From his latest Frankenstein to the idea of cinema as an emotional and spiritual act. The Oscar-winning director talks about himself. starting from that distant day when he felt he belonged to a world of “creatures”
“I have postpartum depression,” jokes Guillermo Del Toro, 61, Mexican director who won four Oscars for The shape of waterthree per Pan’s Labyrinth and one for the cartoon Pinocchiowhen we meet him at the 22nd Marrakech Festival. His latest work Frankensteinavailable on Netflix, is fresh off five Golden Globe nominations, which will likely be followed by new Oscar nominations. Instead of feeling relaxed and happy, however, he seems to be pining. As if he embodied a profound love for his latest cinematic “creature”. A feeling which, we discover, has ancient roots.
«On Sundays I went to church at 8 in the morning, because my mother was very Catholic, and then I spent the day watching films on TV», says Del Toro. «At the age of 7 I saw the Frankenstein by James Whale, a 1931 film, and observing Boris Karloff (the actor who played Frankenstein, ed.) I felt something profound, of the same intensity as what my grandmother felt for Jesus. Except that I perceived him for that world of monsters, in some ways I felt like Frankenstein. When I was 11, I bought a paperback edition of Mary Shelley’s novel and read it in a single day. And since I had been shooting my films in Super 8 since I was 8, I decided that when I had enough film available I would turn it into a film.”
Today Del Toro’s remote desire is there for all to see, and everyone will be able to judge it not only for its adherence to the original novel (“I chose the first version, the one from 1818, much wilder and more undisciplined than the subsequent ones influenced by Mary Shelley’s father”), but as critics have written also for its visual grandiloquence and melodramatic character.
«As a Mexican, emotions are very important to me», says the director, «and I believe that we live in a moment in which expressing them is increasingly rare, cynicism is seen as synonymous with intelligence. But there is no need to be ashamed of expressing emotions, because it is through them that spirituality is achieved. I wanted the film to feel like an opera and convey strong vibrations. In this I was inspired by Romanticism.”
That is to say?
The Romantics embraced an ideal of spirituality and emotion at the risk of bordering on the ridiculous. But Lord Byron said: “If any other expedient fails, it shocks the public.” Well, I think this can be a precept for directors. In an era where the industry wants us to entrust our emotions to algorithms to create art, I say: screw Artificial Intelligence.
Monsters like Frankenstein are at the center of his filmography. Yet they don’t terrify, but they move, we feel empathy for them. How come?
I was born in 1964 and at that time all monsters had stopped being creatures bringing horror. Take Godzilla, the symbol of the force of nature and the power of the atomic bomb: he was already tamed in the 1960s. And in the Seventies, the culture of Universal monsters such as Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman and so on was already thriving, which had been transformed from scary into new heroes. In Mary Shelley’s book the demonic moments of the creature are rare, while, in reality, most of his words follow the monologue of Caliban, the monster slave of Prospero in The storm by Shakespeare: «Why have you made me thus? Why did you give me the world and not its understanding?”. Ultimately it is man’s dialogue with God.
Where does the taste for the visual richness of your films come from?
From every form of art, both from a painter like Henry Rousseau and from illustrators and cartoonists like Will Elder or Harvey Kurtzman. My training drew heavily on visual language.
And the directors who inspire you?
There are two who influenced me, Hitchcock and Fellini. The first said: «I started with silent films and when sound arrived I tried to exploit it in an expressive way, and I did the same with the advent of color». And Fellini did the same by moving from neorealism to color: just think of a masterpiece like Casanova! Since I had all these things available, I tried to use them in the most expressive way possible.
You, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu are Mexicans of the same generation and you have all made it big in Hollywood. How do you explain it? Do you feel like a team?
I talk to Alfonso and Alejandro every week, sometimes more than I do with my family. We have in common that we were rebels: we wanted to do something that the generation of Mexican directors before us had not done, trying to improve the composition of the images, the photography, the sound and so on. And we started with the apprenticeship: Alfonso was assistant director, I took care of special effects, make-up and storyboard. We helped each other: I read their scripts and they read mine.
As for success, from the outside, it is different from how we experienced it. Why?
Being successful can mean staying unemployed for up to five years without anyone realizing it. We all took a lot of risks: I remember when Alfonso was struggling to produce Gravity that no one wanted. And then when it hit the box office, everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
Guillermo Del Toro is now more of a trademark than a name?
I do not believe. The only one who managed to turn his name into a brand was Hitchcock. But he too had to overcome prejudices: before his success they said he was a director capable of shooting at most one or two good sequences, but not a good film.
