Guillermo del Toro (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1964), like Maradona in the somewhat pedestrian verse of Calamaro, is not just anyone. Contrary to the previous song, he is not a man glued to a leather ball. He is rather a filmmaker who, above all, loves, loves in general, and more specifically, loves the monster. And that reveals him as the most particular and even unique individual who inhabits the world of cinema.
For him and his already extensive filmography, the monster is the only being that shows itself sincere and as it truly is. Without lies or adornments, as the classics would say. And in its inevitable truth, the monster is nothing but mystery, the mystery of love. Del Toro says he dedicated himself to what he does after seeing the creature in James Whale's 1931 film. "I felt the shock of recognition in that seminal moment: gothic horror became my church, and Boris Karloff my Messiah," he states.
That was the first time he saw Frankenstein, not the doctor but indeed the monster. And since then, the creature created by Mary Shelley has pursued him like only two lovers seek each other, with desperation. Well, the wait is over, and the monster finally has his film signed by his most devoted admirer.
If he was so obsessed with the story and the monster itself, why did he wait so long?
I imagine it's his moment. A film and a story that say only monsters play at being god couldn't be more timely at this precise moment. But what's most relevant to me is that if I had made it when I was under 40, it would have been about my father and me. I would have been the son, and the whole film would have been made by a son, instead of making the film as it truly deserves: about a father who decided to stop being a son and become a father. For me, that was the challenge. My children were already born, and I still behaved like my father's son. I've been making films for 30 years, and in all this time, I've learned that things happen when they have to happen. I don't believe in destiny or anything being predestined. There is wisdom in accepting the inevitable.
How pressured did you feel when tackling such a well-known and retold story? I don't think, strictly speaking, that there is such a thing as a canon.
Mary Shelley herself rewrote the story over and over. In fact, in the original manuscript, you can see her handwriting and that of Percy Shelley, her husband. What I find beautiful is that when you create a universal myth, whether it's Frankenstein, Pinocchio, Dracula, or Sherlock Holmes, the myth itself rises so far above the original material that any interpretation is equally faithful if done with sincerity, power, and personality. If you think in terms of fidelity to the canon, you would be completely paralyzed.
In fact, the liberties with Shelley's text are evident starting with the characterization of Victor's father, who is now tremendously cruel and strict...
I changed much more than that. The idea for me is the same as, for example, when I made Pinocchio. I wanted to make a Pinocchio that had not been seen before. Otherwise, what's the point. If you want to listen to the Beatles or Joe Cocker, you have to decide which version you want. And I felt from the beginning that this is a book and a myth that has been rooted in my DNA since I was a child. It basically defined who I am. The more you know about Mary Shelley, the more you realize that the novel is deeply autobiographical for her. And I said to myself, "Well, the only commitment I can make is that the film is also deeply autobiographical for me." The relevant thing is the feeling, that even if you change the plot, you feel the film as you feel the book. If you love the book, it's on your shelf, not on the screen. You can take care of it, not crease the pages, do whatever you want with it. But with the film, if I do my job correctly, the opposite happens. In the first 10 minutes, you say, "This is the first time I've seen something like this. I'm going to stay and see what happens".
You spoke at the beginning about the modernity of your film. Every monster movie, in its own way, is a political film. Who is your Frankenstein truly rebelling against?
Any genre, even the most harmless, like a fairy tale, has a political stance on reality. Undoubtedly. But I prefer to think of it as Russian dolls. You have the act itself, then the social reading, later the political, and finally, what we could call spiritual. And this last one is what interests me within the context of the war we are living in now. If you take a clear political stance, it seems like you abandon the spiritual position.
It seems like you're evading the answer...
No, we urgently need a spiritual dimension. It's what these times require. It's the basis of everything. All problems come from there; abandoning the spiritual dimension leads to all the atrocities we are experiencing. This is also a political statement. What I mean is that, if we think that all the origin of evil in this world is political, we make the mistake of not understanding the true origin of evil. The real drama of the world today is that it displaces the spiritual to the world of information, to the world of bits, to the world of attitude... Our commitment to ourselves should be deeper.
Can you be more explicit?
Our times are too simple. We live in a time where the greatest crimes are committed in the name of the best words: homeland, good, heroism, patriotism... Our world is exhaustingly simplistic, and that's why I've decided to bring complexity. When I was younger, I made films, fairy tales, or fables that said, "Monsters are good and humans are bad." Now I believe that we are all a bit bad and a bit good at the same time. A monster is not just good or bad because it is a human being, and humans are complex. That's the issue. And I think that's the problem. The dialogue we have with reality right now is that if someone is bad, they are completely wicked, and if someone is good, they must be a saint by force. This way of reasoning that has been imposed globally I find completely artificial.
From what you say, your Frankenstein is closer to a moral tale than a horror film.
I have no problem with the definition of horror. Of course, Frankenstein can be seen as a horror film. I've made many. But, for me, it's more of a family film. It's a story about being a father and being a son, as I mentioned before. I spent a long time convinced that I was going to be a very different man from my father. And at 40, I looked in the mirror, and there he was. I was my father! I think that happens to all of us. But notice that Frankenstein can also be defined, as it was at the time, as the first science fiction story in history. It's the first time that science is used instead of a supernatural explanation as the driving force of the story.
So it would be a work of maturity...
Or of old age, rather. As you age, you realize the inescapable fact that you are alone, that you are born alone, and that you will die alone. And in the meantime, you have the possibility of companionship, the possibility of looking at yourself in another person and being looked at by another person. My Pinocchio, to go back to the earlier example, was not the story of Pinocchio learning to be a child, but of Geppetto learning to be a father. This changes everything. When we understand that our children are there to understand us and save us, everything changes. A father normally thinks of his children as accessories to make him feel good, to feel proud... And you realize this mistake with maturity, or even old age. I want to think that hope lies in generations having dialogue and forgiving each other. And this is also a political reflection.