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 more resemblance to the world of fantasy than keeping to real-life events.

(Del Toro, 2001)

The Spanish Civil War was initially considered as a “forbidden topic” (Kinder, 1993, p.160) for filmmakers to pursue due to many of the scars it left on society still healing. However, there were a handful of filmmakers who utilised the terror of Spain’s past and brought its depictions to life onscreen. In 1992, Fernando Trueba released the film Bella Epoque focusing on a soldier abandoning the army for the sake of love. Trueba’s work “suggested a new attitude to the past that definitely left behind memories of the Civil War” (Johnson, 2005, p.199). In Del Toro’s work, he applies the concept of depicting these events in all of their devastating horror but with his own signature touch of finding monsters within our own kind rather than the fictional sort (Sondergard, 2016, p.101). Throughout The Devil’s Backbone, there is reference to a ghost haunting the orphanage known as Santi, a boy that used to be housed there. It is eventually revealed, as can be seen in the clip below, that the caretaker accidentally killed the child in a fit of rage and hid his body to cover for himself. This act is, as Del Toro describes himself, reminiscent of the Civil War as it turned family members on each other as he envisions the events within the orphanage to form an allegory to the real Civil War (McDonald & Clark, 2014, p138).

(Del Toro, 2001)

Loss of national identity also affected many during the Spanish Civil War especially in regards to religion. As Helen Graham explains, “religious orders regarding teaching were barred, believing that they represented an insuperable barrier to the creation of a republican nation in Spain” (Graham, 2005, p.12). Del Toro incorporates the downfall of religion into his film by depicting the staff of the orphanage replacing religious paintings with scenic works of rural Spain to fit in with the forthcoming change in society. We also see two of the boys from the orphanage moving a depiction of the Crucifixion of Christ from storage. This can be seen in the clip below.

(Del Toro, 2001)

In response to the question as to whether The Devil’s Backbone leans more towards the fantasy genre than a depiction of the Civil War, I would argue that Del Toro strikes a balance between the two. Instead of using the Civil War as a backdrop to tell a ghost story, Del Toro flips expectations and uses the ghost story to make his tale of the destructive events of war through the eyes of a child, more accessible for a wider audience.



Bibliography:
Del Toro, G., (Director), (2001), The Devil’s Backbone, [Motion Picture], Spain: Sony Pictures Classics

Graham, H., (2004), The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: OUP Oxford

Johnson, R., (2005), Belle Epoque, In A. Mira (Ed.), The Cinema of Spain and Portugal, (pp. 199-208), New York: Wallflower Press

Kinder, M., (1993), Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain, Berkley: University of California Press

McDonald, K. & Clark, R., (2014), Guillermo Del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing

Sondergard, S.L., (2016), The Ambivalence Of Creative Desire: Theogonic Myth and Monstrous Offspring, In J. W. Morehead (Ed.), The Supernatural Cinema of Guillermo Del Toro: Critical Essays, Jefferson: McFarland Press  

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