Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones. His films draw heavily on sources as diverse as weird fiction, fantasy and war.
Del Toro can clearly be seen as an auteur due to his recurring themes and frequent collaborations. In this Culture Show interview from 2006 Mark Kermode discusses the directors work whilst questioning his personal experiences and influences. It can be seen as a good guide for what critical approaches should be applied to your own study and how examples of a directors work can be used to indicate a 'consistency of style'.
For those with a weakness for the beautiful monsters of modern cinema, Mexican maestro Guillermo del Toro has earned a deserved reputation as the finest living exponent of fabulist film. Gregarious and personable, with an almost photographic recall of faces, he has charmed both the hardcore horror fans, who gave him a hero's welcome at London's Frightfest in August, and now the upmarket critical cognoscenti, who snapped to attention following his Palme d'Or nomination for his new film Pan's Labyrinth at Cannes in May.
Set against the backdrop of fascist Spain in 1944, Pan's Labyrinth is a dark fairy tale that distils his distinctive mix of fact and fantasy, poetry and politics, pain and pleasure. It's an epic, poetic vision in which the grim realities of war are matched and mirrored by a descent into an underworld populated by fearsomely beautiful monsters - a transformative, life-affirming nightmare which is, for my money, the very best film of the year.
Since the early 1990s, del Toro has divided his film-making between personal European projects (the modern vampiric chiller Cronos in 1993; the ghostly Spanish Civil War fable The Devil's Backbone in 2001) and big-budget Hollywood hits (ongoing comic-book franchises Blade II in 2002, and Hellboy in 2004). Those familiar with the guilty ghosts of The Devil's Backbone will recognise key motifs in his new fable, about a young girl's exploration of a labyrinthine underworld in Franco-era Spain.
1. It's self-referential. In other words, it refers to itself, or is about itself. Postmodernist artists often refuse to let their works be simply or totally about something else. Their works are about themselves as works of art, and they constantly draw attention to themselves as artifices instead of trying to be windows on some sort of reality beyond themselves.
2. It's "intertextual." That is, it's art that often likes to be about some other work of art, or some other "text." A famous pop artist named Roy Lichtenstein loved painting images taken right out of comic books. That's "intertextuality," he made art about somebody else's art.
3. It's category-defying, often in confusing ways. Postmodernist artists love to defy our expectations and do things they're not "supposed" to do -- maybe to remind us that the rational categorisations we often use to understand art never work as well or as perfectly as we like to think they do.
4. It's "pastiched." Fancy French word, that. "Pastiche," to recent art critics, is the practice of borrowing elements of different genres and different styles from lots of different historical periods, then mixing them all together in a single work of art. It creates a kind of historical collage.
5. It's not snobbish. In fact, postmodernist art can be very "pop." It often draws its subject matter from the realm of popular culture and employs pop-culture forms and genres. Most postmodernist artists don't draw the sorts of distinctions between "high" and "low" culture many artists of the past did -- and so they defy yet another mode of categorisation.
6. It gets fact and fiction all mixed up. Postmodernist artists aren't much interested in the distinction between real and make-believe. They often make famous "real" historical figures interact with fictional characters in their works, and they often re-tell "actual" textbook history in peculiar, unsettling, often illuminating ways. Mixing fact and fiction is a way to amplify this idea.
Characteristics of a postmodern text that can be seen within ‘Pan's Labyrinth’: Intertextuality – the referencing of other cultural texts; either visually or verbally within the content of the text (Alice In Wonderland/The Wizard of Oz/Goya - paintings.) Hybridity - the mixing and/or recycling of pre-existing genres and narratives to construct new forms or a ‘hybrid’ (Fantasy/Fairy Tales/Political/Historical/War/Drama) Pastiche – paying ‘homage’ to older texts (see intertextuality) Bricolage - the collection of disparate or differing objects to help explain the nature of the prevailing culture and society (links to the construction of the film - it's assembled from many different styles/ideas) Irony – playfulness with the style, form and/or content of a text (Knows that is referencing other narratives and has fun with its style)
When answering a question from a postmodern perspective apply the key words to a wide range of scenes in your discussion. Don't just state that it's postmodern as you will also have to explain how your understanding of the film has changed as a result of studying the critical perspective.
Here is an explanation of what a favela is and how they developed in Rio de Janeiro. It is useful in understanding the key concepts surrounding issues of World Cinema and for a discussion of 'City Of God'.
Extract:
How the People Of Rio View the Favelas
The image that most people have of the faveladors revolves around their rural origins, supposed lack of urban experience and that they are only leaching off the infrastructure of Rio. Many consider the favelas the source of Rio's urban problems, citing them for crime, violence, promiscuity, family breakdown and the creation of a culture of poverty. The prevailing view is that the favelas are just a transfer of poverty form the country to the city and are responsible for the negative effects of over-urbanization.
This over-urbanization are seen by some as a positive aspect, creating a perfect atmosphere for new industrial development. Because of the cheap, surplus labor that exists in the favelas, industries could find an easy market for locating and making money. Still others view the favela as just another part of the framework of Rio. It is a natural occurrence of the city and is compared to a weed growing in a garden, there will always be weeds. Despite these views, little is being done to modernize the favelas or even deal with the shortage of utilities.
Here is an interview with director Fernando Merielles about the making of 'City Of God' where he discusses how he cast the film largely with non-actors, mostly young males, who were discovered in the various favelas around Rio de Janeiro in an extensive and non-traditional casting process.
Extract: When did you decide to use non-actors in the film?
When I decided to do the film, I wanted to do it with the same feeling as the book, this “inside” feeling. I knew I couldn’t get this feeling with professionals. And I wanted to use the expertise from the people inside the slums for the film. Whenever I gave them the script, instead of giving them the dialogue, I’d tell them what the intentions of the sequences were and let them improvise. Doing those improvisations for about ten months is how we came up with all the dialogue. If you read our fourth version of the script, the one that I decided to work with, I think like 30 percent is actually scripted. The rest they made up, that’s why it feels so natural. They were a co-author of the film to be sure and that’s why it works.
Worth a look for a discussion of 'City of God'. Go to chapter 8: Post-Cinema Novo - Brazilian Cinema (pg. 117). There are also some useful chapters on New Wave Cinema.
