The Devil's Backbone: More Fantasy Than Fact?
(Del Toro, 2001) “What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps? Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.” (Del Toro, 2001). These are the opening lines to Guillermo Del Toro’s 2001 supernatural drama, The Devil’s Backbone. The film is set against the backdrop of the final few years of the Spanish Civil War as an orphanage finds itself trapped in the middle of the conflict as well as facing a possible supernatural threat, but it’s these opening remarks that pose a comparison between the definition of a ghost to the cyclical nature of war. According to Del Toro, he envisioned both The Devil’s Backbone and his later feature, Pan’s Labyrinth, to be his tale on the Spanish Civil War with each interpretation taking on a sibling-like role (McDonald & Clark, 2014, p.143). The aim of this post is to analyse whether the film bares mo...