'Turn of the Screw' set in the Spanish Civil War morphs strangely into Gothic
melodrama cut with 'Lord of the Flies'. I liked it as a whole, but what about
you?
Thoughts, please!
― Will, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)
I would have made it a twelve certificate, as it is in truth just a
really classy kids ghost movie (not far off in tone and setting to
The Others). Very impressive storytelling though the ghost is
revealed a bit too early - but a great piece of boys oown derring do
mixed with tragedy and spookiness.
That said, the villain might as well have had a moustache he twirled
he was so damn evil.
― Pete, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)
fifteen years pass...
just saw a pristine 35mm print, damn this is such a fine film.
not least of all because the personification of evil is the mega-luscious Eduardo Noriega
there's a new lavish book on it ($50 list).
del Toro was there post-film and was very funny, did at least 3 fat jokes on himself.
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Monday, 4 December 2017 02:14 (seven years ago)
i was just thinking about this movie yesterday and how it lives kinda unfairly in the shadow of pan’s labyrinth
del toro has a real talent for working with kids - wish he’d do more in that vein
― Dic Space has been contacted for comment. (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 4 December 2017 07:59 (seven years ago)
xp you probably saw the same print I did in NY. first time i saw the movie, so great! I may actually love it more than Pan's Labyrinth, but I'll need to revisit that one to make sure.
― Nhex, Monday, 4 December 2017 09:21 (seven years ago)
del Toro in book excerpt:
If you watch [The Devil’s Backbone] again, you’ll see that I try to give you misleading clues in the beginning. I think that every movie gets better the second time around if you love it. And sometimes you don’t understand why, but it has a pull on you and you want to see it again. Some of the movies I like most, I liked on the second and third viewing, and disliked on the first viewing, but something kept bringing me back to them....
The movie opens like it closes, except at the end of the movie I add one more line: “A ghost, that’s who I am.” That’s the doctor recognizing that he’s narrating the movie—that there are two ghosts in the movie, one doing the narration, and Santi. But that line shows that Casares has made peace with his reality: This is who I am. Spain is a very haunted country, and it’s mostly haunted by the Civil War. So I open with images that, even if you don’t know the story, you think you just saw a kid murder another kid. You see Jaime killing Santi, because Santi’s on the floor bleeding. You see an act of war—the bomb falling. You don’t know you’re going to see that bomb again in the middle of the courtyard. You see the kid with the blood coming out of his head, which was important for me to set up because it’s a visual characteristic of the ghost [that’s] very strong once you see it. Then we come back to all these little snippets in a different way at the end of the film. At the end, you understand how the ghost—the kid that you see get killed—was killed. And you see the floating memories of Jacinto in the water, his photographs that he had in his pocket. And you see the professor trapped within the frame of the building, and the kids going into the distance. Santi has caught Jacinto, but he’s still standing in the middle of the pool. Santi was not liberated.
https://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/book-excerpt-guillermo-del-toros-the-devils-backbone-by-matt-zoller-seitz-and-simon-abrams
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 7 December 2017 21:36 (seven years ago)