El Espinazo del Diablo (The Devil's Backbone) (2001)

When watching Guillermo Del Toro’s third feature film, The Devil’s Backbone, the promise of the richly conceived Pan’s Labyrinth is apparent in many details: the handsome photography, the Gothic ornamentation, the simultaneously grim and humane sensibility of the storyteller, the imagination.

And what an imagination Del Toro has. With the recent passing of Stan Winston, I’ve been more conscious of the contributions of creature puppetry and the vast superiority of tactile monsters over computer-generated ones. Del Toro primarily provides the former - memorable movie monsters that are not superimposed over the actual settings, but dwell and lurk, very real, within the walls of his gothic-noir architecture. The more often better than decent Hellboy (2004) has a handful of striking monsters and mutants; Blade II (2002), features the coolest cinematic vampires in a while, the ones carrying the Predator mouths; and of course, there is the wobbling eyeless nightmare that is the Pale Man.

He also knows how to pick humans who carry a palpable air of brutality: Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega) is like a junior version of the sadistic Captain Vidal from Pan’s Labyrinth, and has dark, primitive features that reminded me of a much meaner version of Colin Farrell.

There is a sinister mystery at the heart of The Devil’s Backbone and it’s clear that Jacinto is at the center of it.

We are made aware that he was once an orphan at the very institution where he now works as a scowling work-hand. He says the place makes him sick, though why he stays is not revealed until a little later when we learn he is involved in a couple of conspiracies (this would be the point in the review where you might want to stop reading if you’ve not seen the film), one of which is producing supernatural consequences, namely a wronged ghost who will not rest until he has brought his killer to justice. This is a familiar story ingredient in any movie that involves ghosts, usually, and, though the plot of The Devil’s Backbone may not be inspired, the film is a complete success in its cinematography (many, many images could be paused to admire for the sophistication of their composition). Example: There is a long-distance shot of Jacinto and some buddies sitting in orange-yellow light at a table in the middle to lower right side of the frame neatly arranged beside a pile of crates and barrels covered in white cloth bathed in white-blue light from the top to the bottom of the left side of the frame. Pause it and witness a painting. There is a superior artistic eye at work here, though anyone who has watched Pan’s Labyrinth knows this already.

Despite my admiration for the elegance of the look and the richness of visual creativity, The Devil’s Backbone left me wanting a deeper story. It tells a generic sort of R-rated Spanish Scooby Doo story. It has some delightfully perverted details (the headmistress's artificial leg, the deformed fetuses marinating in jars of rum...

...rum with which Professor Casares (Federico Luppi) fills a shot glass and downs) that add particular flavor and idiosyncratic humor, but the visionary ghoulishness of Pan's Labyrinth is still developing.

In one of my favorite movie images of the year, Del Toro plants an un-detonated megaton bomb face down in the ground of the courtyard of the orphanage. Not subtle, but some of the greatest movie images are not subtle (Charles Foster Kane leaning grandly over a podium with a 30-foot tall banner of his face towering behind him). The bomb sticking obstinately in the air is not only a singular, potentially iconic image, but also a potent symbol for a location simmering with dark secrets lying dormant.

Those dark secrets, regrettably, are disappointing; the underwhelming nature of the film comes from the story suggesting an epic, expansive evil with its setting and often mighty images (the bomb, the jarred fetuses and the symbol of the “Devil’s backbone”) and then revealing the evil as being merely the accidental death of one of the boys at the orphanage at the hands of a greedy, amoral young work-hand. Jacinto becomes much worse than simply amoral as the film goes along, but regardless, any possibilities for communicating a larger allegory offered by those mighty images is lost once the film simply reduces the possibilities to the boys tussling with Jacinto and two thug friends of his.

Another way to regard the wasted symbol of the upright bomb is to pretend it represents Del Toro’s ability: it is certainly already there, waiting, but it has yet to erupt into anything spectacular.


Grade: B