subsequently shot down over Guam, crippled and facially disfigured, Beatrice reacts poorly to Oliver's appearance and he retreats bitterly to the cottage.

Do you know the story? There is something enchanted about the cottage. Little by little, as they get to know each other, Laura and Oliver become lovely in each others' eyes. The film reveals this wondrous transformation. Oliver's scars melt away. Laura's homeliness disappears. Mrs. Minnett understands that it's their love for each other that has brought this on and a blind neighbor, John Hillgrove (Herbert Marshall), who has become the couple's confidante, exhibits the ancient wisdom of Teresias of seeing clearly into the heart of the matter. I had already learned by fifth grade through my favorite book The Little Prince that it is only through the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. The Enchanted Cottage only proved that treatise.

I don't always look at movies these days as fantasies. I measure their production values. Their demographic reception. I critique their direction, their performances, and overview the criticism of others. I investigate a director's oeuvre or delineate the parameters of genre. The historian in me uncovers that there was an earlier 1924 silent film version of The Enchanted Cottage based on Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's play and I'm curious to compare it to the one with which I'm familiar. I can see now the role the movie might have played in mollifying the cultural attitudes towards men returning disfigured and wounded from the war; the 1924 version for the First World War, the 1945 version for the Second. I even hear that Pinero's play was adapted into a musical earlier this year premiering in New York, perhaps a reflection on the war in Iraq? The world—not only the world of movies—has become a much smaller place and Hollywood no longer reigns dominion. For that matter, romance no longer reigns dominion. In many ways Hollywood has collapsed under the weight of its own artifice; its dreams and romances rendered ingenuine and obsolete. Yet still, on certain rainy days, in the middle of the afternoon, this 1945 Grade B melodrama brings my mother back to me, the appreciation she taught me for movies. I guess you could say I still use movies as a defense: to counter my disabilities, my inability to work as I once used to, to ward off a world that has taken so many loved ones from me, so many dreams, myriad ambitions. Mother herself has become so ill and lives in constant pain. She finds it difficult to sit still long enough to lose herself in a movie. That breaks my heart somehow. It seems like the ultimate theft by—as they say—time and other thieves. I hope that thievery is a long way off for me. For in losing myself in movies, I ultimately find myself, like the light that gradually returns in this winter season.

So this is not so much a review of The Enchanted Cottage as it is a Christmas missive to Mother. May light return to you. May today find you one second less of pain. I love you. Thank you, sincerely, for teaching me to love the movies. I wish I were with you right now, your frail hand in mine as we sit on the edge of the sofa, hearts in our throats, when Laura and Oliver descend the stairs, homely and disfigured to others, but fair and handsome to each other. If only the world, and all our pain, could be so enchantingly transformed.

THE GOOD GERMAN

I knew I was in trouble when Eddie Muller (the "Czar of Noir")—introducing an advance screening of The Good German to his word of mouth audience—admitted to having seen the film last week in Los Angeles and synopsized it as: "It's … interesting." Those two words with a pause inbetween are as good as hanging a funeral wreath on the front door. He then proceeded to tell us that—if we wanted to see "real" noir—we should come to his upcoming Noir City in late January. I guess I can't blame Muller for some shameless self-promotion when Warner Brothers didn't pay him a cent to introduce the piece. You get what you pay for, huh? And I'll certainly take him up on his invitation.

Dave Hudson and The Greencine Daily have done a good job of shepherding the consensual disappointment into one entry. If you're really interested in reading why other film writers feel the film has failed, go there. Otherwise, here's my two cents.

First, my druthers would be that all the money spent into replicating a film noir movie be put into restoring some film noir classics. Period. Enough with the stylistic homages that don't quite work already and all that good money thrown after bad.

Second, as the movie started, it had that faint edge of irreality seen in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, all the trappings and touches painfully captured, without anyone thinking to invest a soul. And no amount of vintage footage will cobble a soul together without all the local villagers screaming, "Kill Frankensoul! Kill the monster." Which genre was Soderbergh really trying to replicate here?

Third, I am far from being a prude (I just interviewed fucking Guillermo Del Toro for Chrissake!) but was it really necessary to insert all the crude language into The Good German? If the film was to achieve any kind of true homage, how could all these "fuck a ducks" help? I don't recall a single "fuck a duck" in any of my favorite noir films. Is there a "fuck a duck" in Casablanca? So, okay, this was a postmodern homage? Yeah, right. Okay, sure. I'm not saying they didn't really cuss like this in 1942; but, I just don't remember hearing this kind of language in previous film noir features. Somebody correct me, please, so I don't remain irritated about that poor violated duck.

Fourth, I didn't even know this was a Soderbergh film; I hadn't read any reviews or heard any buzz. I went because George Clooney was in it and—even though he is possibly the most handsome leading man alive—he wasn't convincingly in love with Cate Blanchett; he was irritated with her. All through the movie. Right to the end. Convincingly irritated. Cate, on the other hand, was the closest to being anything accurate in this film. The woman is a wonder. Black dye-job, black contacts, thick-lipped fake accents and all. She could do a Fruit of the Loom underwear ad and I would love her. Come to think of it: didn't she do a Fruit of the Loom underwear ad this year? And isn't it also in the running for Oscar consideration?

So there you have it. Style over substance. A film with no soul. Lots of duck fucking. An unconvincing love affair and not near enough shadows to hide a film that is … well … interesting. To say the very least.

QUEER CINEMA—Jed Rosenthal Bell and QueerCity.com

It's with great pride that I announce that—partly due to his conversation with me here on The Evening Class—filmmaker Jed Rosenthal Bell has been offered a column on the newly-launched QueerCity.com. His first write-up is an appreciation of Omar Little, the "criminal king" of HBO's The Wire. "Omar represents a new concept for TV," Jed writes, "the hard homo hero. Even better, his queerness is as relevant, as built-in to his character, and as causally, structurally related to all the happenings in the world of The Wire as every other thing in this beautifully complicated drama."

DAVID THOMSON—A Conversation On "Passionate" Film Criticism

Recently, working on a magazine article profiling David Thomson's upcoming PFA film series "A Thousand Decisions in the Dark", David invited me into his home to get the job done. I came prepared with my digital recorder, a few pertinent questions, and some pineapple cornmeal tarts from L'Boulangerie, one of my favorite bakeries (which just happened to be in his neighborhood). After I got what I needed for my article, I took advantage of the opportunity to ask David about an issue that came to the foreground during Andy Horbal's recent Film Criticism Blogathon. I dedicate this piece to Pacze Moj at Critical Culture for inspiring me—through his piece on Pauline Kael—to think more deeply about an issue I take for granted.

Michael Guillén: David, there's been some discussion lately among myself and my compatriots as we've been researching and discussing film criticism about a frequent complaint—which I've not quite known how to address—regarding measuring a critic according to their passionate engagement with a film and that passion being inflected in their reviews. First, there was not a consensus about what was meant by "passion" or a "passionate" review. For example, if someone says Pauline Kael is a "passionate" critic; what exactly does that mean? Do you have any thoughts on that?

David Thomson: Yeah!

MG: Because I consider your writing passionate, especially with regard to how you feel the medium is failing and not living up to its own standards.

Thomson: Right. I hope it is. [Your question] is very complicated. I was brought up in a situation where the critical orthodoxy that existed in England at that time liked certain films, (I thought) wrote about them in a rather dry manner, and seemed to me to be trying to make films feel and sound like novels or plays. I knew that—for myself—the excitement of film came very much from the unique circumstances: the dark, the size of the image, the packed crowd, the visceral quality to it, and the feeling that something sensational was happening. That doesn't mean that those things didn't weigh upon you intellectually and in reflection; but, your first encounter with the film is a tense battle and it's trying to overpower you. In part, you want to be overpowered—it's like a love match—in part you want to be overpowered, in part you want to be yourself. So you're fighting back a bit, you're resisting, you're involved, you're wrestling with it and that's very important to me. It leads to a kind of writing where you feel the heat of the encounter and I always loved writing about film that begins, at least, by giving you that feeling of "God yes! That's what it's like to see that sequence! That's what you feel!" That gets a really precise physical emotional nervous reaction to a scene. I call that passionate because I think it comes from the guts. It obviously comes from the head too, but, it's very directly involved. I like writing about film that does that.

Now, as you grow older, you become perhaps a little calmer and you learn that the passion can be a little bit faked, a little bit self-conscious.

MG: The passion in the film or in your reaction?

Thomson: In the writing. What it comes down to is: I find it hard to read people about film where I don't feel that they are just as crazy about the meeting. I don't mind disagreeing about a film and, indeed, nowadays I would rather read someone I disagree with over a film than agree with because it provokes your thinking. Once upon a time I got angry if I disagreed. Now I've come to see that that's the most interesting reading.

MG: That's why I brought it up because some of the comments I've read basically stated that a passionate writer is not a good film critic. One fellow particularly, steeped in film theory, said that ideas don't come across when the writing is too passionate. I couldn't agree with that because 1) much of the semiotics of film theory bore me to tears and 2) there's such a thing as emotional intelligence and some ideas—as D.H. Lawrence complained—are dead from the ears down. Some ideas fly on the backs of emotions. If you take out the emotions, how will you get that particular idea across? They would plummet like Icarus with his failed wings.

Thomson: I agree entirely. I think it depends on what you mean by film criticism. These days it is so hard to tell what people mean. Film reviews, reviews that you might read on a Friday, say, to decide whether you want to go and see a film, they're terrible. They're as bad as they've been in our time. Also, if you're interested in film, you're not the kind of person who needs to be told what to go and see. You've probably got your list building in advance of what you're going to see. You know what you're going to go see because you reckon you know what's going to be interesting. Occasionally something will come up you've not heard of and if you read a good review of that, that might put it on your list. That can be helpful. But you don't really need too much prodding to go and to know what to see. Real beginners do but we're not in that category.

MG: Is a review ahead of the fact and a critique after the fact?

Thomson: I would rather not read anything about a film at all before I see it but I enjoy reading some stuff on a film after I've seen it. But, you see, I believe in seeing a film several times.

MG: I do too.

Thomson: Kael had this whole thing about you just see it the once. It seems that's what she did. I think that's depriving yourself of a lot of pleasure. The pleasure I have got from seeing certain films in re-viewing is amazing, enormous.

MG: Also I'm very interested in reception studies, not only how a film is received, but how it can be perceived variously at different screenings. For example, I just saw Mel Gibson's Apocalypto twice in one day. The first screening was for press critics—who came in predisposed to tear the film apart more savagely than any historical Maya sacrifice—and the second screening was over in Berkeley at the Landmark Shattuck with a whole bunch of students who were getting in for free, the line was around the block, and what struck me at the second screening—in terms of discussing passion—was that, clearly, Gibson as a filmmaker had done something right because these kids were laughing and gasping on cue. His film got his desired effect. He got the reaction out of his audience that he wanted. However, when the film ended, it was resoundly booed.

Thomson: Was it?

MG: The minute the Spanish conquistadors appeared, Mel suddenly lost his audience. He had them up until then but the moment they appeared, his audience started booing, as if he had pulled a clichéd rabbit out of a hat. I found that fascinating and their disapproval more interesting than the critical predisposition I experienced earlier at the first screening. Between the two experiences of watching the one movie, it was like two different movies.

Thomson: We talked about that before, if I remember. I think the different ways you see a film are terribly important.

PAN'S LABYRINTH—Landmark Embarcadero Q&A With Director Guillermo Del Toro

Graham Leggat, Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society, introduced Guillermo Del Toro following the Embarcadero Landmark screening of Pan's Labyrinth. As with my interview with him, Del Toro is not a man to censor himself and his comments get into the film in detail so those who are offended by such language or equally by spoilers might best skip this write-up until they've had a chance to see the movie.

To get the ball rolling, Leggat referenced Mark Kermode's interview with Del Toro in the December issue of Sight & Sound, wherein Del Toro talked about Clive Barker, the writer responsible for the Hellraiser series of films, who had written of "a deep place touched only by monsters." In that interview Del Toro went on to speak about how a deep part of him had been touched and transformed by monsters. Leggat asked him to amplify.

Del Toro complied: "In the Barker story ["The Skins of the Fathers"] he actually literally means it because it's a woman who has intercourse with monsters. I love monsters and I think fantasy is the last refuge of spirituality in this time because we have essentially [gone] through the '50s and '60s and '70s, and all the iconoclastic taking down of—rightfully—disgusting institutions; but, anything that was erected after that essentially was or has become as hollow as those institutions. So we took down all the crap and we erected new crap. [Laughter.] We erected every boring, materialistic sort-of-reality t.v. shit to drive us on. I believe that in this age one of the few moments where I can feel like a child and can feel spiritually uplifted is through fantasy. I really believe in monsters in the way that a Baptist would receive Jesus. …Monsters were invented by primitive man to explain—first of all—nature. Then as they became socially more complex they started inventing monsters to talk about the things that scared them about themselves and eventually it's psychological. Monsters have a direct tap into spirituality and consciousness. I feel that I have an intimate, almost religious, contact with fantasy creatures."

Leggat noted that in an anti-fascist fairytale such as Pan's Labyrinth, or even in many of the classic fairy tales, there's a tension between innocence and brutality. Referencing back to the Sight & Sound interview, he noted Del Toro's comment that he can't feel the magic without the brutality of realism. Leggat queried if that was tied up with Del Toro's description of the monster inside?

"The origin of the fairy tale," Del Toro answered, "is an oral tradition. Normally what would happen is cobblers and tailors traveling from town to town would stay at homes and charge a warm bed and a meal and then the whole family would sit around the cobbler or the tailor and they would tell a story, many times about a cobbler and a tailor in a fairy tale. That's why they figure so prominently in fairy tales. They had to entertain the whole family, children and adults, so they talked about contexts that felt alive and contemporary at that time. They talked about famine. They talked about war, pestilence, and they peppered [the stories] with incredibly brutal moments either to entertain the adults or to scare the children shitless [laughter] and into behaving. So there [are] two kinds of fantastic tales: one is extremely repressive, pro-establishment, and tells the children don't go out at night, obey your parents, don't be ambitious, and this kind of thing; and then there is the other one, which is absolutely insane and brutal. But all of them were peppered with really dark, incredibly almost Freudian, elements. I felt that they had been [whitewashed] and sweetened and taken beyond recognition into being Disneyfied, if you would. I wanted to recuperate the brutality because I believe that without a context of horror then the magic is meaningless. If all you're going to have is little elves singing happily all the fucking time…. [Laughter and applause.] The fact is my fantasy has always been absolutely non-liberating. It has helped me deal with the real world but I never imagined myself singing to little bluebirds or chipmunks or stuff like that. The way I see fantasy is not a way to escape reality but to articulate reality. To use those elements to learn your way around the world and I believe that fantasy is a way to create parable, to talk about big truths but in a way not married to outcome, or married to a political outcome, an immediate outcome. Darkness is necessary in those cases to bring forth … this movie, if it worked with you—because a movie, I keep saying, is like a blind date, y'know?—if it worked with you, if it tickled you in the right places, then the movie hopefully transported you to a vulnerable place where you can be a kid again. Now we, as adults, in order to be shocked by the horror like a kid and experience the wonderful like a kid, I have to push your buttons and they're hidden under layers and layers of social fat. I have to push really hard like deep tissue massage…. When I was learning how to be a draftsman and opened one of the early books about how to draw with a pencil, the first thing they set up was that—in order to create the illusion of volume—you need darkness and light and that's exactly what this fable is [about]."

Alluding to Del Toro's infamous refusal to direct The Chronicles of Narnia perhaps for these very reasons, Leggat wondered if Del Toro found the extreme world of anime more compelling than, say, Harry Potter?

"The Narnia thing," Del Toro quickly responded, "is because I'm a lapsed Catholic and I didn't want the fucking lion to resurrect." [Laughter and applause.] "Why bother? Also, I loved the books when I was growing up and at that time I was jerking off behind the altar. Some of the anime I love. A lot of the anime I don't. The Harry Potter movies, for me, the books—which I read before seeing the movies—they were really beautiful books and the first time I saw the first and second movies they were almost so healthy that they looked like a yogurt commercial. They looked so healthy, I thought, 'Is this the same book that had this Charles Dickens orphan living with his relatives?' I didn't really recognize him that much."

Leggat then opened the conversation up to questions from the audience. One young fellow, gracefully acknowledging first Del Toro's Golden Globes nomination and inducing a deserved round of applause, then queried if Takashi Miike was a direct influence on Pan's Labyrinth?


"No," Del Toro denied, and then inquired if the young man meant the scene where Mercedes slashed Vidal's mouth? "They do it in many cultures and in Britain this is called the 'Chelsea smile.' If you're a traitor, they do the Chelsea smile to you. What I wanted … both in Devil's Backbone and in this one there is a moment where the character … I'm very interested in the proto-fascist to look really sleek. This guy [has] shiny boots, beautiful hair, [is] incredibly well-spoken; he's a gentleman, right? He can bash and kill and all that but when his wife leaves the room, he gets up from the chair. I was interested in him starting to look on the outside the way he looks on the inside and the same was true in Devil's Backbone. So I did the half-Chelsea on him because I wanted to prove several things. I needed that shot where he's sewing himself because it's a character moment. That shows you what type of guy this guy is. He shines his own boots. He fixes his own watch. And he sews himself up. This man is unstoppable. He's not going to stop. He's going to keep going. And then I want him to drink the drink, hurt, and what does he do? He pours another one! It's defining the character. It's a moment that's larger than life that turns him into the Big Bad Wolf. The fairy tales needs Little Red Riding Hood and it does need the Big Bad Wolf. That was not Takashi Miike; that was the half-Chelsea smile.

Actually, the young fellow corrected, that wasn't what he had in mind. He was wondering if Miike's Yôkai daisensô / The Great Yokai War (2005) was an influence on Pan's Labyrinth?

Again Del Toro denied a connection. "I love Miike. I saw The Great Yokai War about two months ago because there was going to be a scene in Hellboy 2 originally that had Yokai ghosts, which budget-wise has been eliminated now. Somebody said, 'Oh, you should check Miike's version of the Yokai wars'; but, I didn't see it during the shoot of Pan's Labyrinth. I like his movies. Audition scared the fuck out of me. That moving bag haunted me for ages and the sawing of the foot lives in my memory. I really love his sensibility but he's done so many movies and I've only seen probably 10 of them. So I have—what?—65 to see?"

One young woman wondered about Del Toro's research methodology, what he had read to prepare for this movie, and if there were possible allusions to the Little Mermaid fairytale?


"I've been collecting fairy tales all my life," Del Toro responded, "I have—I don't know—maybe 200 volumes. A few of them are original printings from the Victorian era illustrated by Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Arthur Rackham and the like. I am actually an avid collector of original art by Kay Nielsen. I've always been interested in reading the compilations and treatises about fairy lore. I've always found them a little dogmatic. It seems like they have a thesis to prove—either a psychosexual or social—and they go by it. I have enjoyed Angela Carter. I have enjoyed Bruno Bettelheim. I have enjoyed everyone. But the one book that became incredibly important in this movie was a book called The Science of Fairytales, which is a late Victorian book that has a prologue by A.A. Milne, the author of Winnie the Pooh. The book is an incredibly [scholastic], incredibly amusing but thorough inventory of how fairytales came to be, how the fantastic tale came to be, in all the cultures, not only Europe. It does a very unprejudiced inventory, sort of the way Joseph Campbell does it later in his books but far more open, far more light. I encourage you to seek it and you know what? If you can Google it, you can download it, because it's free to print on the Internet. I always browse in used book stores and I get nose and ear infections. I found the book and I bought it and I read it and then I found it on the Internet. It's a beautiful book. There is another book that I love that, for example, Mike Mignola also uses a lot in his comic books called Passport to the Supernatural by Bernhardt J. Hurwood. Those two books have a similar spirit in that, after reading them, you want to read everything that was [quoted]. Hurwood quotes everything from oral tradition, Plotinius' writings, he quotes a great 17th century book by Don Augustin Camlet about vampirism that talks about microscopic vampires and all [those] kind of things. The movie quotes everything because I wanted to have the story feel like an ancient fairy tale. It has homages to Wizard of Oz with the red shoes. I quoted exactly the Alice in Wonderland dress. I quoted C.S. Lewis—without the lion resurrection. I quoted Hans Christian Anderson also in the spirit. Anderson and [Oscar] Wilde have a really incredibly strange and moving sort of S&M thing going on. I'm not exactly able to pinpoint it but it's disturbing and moving and spiritual and, rather than try to explain it, I love it and assimilate it. Hans Christian Anderson was also whipping himself into submission for his desires—Wilde was a little more free—and what I think is the idea of sacrifice comes from him. I actually quote verbatim Charles Dickens' David Copperfield when the stepfather says, 'It's the other hand, Ofelia', which I think is chapter 3 of David Copperfield when he meets his step-father the first time. At the end her seeing this wonderful world is an exact quote of "Little Matchbook Girl" by Hans Christian Anderson and so on and so forth." Del Toro repeated the title of the two main literary influences on the film: The Science of Fairy Tales and Passport to the Supernatural. "I recommend like Oprah," he grinned, which roused a rush of laughter from his audience.

Another fellow noted that Del Toro is one of the only directors who actually shows children dying. In Mimic Del Toro actually shows the children being killed, though in Pan's Labyrinth he pulled back a bit and didn't actually show Ofelia's murder.

"No, actually I show the shooting," Del Toro qualified. "The violence in the movie is deliberately dosified and calculated. I was in favor of the structure of the movie. We live in a completely hypocritical world where we can bombard entire cities [but hurting children—in concept—is taboo]. We can eat the meat but we can't kill the cow. We don't mind the fucking package in the supermarket but we would be unable to kill the cow. It's the same in the world. We are raising these antiseptic fucking little brats to feel nothing, to shield them from pain, to shield them from imperfection, shield them from anything, and they grow up to be 35 year olds with the mind and the spiritual potency of a four-year-old kid. I find a movie like Free Willy much more obscene where they tell you, 'Oh, if you swim next to a fucking killer whale, he's going to be your friend. He won't chew your fucking legs and spit your intestines out.' [Laughter.] I find that kids are far more intelligent, far more sophisticated, than we give them credit for. We are brutal with children in the real world, allow brutality to exist towards children by the church, by society, by everything, but we shield them in the stories. I find that impossible to conceal. The way we treat them, the way we have laid out the world is so fucked up. We pass our hang-ups. We pass the crap from generation to generation but we want to make the fiction clean. The most truly liberating aspects are the ones that we overprotect. We can bomb the fuck out of Iraq but we won't tell our children about Winnie the Pooh bleeding. It's insane to me. Children in fiction—especially adult fiction—they're just another character in the same way that [on] my set a child actor is just another actor. I don't come in and say [coddling], 'Listen, my darling, that is a rubber man." I take them through the steps and, like another actor, with respect.

"There was a scientist in the mid 20th century, a brilliant crazy guy who actually invented ice ships for Churchill for World War II (and they were working). He was very interested in education. He said something brilliant. He said, 'Children should be treated like ambassadors from a more advanced culture who are here to teach us things instead of us trying to teach them our pathetic, stupid way of seeing the world.' I think it's hypocritical to do this. If I were doing a movie for 8-year olds and all of a sudden cut the throat of the two main children, I would say, 'Well, I'm as sick as fuck.' But this is for adults. So it's fine."

The same fellow had a follow-up question regarding Del Toro's brave depiction of the Faun as ambiguously evil, redeemed by film's end.


"The Faun is more ancient than Western culture," Del Toro reminded. "The Faun is not a trickster as Campbell would pose it. The Faun is definitely a neutral character. He was a benign faun. 'Pan' is only in English. [The original film title is El Laberinto del Fauno, The Faun's Labyrinth.] If he was Pan the girl would be in deep shit. [Laughter.] Believe me, that girl would be walking sideways by the time Pan would be done with her. No, he's a faun. The Faun, in its original conception, is a character that is neutral. He cares for the woods but he can destroy it, he can kill. It's a character that is neutral in that sense, like nature. The idea was that this character is there just to guide her through the process. He doesn't have an investment [in] the outcome of the tests. One of the things I tried to do with him is the more the tests advance, the younger and more beautiful he becomes. Towards the end he's actually—the way I was directing him, I was telling him—he's like a glam rock star. As a director I told him, 'You have to move differently, be more sensual, be more beautiful, because it was important for me that [Ofelia] rejects him, not only when he looks bad, but when he looks the best she also says no. [She's] going to follow [her] gut. The three tests are a decoy. The real test is how she goes through them. If at the end the last test is supposedly, 'Give me the baby', if she turns the baby in that's not passing the test. If you notice in the movie one of the things I tried to do is the Faun is played by the same guy who plays the Pale Man because to me its two incarnations of the same character putting her through paces to see how she will react and seeing if she will learn from her disobedience and not lose the capability to disobey what she feels is wrong. Meaning she can disobey and it's great but then again at the end she's not intimidated by her mistake. She still disobeys the Faun [when he says], 'Give me the baby.' If you notice, the two fairies who are the Red and the Blue that are eaten by the Pale Man in the banquet hall, they come back at the end and circle around her so they were never really eaten."

Asked if the fascist character—though sleek and great looking—exhibits self-hatred through the nuance of cutting his own throat in the mirror when he's shaving, Del Toro confirmed that was his intent. "When you create fascists, when you create characters, these are not by any means intended to be Dostoevskian three-dimensional fully-fledged psychological portraits. These are types. These are characters that I hope are great but they are type characters. You cannot nuance both the story and fuck up with the story and fuck up with the characters; you're taking two legs out of a chair. Something's going to fall. I like to screw up with one leg and keep the others firmly planted in the genre or in the tradition. [Capítan Vidal], what I was thinking of him, is it's a character that the only thing he needs to have is flaws and reasons to be the way he is. Now this is a guy who was raised by a general. Whose only legacy is a broken watch to tell him, 'You're going to be like me. Tell my son how a man dies.' You can imagine the educational process of that father. It's not exactly fantastic and the guy even lies about his father's watch, that's how intimidated and how bad he feels about his own career, which is he's a captain in the military police hunting ragtag guerilla bands in the mountains while his father was a legendary general. This guy hates himself more than he hates anybody else. To me the fascist creates a whole legend, a whole construction, through his legacy because he's worried about leaving a memory that will live forever. It's his legacy and his construction that are fragile. On the other hand, the girl who is not worried about anything really leaves a legacy and lives forever in my mind in the movie. Kierkegaard said the reign of the tyrant ends with his death; the reign of the martyr starts with his. [This is] the difference. Look at the way the two characters physically die. The girl dies after going exactly to the place she wants to go, in her heart, and for me that's real. The captain, the last thing they tell him is, 'He'll never know your name' and he's completely destroyed. Everything that he believed in was that fragile. These people are like that. They live in another world. When you live in Spain long enough and, trust me, there's still a shitload of right wingers in Spain that miss Franco, they wish the Generalisimo would come back! These guys believe what he did. [Vidal] says, 'I want a new, clean Spain for my child to be born in." He really is doing these things [he perceives] to inhuman people. The Marquis de Sade used to say, 'I can understand the crime of passion. I can understand somebody murdering somebody in the heat of the emotion. But what I cannot understand, and what I cannot condone, is murder for ideas and laws. That someone can coldly, calculatedly, say that this law or this idea allows me to kill you.' This is what happens when you dehumanize somebody. When that guy becomes a Black guy, a Jew, a Muslim, whatever idea you want that allows you to kill him, you are relinquishing your own decision. You are relinquishing your own choice. You're making it impersonal. [The fascists] do that, killing [others] 'for the good of Spain.' When I was [on] the radio in Spain with this movie a guy called and said, 'Why do the fascists always have to be the bad guys in the civil war movies?' [Laughter.] I said to the guy, 'Listen, Sir, where I come from the word fascist has pretty bad connotations but if you know of any charming fascists and would like to bring them to the radio, please feel free to do it.'

"Everything in the movie tries to do parallels with things in the real world. There are two keys; one in the fantasy world, one in the real world. There are two daggers; the dagger that she hides and the dagger that she [finds]. The geometry of the dining room of the Pale Man and the geometry of the dining room of the captain are exactly the same. My idea is that these things are things that the girl catches on the fly and uses them to construct her imagination. And that is me. The Pale Man is the church. He has the stigmata. He puts the eyes in there. He devours children. [Laughter.] I was in Jesuit school. I'm not going to be a forgiving man. But the idea is these are things that feed into the angst of the girl and she's building her own little world with that or coding it like that. By the way, most of the violence in the movie is either based on oral accounts that I have read on things that happened during the civil war. In the case, for example, of the dialogue of the priest where he says God [cares little] about their bodies, he has already saved their souls. That's verbatim what a priest used to say in a concentration camp for Republicans when he brought communion. He used to say, 'Confess, my children, because God doesn't care about your bodies; he's already saved your souls.' And if that's not a motherfucker, I don't know what is. [Laughter.]"


An elderly gentleman asked Del Toro what inspired the character's name Ofelia?

Del Toro responded, "Ofelia is such a beautiful name for a tragic heroine. It may be too high-falutin' the idea that—like in Hamlet—she's an innocent heroine manipulated by so many factions and ultimately meeting a tragic end. Of course [Ofelia] doesn't die in the water but I love the idea of someone who is ultimately innocent [where] nefarious things are happening. Ofelia is a girl that is being told—like we are all told at a certain age—how to behave and what is expected of her. What dress she should wear. How she should behave like a lady. What she should do to regain her kingdom, and so forth. All these things in this case she's strong enough in her will to disregard."

One Hellboy fan complimented Del Toro for his expert comic adaptation. He wanted to know what fans could expect from Hellboy 2?

"I love comic books," Del Toro admitted, "and I grew up in a household where I was reading. My father was a middle class guy and one of the first things he did when he came into money was—he heard it was prestigious to have a library—so he went and bought four encyclopedias. Just by the way they looked, frankly. He bought one that was a Family Health encyclopedia where I learned the word 'fallopian tubes' [laughter]. The other one was an encyclopedia of art, which I read also entirely and so forth. But other than for those books that my father had, another was an anthology of world literature for young readers where I discovered my first Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, all those in there. At the same time I was reading those things in my father's incredibly abundant library, I was discovering comic books. To me Degas, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Gaugin, Edvard Munch are in equal value as Bernie Wrightson, Richard Corbin, Arthur Suydam, Jack Kirby, I didn't care. I just felt they were equally powerful. When people say, 'We see that you do your personal films and then you do the American movies' I say, 'No. To me Hellboy's personal.' It's autobiographical, frankly. He's born the same day I was born. He was born October 9, 1944 and I was born October 9, 1964. Many details of [Hellboy's] courtship with Liz, are details in the courtship with my wife. I believe that the ideal love story is finding a fire girl and being fire proof. The idea, like in Pan's Labyrinth, at the end of the day the fable is about choice. How you are who you choose to become. Not who you are born like or where you are born. I was born in a small city in Mexico where it was impossible to make films let alone fantastic films. When I got up in my first day of screenwriting class and I declared I wanted to do fantastic movies, I became immediately the town idiot. I believe that with will and hard work you end up bending the world a little bit to live in it. If the first [Hellboy] was the love story, [Hellboy 2] is the first year of marriage. What happens after they kiss fantastically and they live [happily] ever after? Somebody has to wash the socks and take the garbage out. Then it's all wrapped in an adventure about the real world destroying fantasy. How we have absolutely prostituted and ground it into the ground, destroyed fantasy, to build malls and highways. That's the story. The fantasy creatures rebel against the human and Hellboy has to choose which side he's [on]."

A woman complimented Del Toro on showing the scariness of the fairy people, that he didn't clean it up, that Ofelia fucked up but accepted her mistakes and moved on. She was impressed by Ofelia's bravery. That she went into the labyrinth without any fear. The woman said she was engaged by the dark beauty of the film all the way.

Del Toro thanked her and added, "The movie is autobiographical. I explored my entire home town through the sewers. [Laughter.] I went with two or three friends with flashlights and—over the course of three years—we crisscrossed the town through the sewers. I was never afraid. I saw monsters when I was a child. They were probably lucid dreams but I saw creatures. I believed they were real. I was in the Society for the Virgin Mary and we used to do oratory contests in the catacombs of a Catholic church in Mexico, which is equal to having a pyramid built in the center of San Francisco, a Catholic church that had catacombs, and we used to go there, praise the Virgin Mary, and when the priest would turn around we would open the crypts to see if there were bones in them. I was never really afraid. I was curious more than afraid and I think that children are like that. It's curiousity. The Celtic culture I wanted to take through Spain because they are rich and powerful as a culture and as a mythology before moving off to the northern lands. It's seldom used in Spanish films."

Del Toro then thanked everyone for coming and asked that, if we loved the movie as much as he hoped we did, to please—because it's a small movie—go out to the rooftops and shout it out to the world.

Cross-published at Twitch.

PAN'S LABYRINTH (2006)—The Evening Class Interview With Guillermo Del Toro

I may have been too hasty choosing my 10 favorite interviews of 2006. Meeting Guillermo Del Toro at the Ritz Carlton for a brief chat about his latest film Pan's Labyrinth has rendered that list obsolete. Without question, Del Toro has been one of the individuals I have most wanted to talk with all year. I didn't have access at Toronto and wasn't able to attend San Diego's Comicon as originally planned and so the opportunity to hook up today felt very much like a gift for the holiday season. Guillermo is friendly, down-to-earth and charmingly cusses a blue streak. Not for the prudish nor the spoiler-wary.

* * *

Michael Guillén: First and foremost, congratulations on winning the San Francisco Film Critics Circle award for Best Foreign Language film earlier this week.

Guillermo Del Toro: I love it.

Guillén: As well as comparable accolades and nominations across the board, including the recently-announced Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Del Toro: It's just fantastic.

MG: …and well-deserved. Pan's Labyrinth is certainly my favorite movie of the year.

Del Toro: Fuckin' A!

Guillén: Foreign-language, whatever, it is my favorite movie of the year; a truly visionary piece.

Del Toro: Thank you.

Guillén: I first saw Pan's Labyrinth at the Elgin Theater during the Toronto International where you and Ivana Baquero introduced the film, then again here in San Francisco, and will be seeing it again this evening at the San Francisco Film Society screening.

Del Toro: You're going to see it again tonight?

Guillén: Yes.

Del Toro: That's great. Because I think one of the things the movie has, hopefully, is every time you see it there's little details that surface.

Guillén: That's what I've noticed so far; it's rich in detail. Pan's Labyrinth is textured with redemptive transgression. Can you speak to why doing the wrong thing ends up being so right?

Del Toro: I love the way you put it. There's a song by Rufus Wainwright—"Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk" it's called, I think—and it says, "Why is it that everything I like is a little bad for me?" Instinct will guide you more than intellect towards what's right for you and actually more naturally right. Disobedience is one of the strongest signals of your conscience of what is right and what is wrong. When you disobey in an intelligent way, you disobey in a natural way, it turns out to be more beneficial than blind obedience. Blind obedience castrates, negates, hides, and destroys what makes us human. On the other hand, instinct and disobedience will always point you in a direction that should be natural, should be organic to the world. So I think that disobedience is a virtue and blind obedience is a sin.

Guillén: Why do you eroticize cruelty? Your villains are thrillingly virile. First, Eduardo Noriega in The Devil's Backbone; now, Sergi López in Pan's Labyrinth. You've made it near to impossible for me—a queer-identified male—to trust a handsome stud! [Guillermo laughs.] At the least you have revealed to me that—if I'm going to go out on the town tonight—I really would rather leave Dr. Jekyll in the lab and go out with fucking Mr. Hyde. [Guillermo laughs again.]

Del Toro: Well, it's the revenge of the guy who grew up being a chubby, not-very-attractive guy. That's the revenge of the nerd. One of the dangers of fascism and one of the dangers of true evil in our world—which I believe exists—is that it's very attractive. That it is incredibly attractive in a way that most people negate. Most people make their villains ugly and nasty and I think, no, fascism has a whole concept of design, and a whole concept of uniforms and set design that made it attractive to the weak-willed. I tried to make Sergi López like all politicians that are truly evil—well-dressed, well-groomed, well-spoken, gets up from his chair when a lady enters the room, gets up from his chair when a lady leaves the room. I'd much rather be with a slob that is cool. It's very rarely that when somebody is that worried about the outward appearance, there's something truly truly wrong within. The opposite is often true. When people aren't comfortable just being in their normal level, just being—I don't have a cool pair of shoes, I don't have a cool pair of pants, but I'm all right—that's actually a sign of comfort, that something's at peace within. Extremes are incredibly powerful in cinema and the fact that this 11-year-old girl is much more comfortable in her skin than this fascist that hates himself so much that he slits his own throat in the mirror and negates his father's watch and does these crazy things, that gives the girl power and gives the other guy the illusion of power and the choice of cruelty. Choice is key in what we are. You choose to be destructive or you choose to be all encompassing and love-giving. Each choice defines who we are, no matter what the reason behind it is, because everybody values the reason behind the act, or the idea behind the act more than the reason. The idea behind the act, they value it more than the act these days.

Guillén: The contrast between the two is profound in this film. In your fantastic Guardian interview with Mark Kermode you contrasted the curvilinear, uterine design and the fallopian color palette of Ofelia's fantasy world against the colorless right angles of the fascist world. That comment reminded me of the Austrian painter Hundertwasser who has a line I've long loved: "The straight line is godless."

Del Toro: I agree. What a great line! Who said that?

Guillén: Hundertwasser.

Del Toro: Oh fuck. Can you write it down for me?

Guillén: Sure.

Del Toro: Thank you. The straight lines are an obsession with perfection and perfection is unattainable. Perfection is a conceit. Perfection actually lies in fully loving the defect. I think that's perfection. It's like what the guy says in Hellboy, he says, "We like people for their qualities; we love them for their defects." It's true in life. It's the same. I remember that one of the first reactions that the critics had to Edvard Munch's paintings was that they were technically flawed and "ugly to look at." They were saying, "He not only is a bad painter, he chooses to paint only disgusting subjects." And you go, "What the hell are you talking about?" Humanity is like that. Humanity should be flawed and imperfect and fucked up and loved because of that, not in spite of that, because of that. I remember also the Marquis de Sade who used to say a beautiful line; he said, "I understand murder for passion." He said, "I not only understand it, but I condone it. What I don't understand is murder for an idea. Or for a law. That is perverse." To kill somebody because he broke an idea or he broke a law? I agree with him. When we send somebody to the electric chair because he killed one person but we give a purple heart to somebody because he killed dozens for the "right" idea—patriotism, liberty, democracy, whatever the fuck you want to invent—I find it completely perverse.

Guillén: It borders on the insane. All of your previous films have a fairly prevalent and overt use of Catholic imagery, but Pan's Labyrinth almost completely avoids it, and yet your friend Iñarrítu said this is probably your most Catholic film.

Del Toro: He said that, yes.

Guillén: Is the omission of visible Catholic detail just a coincidence? Or was the church's position and sympathies with the Francoists during the civil war something you considered as you planned out the symbolic strategy of the film?

Del Toro: When I was researching the movie The Devil's Backbone, I found the absolutely horrifying—not only complicity—but participation of the Church in the entire fascist movement in Spain. The words that the priest speaks at the table in Pan's Labyrinth are taken verbatim from a speech a priest used to give to the Republican prisoners in a fascist concentration camp. He would come to give them communion and he would say before he left, "Remember, my sons, you should confess what you know because God doesn't care what happens to your bodies; he already saved your souls." This is taken verbatim from that speech. The Pale Man represents the Church for me, y'know? He represents fascism and the Church eating the children when they have a perversely abundant banquet in front of them. There is almost a hunger to eat innocence. A hunger to eat purity. I didn't want to avoid it, but I did not seek Catholic imagery. Nevertheless, I understand that redemption by blood and the rebirth by sacrifice is a Catholic conceit. So I accept it without any problems because I think that sexuality and religion come from your imprint in an early age. Whatever arouses your spirit or arouses your body at an early age, that's what is going to arouse it the rest of your life. Everything will be subordinate to that. It's a personal choice and it's a personal experience. I don't shame myself about being a lapsed Catholic and so if that cosmology appears in my movies, I'm fine with it.

Guillén: When I was a student of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, he taught me that it was—in some ways—inappropriate the way kids in the '60s went gaga over Eastern mysticism. They could learn from it. They could enjoy it. But it wasn't really their path no matter how much they wanted it to be and they would always deep down at heart be Christians needing to resolve spiritual issues in a Christian way. Their template—or as you say imprint—had been set.

Del Toro: They will always be a Western man looking at the East. Where your feet stand does not limit your gaze but it does limit what perspective you judge it from.

Guillén: Your orientation.

Del Toro: I can read all the fucking books about Taoism I want; I'll still be a Catholic boy reading them. There's no way of avoiding that.

Guillén: Another thematic image that I kept picking up from Pan's Labyrinth involves the relationship between Ofelia and Mercedes. First, you have the stelae in the middle of the labyrinth with the sculpted image of the faun/father, the girl and the baby; then you have Ofelia holding her baby brother; then Ofelia is killed and you have Mercedes holding Ofelia's baby brother. These three images were equivalent for me and served as symbolic substitutes for each other, insinuating a parallel structure between Ofelia and Mercedes. Moreso than between Ofelia and her mother.

Del Toro: You're absofuckinglutely right!! I'm amazed and happy. You win the prize. You're the only fucking guy that has noticed that! I thank you very much. The idea for me is that you're born with a mother and then you find another on the way. You are born with a brother and you find another one on your way. You fabricate your family as you grow up. Mercedes is the future of Ofelia if Ofelia chose to stop believing. Ofelia asks Mercedes, "Do you believe in fairies?" And Mercedes says, "I used to when I was a child. I used to believe many things that I don't believe in any more." That's why the attraction is so strong. They see each other in each other. They see their strength. Mercedes loves the purity of this girl and Ofelia instinctively knows the nature of this woman. They form a mother and daughter bond. That's why it's so tragic for me that Mercedes cries for Ofelia at the end because for Mercedes the girl died but we know she didn't. That is very Catholic. Ofelia is in a better place within herself. She may objectively cease to exist but this is where I think the epilog of the movie is incredibly important and moving. If you die and your legacy is one little flower blooming in a dry tree, that's enough of a legacy for me. And that's a magical legacy. If she had not done the things she did, the tree would have never bloomed, but, because she did them, there is a little flower blooming. On the other hand, she dies at peace. She dies at peace with what she did. She's the only character in the film who decides not to enact any violence. Not to take any lives. Even the doctor takes a life. But the only one who chooses "I will not take any life because I own only mine", that's the character that survives, spiritually. The fascist dies the loneliest death you could ever experience and the girl … [I'm reminded] of the quote by Kierkegaard that said, "The tyrant's rule ends with his death. The martyr's rule begins with it." It is the legacy—no matter how small it is—that makes Ofelia survive that episode. The movie is like a Rorschach test where, if you view it and you don't believe, you'll view the movie as, "Oh, it was all in her head." If you view it as a believer, you'll see clearly where I stand, which is it is real. My last image in the movie is an objective little white flower blooming in a dead tree with the bug watching it. So….

Guillén: I'm glad to hear you say that. This is the dispute going on among people who have seen your film. Was Ofelia in her fantasy world? Was it a real world? I keep saying such questions pose a false dichotomy.

Del Toro: Yes, of course. And it's intimate. If the movie works as a piece of storytelling, as a piece of artistic creation, it should tell something different to everyone. It should be a matter of personal discussion. Now objectively, the way I structured it, there are three clues in the movie that tell you where I stand. I stand in that it's real. The most important clues are the flower at the end, and the fact that there's no way other than the chalk door to get from the attic to the Captain's office.

Guillén: Yes, and again referring back to the dynamic of their dyad, Mercedes notices the chalk door; they aren't just in Ofelia's imagination.

Del Toro: Objectively, those two clues tell you it's real. The third clue is she's running away from her stepfather, she reaches a dead end, by the time he shows up she's not there. Because the walls open for her. So sorry, there are clues that tell you where I stand and I stand by the fantasy. Those are objective things if you want. The film is a Rorschach test of where people stand.

Guillén: In your interview with Will Lawrence for The Telegraph you stated: "There is a moment in everyone's life when they have the chance to be immortal, not literally, but like at the moment they don't give a fuck about death—then they're immortal." Could you talk a little more about that? I thought that was a fascinating comment.

Del Toro: Here's the deal. My father was kidnapped in 1997. He was objectively kept hostage for 72 days, right? The first day you think you're going to die. The second day you're absolutely certain you won't survive. The third day you cry at the drop of a hat because you think this is hell and this and that. And then there comes a point in which you realize that you are made prisoner along with him. You are also a hostage of the hostage situation. There is a moment in which you have to will yourself to be free because you are. You say, "If it is true that he is a prisoner, it is also true I am not." There's a moment where you start functioning again. You have to will it.

People think that when they talk about immortality, they talk about immortality in the most pejorative terms. A guy who lives 180 years or 1000 years, that's immortality? It isn't. It's physically impossible. I don't believe in it. But I believe in a form of immortality which is: if you think of your life as a long laundry list of things to do, which is I have to wipe my ass, brush my teeth, change my clothes, get laid, experience oral sex, all this stuff, you have to do it. You have to go through your check list, right? One of them, it says: dying. Why should one of them be more important than the rest? The moment it ceases to be important—your death, not other people's death; I really have a tough time with somebody dying because of the love I feel for them—but in my personal life dying is as unimportant as changing my shoes and my socks or brushing my teeth. It's just another thing I have to do. It's part of the laundry list. So at that moment you become somewhat immortal, which means you're immune to death. That is in Pan's Labyrinth actually. If people watch it carefully, the precise wording of the faun's words to the girl is: "You have to pass three tests before the full moon shines in the sky. We have to make sure that your spirit is intact and not become mortal." That's the real purpose of the tests. It's not if she gets the dagger and she gets the key, those are the mechanics of the test, mechanics which she can then proceed to fault. She can flunk the tests. The mechanics of the test she succeeds in. She believes in herself. She does what she thinks is right. She fucks up here and there but—when the real test come, when she is cornered with no other options but to either kill or give her own life—she chooses to put her own life at risk rather than the kid's. That's a real test. That's what makes her immortal. That's what makes her that she has not become a mortal. So in the movie all the tests are a misdirection and you actually go back and watch the movie and realize that my thesis is that the Faun is the Pale Man in another guise. He's the trickster in another guise. So is the Faun. And the proof of that in the movie is that at the end when she goes and rejoins her father and her mother and the baby in the other world, the fairies that the Pale Man ate are all around her. The same fairies. I coded them in three colors—green, blue and red—so when they reappear you could know, "Oh, those are the green, blue and red fairies."

Guillén: I'll watch for that tonight.

Del Toro: Watch for it tonight! The great thing about the movie, the beauty about the movie is that you can watch it many many times and every time you'll find a new little layer and a new little detail.

Guillén: Well, I wish I had the chance for multiple interviews like I've had the chance for multiple viewings of Pan's Labyrinth. But I need to wrap up. Thank you so much.

Del Toro: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Cross-posted at Twitch. My thanks to Todd Brown at Twitch and David Lowery at Drifting for their suggested queries.

12/20/06 UPDATE: SF Bay Guardian's Johnny Ray Huston understands that "children mean resistance" in Del Toro's films and, in an insightful comparison to Bong Joon-Ho's The Host, notes: "Both Bong and Del Toro measure the sins of the world against a girl's heroism, and while they've learned about the power of spectacle from Steven Spielberg, they haven't swallowed his saccharine formulas—or pursued his nationalist and reactionary political tendencies."

12/30/06 UPDATE: Sara Schieron's Bay Guardian interview with Del Toro covers eggs, ghost sightings, lucid dreaming, Catholicism, the "supranatural," uterine imagery and more.

01/01/07 UPDATE: Dave Hudson does a masterful job of updating the critical response at The Greencine Daily. Also, Del Toro, Iñarrítu and Cuaron on Charlie Rose via Twitch.

02/21/07 UPDATE: The condensed (and censored) version of this interview published by Entertainment Today has gone up on line.

02/23/07 UPDATE: I'm beginning to wonder if there's anyone who hasn't interviewed Guillermo del Toro? Or more importantly, if he will ever exhaust the wealth of stories that he seems to possess? Part one of Canfield's recent interview at Twitch is of particular note because of its mention of a book that Guillermo wrote on Alfred Hitchcock, allegedly published in Spanish by the University of Guadalajara Press, and never translated into English. I would love to read what he says about Hitch!

ASIA SHOCK—Codys-San Francisco Bookstore Appearance By Author Patrick Galloway

Patrick Galloway, author of the Stonebridge Press Stray Dogs & Lone Wolves: The Samurai Film Handbook, has followed up that celebration of Japan's unique samurai genre with his next Stonebridge publication Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, & Thailand, wherein he takes on Asian masters of suspense, the supernatural, exploitation, and good old, bone-chilling, blood-curdling fear! Galloway's adventures into the world of dark cinema will delight newbies and devotees alike. He offers viewing tips, genre/cultural overviews, extensive reviews, highlights, and screenshots, covering everything from Nakagawa's classic Ghost of Yotsuya to Oldboy, Pulse, and Another Heaven.

I'm in the middle of reading this entertaining and informative page-turner and wanted to shout out that Patrick will be reading from Asia Shock and presenting a series of film clips this coming Friday, December 15, 7:00 p.m. at Cody's Bookstore in San Francisco, 2 Stockton Street at Market (415-773-0444). For those of you foolish enough to miss this welcome event, I will be there to capture the Q&A and to interview Patrick afterwards. Stay tuned!