|
|
Guillermo Del Toro
The films of
Guillermo Del Toro are visually entertaining,
engrossing, and most of time, personal. In the first few
minutes of Blade II, Del Toro will pull you into a scene
that will make you feel uneasy and squeamish. Throughout
The Devil’s Backdone, he will make think about and feel
for the characters. In a scene that needs to be seen
from Cronos, a man who is becoming a vampire licks blood
off the floor of a bathroom. You will either think
Guillermo Del Toro is a genius like his fans call him or
a pig like his haters call him. |
Guillermo Del Toro is not like other directors who went
to film school. He is from Mexico, where there is no
film school and here working in film, much less in the
horror genre, is frowned upon. He came to the U.S. to
apply to learn about make-up from artist, Dick Smith. He
learned for free because he was the only one from Mexico
who was doing that kind of work.
Themes about religion, being an outcast, and being put
down by others are presented throughout his films. He
made a name for himself with his low budget vampire
film, Cronos. His follow-up was the decent but not
well-received, Mimic. If critics thought he was going to
fade away, he proved them wrong with the ghost story,
The Devil’s Backbone. The man was enjoying himself when
he made Blade II. His most personal and his favorite of
all of his movies is the comic book adaptation, Hellboy. |
|
| He is a visionary director who is taking the horror
genre, which is not considered to be promising by
critics, to an art form. There is also something I want
to say about Guillermo Del Toro. I was fortunate to meet
this man. On Halloween in 2002, Lincoln Center was
holding a horror film festival where directors would
have a Q/A before their movies is screened. Guillermo
Del Toro spoke before his movie, Cronos, was screened.
He spoke with enormous passion and laugh-out-loud humor
about movies, his films, and life. Afterwards, I spoke
to him and asked for his autograph. As he drew the bug
from the Cronos movie on my paper, we spoke about Mexico
and the food from Puebla, a town in Mexico. I was a
novice filmmaker in my second year studying at the
College of Mount Saint Vincent. Standing next to
Guillermo Del Toro, I realized what a real director is
and the kind of filmmaker I hoped to become one day.
|
|
by Jorge Solis
March 2005 |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
| |
|
