Guillermo Del Toro

How does Mexican director, Guillermo Del Toro, portray children and childhood in his films?

By Sophie Villalobos

Guillermo Del Toro

• Born October 1964, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.• Largely raised by his strict Catholic Grandmother.• Started making his own Super-8mm films when he was eight

while attending a Jesuit-run boys’ school.• Studied script writing with Mexican director, Jamie Humberto

Hermosillo.• Learnt Make-up and special effects from Dick Smith (The

Exorcist 1973) • Started his own make-up design company in Mexico 1984

called, ‘Necropia.’

Children and Childhood

“I hate Hollywood movies with children as happy, brainless creatures that spout one-liners. What I tried to put in The Devil's Backbone (2001) is how unsafe it is to be a child. Many times in my life I saw children almost kill each other.” [1]

Mise-en-scene

A shot from a scene where Ofelia encounters The Faun in the ‘real world.’ The strange bluish tint is used here.

A shot of the ending scene from “Pan’s Labyrinth” where Ofelia returns to the fantasy world. The amber is used here.

“You have the blue outside world and the golden magical world.” [20]

The Narrative Opening Of Pan’s Labyrinth

CinematographyThe camera is held at eye-level with Ofelia. This shows her point of view as being important: “The camera is always at the height of the kid’s eyes...” [15]

The shots that show the adults are low angle/over the shoulder shots showing how Ofelia views them from her child’s perspective. In this shotThe camera shows how she views her step-father.

CinematographySimilarly to Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro also uses eye-level sots in The Devil’s Backbone.

Like in Pan’s labyrinth, a high angle/over the shoulder shot shows the antagonist, who in this case is another child. A low angle/over the shoulder shot is used to show how the protagonist views the antagonist, all from a child’s point of view.

Props: Fairy BooksThe close up of the fairy book Ofelia is reading during the car journey in the opening .

Screenshots from a scene later on in the film where an insect enters Ofelia’s room at night. Ofelia shows it an illustration of a fairy from one of her books and asks, “Are you a fairy?”

The insect then transforms into a fairy similar to the illustration.

Pan’s Labyrinth - Sound and Editing

An example of the vertical wipes used in “Pan’s Labyrinth” : Ofelia’s fascist step-father rides into the forest in search of rebels. A tree trunk wipes across the screen to reveal Ofelia walking in another part of the forest while reading aloud a fairy story from one of her books.

Childhood Symbolism: Pale Man

The Pale Man’s feast is identical to the feast of Ofelia’s Fascist Step-Father.

Childhood Symbolism: The Faun Scene 1: The Faun discovers that Ofelia has disobeyed his orders. He tells her that she can never return to her kingdom, that all memory of her will vanish and the creatures will vanish with it.

Scene 2: From the ending scene of the film. The Faun and Ofelia are talking, Ofelia’s stepfather appears from behind. The camera switches to a point of view shot. This shot is from Ofelia’s stepfather’s point of view.

Childhood in Pan’s LabyrinthThere are religious overtones in this scene that are derived from Del Toro’s own Catholic upbringing. Ofelia’s narrative voiceover accompanies the images of the rose on screen. Her story is about a rose on top of a mountain that gives the gift of immortality. The flower represents Jesus and the promise of eternal life.

“I very deliberately designed the idea of the fantasy world to be extremely uterine. We used a fallopian palette of colours: we used crimsons and golds, and everything in the fantasy world is very rounded while everything in the real world is cold and straight. You can see it in the not-so-subtle entrance to the tree. The idea is that this girl's idea of heaven, ultimately, is to go back into her mother's belly. That is why the first time she goes to the fantasy world, she goes through the baby in her mother's belly. She starts talking to her brother, and the camera goes into the belly and through that we go into the magical land where the rose grows and so on.” [11]

Brutality and Childhood

A child is murdered by an adult in both ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’. They are both compositionally similar.

In both ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ the adult antagonist is abusive towards the child protagonist.

Children as open-minded

Cronos: “What if the granddaughter accepts him no matter how bad he looks, no matter if he is rotting away?” [19]

The Devil’s Backbone: Carlos is not afraid to confront the ghost. He does not deny or doubt its existence.

Conclusion