I have long been a fan of del Toro's work, whether it be the classic Pan's Labyrinth, the larger-than-life Pacific Rim, or his children's show, Trollhunters. I remember a friend of mine remarking to me that the fantasy genre had become bland, with dwarves, elves, gnomes, and dragons taking the forefront. My immediate response to him was, "we need to watch del Toro's movies, starting now."
Guillermo del Toro was raised in a lovely house in Guadalajara, Mexico after his father won the lottery. Throughout his childhood, he tore through books, comics, and horror movies, slowly collecting the imagery and knowledge he needed to someday design monsters of his own. When he was four, he saw his first dead body. Despite his strict Catholic upbringing, del Toro refused to dispel his love for the macabre. His grandmother, a devout Catholic, would punish him mentally and physically for his interests. This caused a permanent shift in the way he viewed faith and institutions as a whole.
He began working as a makeup and special effects artist after studying film, learning more about design, and improving his skills. His horror doesn't come from gore, fantastical monsters, or the unknown, but rather the human body. He says, "we are almost like spirits or minds that are being hosted in a bag of meat that is treacherous." We can see this version of horror in movies such as Pan's Labyrinth, where the main character's mother is bedridden from a high-risk pregnancy, or in The Shape of Water, where the villain's fingers slowly decay from gangrene.
del Toro describes himself as using mental imagery to create and often designs out his monsters before sending them to his special effects team. He draws different elements of his movies in shows in various notebooks and has oversight of his special effects teams. To create the Pale Man, one of the antagonists of Pan's Labyrinth, he remembered being horrified by manta rays as a child and put the face of a manta ray on the original sketch the special effects artists sent to him. The Pale Man's emaciated figure is a symbol of how some priests, despite being presented with many opportunities to find love with other adults, "hunger" for young children — he sees them (and the church as a whole) as an insatiable evil.
Something that sets del Toro apart from his fellow horror/fantasy directors is his love of practical effects. Despite the general pivot to CGI in the past decade, he has remained committed to using practical effects as much as possible. In The Shape of Water and Pan's Labyrinth, he only used CGI to animate the faces of the monsters and add lighting effects. The Amphibian Man, the male lead of The Shape of Water, was one of his most detailed creations. He spent years perfecting the design. One of my favorite stories is about when he had his wife, daughters, and other family members look at the design of the Amphibian Man to make sure that he was attractive enough to be a leading man. It took three years to perfect the design, and del Toro doesn't regret any part of his creative process.
I believe that Guillermo del Toro's work shows middle-C creativity. His ability to blend historical events with fantasy shows a great knowledge of both topics. He works within the genre of fantasy but invents new and exciting creatures to tell his stories with. And even then, the creatures never seem to be the villains (save for Pacific Rim) but rather the people refusing to accept change, much like the authoritarian institutions and governments of the past that del Toro rejects. His stories are one-of-a-kind, and I think he has changed the genres of fantasy and horror for the better with his open mind.
I personally love Guillermo del Toro's work. I think that nobody can really create "monsters" like del Toro does. While you may be able to argue that some of his movies may not be that creative as far as the plot goes (cough, cough Pacific Rim). I think that his true creativity would definitely lie in his designs of his "monsters". I read that he was mostly inspired from watching the "Creature from the Black Lagoon" for his design for the amphibian man in "The Shape of Water". He said as a kid he wanted to see the Creature be the good guy and end up with the girl and I though it was so cool that he brought that to life in his designs. I loved the way the Amphibian Man looked like an ancient god brought to life, and the attention to detail in the scales on him. But even if you go back farther to Hellboy, the movies still hold up because of del Toro's attention to detail in these character designs. Overall, this was a great post and got me thinking about watching one of his movies again.
ReplyDeleteI had the privilege of viewing Pan's Labyrinth in a senior year film studies class and found it really interesting how del Toro is able to combine his creepy Kafkaesque imagery in a manner that is both terrifying but—to a certain extent—child friendly. The whole plot of Pan's Labyrinth is reminiscent of a fairy-tale someone would tell a child at bed time, full of magical fawns, and secret princesses. Del Toro initially planned for the title of the film to be called "The Labyrinth of the Fawn," a direct translation of the Spanish title, "El Laberinto del Fauno," as a testament to its traditionally fantastical nature. It is also very intriguing to observe how heavily influenced he is by his childhood in creating his various worlds of fantasy, especially when one compares the idea of the Pale man being a critique of Catholic priests and the Church as a whole while accounting for the abuse he suffered at the hands of his strictly religious Catholic grandmother.
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