Sunflower
Valinor
Jun 19 2010, 10:38am
Views: 1412
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Okay, if some of you laughed at my posts before, you're really going to laugh now, becauseI'll either come off looking like a total naieve jerk or way off the mark, out of touch, take your pick, but I hope what I say has some merit. I've been trying to put this into words longer than I can say.Beneath all the anger, all the bitterness and the outrage, lies a deppand still-abiding sadness, a sadness that I think may never fully fade...not as long as I enter a theater or open up a magazine, let alone pop in a DVD. I discivered Guillermo Del Toro's work almost 5 yrs ago when I entered a theater ans saw "Pan's Labyrinth." (an experience I am forever grateful to God I was able to do in a theater and not just on TV...it makes all the difference.)Sincethen, I've followed him on his website, Del Toro Films, http://www.deltorofilms.com . I lurkedf ro 2 yrs, then began posting about 3 yrs ago. I went to GDT School and followed the beginning of what I saw as his natural progression upwards in Western film, chronichling his three-prongedshutting between Mainstream Hollywood, the Spanish-Americsan cinema hybridshe created, and the lstly the beaurgeoning Mexican-Spanish Axis of blossoming artists that the Oscar success of PL has enabled to bring forth. I got to know, and will continue to know, a great bunch of people, a msall close-knit family of 45 people or so, and have been eld down strange paths, including meeting a couple of the great man;s artistic entourage. All the while I read his once in a while posts, full of the curious enthusiasm of a little kid, and then when he was announced as director of TH I gleefully followed him over here, seeking to get more people from both sites posting on the other one ( an experiment that had had only modest success.) I was convinced I had something more than special..something you don't see very often. The trhing that has fascinated me about G is the battle he has spent the past 15 or so yrs fighting between the 2 halves of himself, as expressed in the 2 poleshe currently operstes within: the mainstream cdommercial side and the Spanish-language side as expressed in Chronos and the Spanisj Civil War Dualogy. (one of his "wish list" projects with Universal is the third inststallment of this supposed trilogy, but it does not excite me as much as the other two...for reasons I will explain later.) Disgusted with Hollywood after the experienceof Mimic, he went back and began making his own iconoclastic pieces, indulging in the subtelty, depth and lyricims he felthe was denied in Hollywood. Most directors would have stropped there, bur G felt there was an antrinsic need to operate in both spheres, that one needed the other...and not just to pay the bills or have one be leverage for the other, Except for PL, none of these felt to me fully complete. In PL he found a premis--that the adult mind needed fantasy more than the child and fantasy is a treasure that is needed and must be preserved at all costs, and the way for an adult is to begin by opening your mind to wonder. (thus I interpret it.) His last work before TH would have been was Hellboy 3, which far from being as good as many thought, was for me in retrospect an outpouring of frustrsation at the confines he was caged in, a yearning for a larger canvas to paint in. Thus the over-boiling cauldrom of creatures in the Troll Market. He was rattling the bars of the Hollywood cage and yearned for someting more. No matter the fun, seeing it now, you can tell his soul was not invested in it... And then like a ripe plum from the sky, "The Hobbit" fell from the Movie Heaven. I don;t think for him it was just a career move...all comments at fim festivals to the contrary. He did not fake that pic with PJ. One of the things that most excited me over these many months was not only the impending opportunity to witness how Del Toro planned to merge his 2 warring selves possibly into something new, in cinematic terms, but how he was going to finally have not omly a large enough canvas to stretch out upon and bring his formidable intellect to bear, but how the high-profile natureof TH was going to open up whole new worlds, potentially, for so many. We who not know him from DTF and were introduced to him through hos osts here, got to know the incredible depth of his knowledge. Many people may be abkle to drop the names of obscure poets, painters, authors and even gamers and musicians at the drop of a hat, but I doubt many of the current crop of directors in Hollywood, let alone their clients, browese old bookstands and can sucessfully connect a gamer with a poet, or an author with a..well, another osbscure author, and find artistic ferment and unity in such ideas. And it was not just online. Many's the time I've opened sa magazine over the past 3 yrs and found that G had an endearing habit of "relapsing" and letting slip the most oscure names and titles into interviews with mainstream publications.) How many times I've found myself thinking, "I can't WAIT to see the cover story in TIME magazie or Entertainment Weekly where he talks about Dos Passos or some unkmown German writer from 1902, and their novella about vampires." (etc etc.) And say, if LOTr was anything to go by, the "twilight" fangirls all fall in love with whoever plays Bard and want to read every article his picture is in, and are inspired to Google this German guy and read his poetry!" A silly idea, biut never underestimate the powers of peer influence on a teen..I speal from some experience. You'd never find me today with a heavy tome of Joyce under my arm (but yes, on my bookcase:), but I can always remember the distinct thrill of discovering "Ulysses" at the age of 12, simply b/c I went on an Irish binge b/c my new (and still favorite) musicians were U2.And I wanted to knoe every name any band member said in an interview. To this day, omly Harold Bloom's musings about "the snot-green sea" on the Matello Tower remain embedded in my brain (O alas!) Silly? You betcha. What were the chances of this happeninfg with gneral audiences for TH? Maybe in America, slim...but you never know. However, the chances of some 10 yr old Russian child being led to it were great, if they didn;t know them already. How many kids in Thailand or Brazil will flock to Drood? We shall see...IF it gets made. And that is the real revolution we hall sadly never get now. Del Toro is that rarest of breeds operating anywhere near the commercial mantream today: the one whose foundation continues tio be the Written Word. He is a truem Renaissance Man, a true intellectual, a throwback to an earlier time beofre the last 2 generations of film-mkaers when immersion in their parents; libraries was the norm and visual media were a new and yet still distant phenomenon. Listening to a GDT DVD Commenatary was fior me often like what a DVD comeatary would be if DVDs were around when Bergman or SanijatRay or Jean Coctueau were in their artistic prime. (that's what I felt Del Toro had a chance at being: the next Jean Cocteau...or bigger...PL was his "Beauty And The Beast." Beautiful haunting score and all.) Except that with TH, he;d be splashing his Old World intelect upon the biggest of global broadcasters and influcenicng countless millions at the most jhigh-profuiler level as a result. Many times I;ve caught myself thinking, "WHAT is this guy stilldoing making horror films and ghiost stories? He should be making stuff likr Dr. Zhivago, instead." But alas....that Hollywood he had a chance of rasing from the dead. Not so now. Commerical clout is all, and omnly by rising to the highest commerical level can you be affodedthat scope and freedom. Gone now.) The last 2 generations of Hollywood giants came of age and were the most heavily influenced not by the wriotten word, but by its 2nd generation anticideents--radio, TV, fiolms of all sorts. Pulp novels. And now, video. Blomkamp, PJ, Cameron, Spielberg--they all drop the names of film directors and TV shows more readily then authors and painters and poets for the most part. OH, there's the occaisonal Milius who seems to have that Old Worldism, but they are few and far between. This and G'd book illustrator past, the Notebook, his Brothers Grimm mentality that did not seek (unlike Spielberg with ET, for example) to candy-coat life by suggesting that there could be any easy subsitute for the loss of loved ones, who was afriad to show the lonely place the world reallywas and our honest attempts to deal with it--well...That mentality is different too. At least otdayit is. He is behind his times. Could this have made a differnece? This big global canvas to splash his PL sensibilities on (for I am convincedhe was reaching for new ground with TH scripts--tobring a PL sensibilty to ME at the same time he was going to attemopt a sweeter, sadder and wiser tale that was a step higher than anything we;d ever seen--he was going to reach for nww ground and none of the projects he;d been offered come cloee. Let'ssee what Universal has on trhe table for him, as per his sugggestion and theirs. First up: 2 remakes: one of Frankenstein, the other of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide. Reamkes of film that have bave been done to death. Oh, he;d do a great job, but they're REAMKES. Nuff said. Hellboy 3: reportedly, that's not goong to end happy. And you can;t help thinking, that the oroject doesn;t sound so fun anymore after TH that never was, but a big coming down. Drood: the most OScar potential of the bunch, but the least likely to be greenlit, now that Gi sno longer :the director of TH." It;s a murder mystery set in the catacoms of London and follows a fantasy interpretation of the last 5 yrs of Charles Dickens's life. Anyone who's read Drood will think it has some potential but then again, it;s still ofmurder mystery about CHARLES DICKENS. (I've read it , but will spare the full plot.) And finaly, the project closest ot G';s heart, and for wh9hc hw is REALLY waiting for, his lifelong dream: HP Lovecraft's story ":At The Mountians Of Madness" (ATMOM). An uncanny King Kong-like tale set in deepest Antarctica in the early 1930's that bears an uncanny plot resemblance to Tolkien's 2 Moria chapters--with much the same result. I love readng it over and over, savoring the Tolkien-like richness of cartograpjhy, richness of diescrptivedetail, and the slowe unfloding of the taler like an onion peeling, as well as the claustrophobia as I follow the 2 main characters through the Dead City and the horrors within. Del Toro;s dream is fim parts of this in Antarctica. IMO, any studio woulod jump to do this for the director of TH", but not, now, sadly, GDT, who to his dying day will bear the title of "the gut who was going to direct TH>' If directors were plants, then I propose the follwing: that Camkeron is a tough, hardy coral; Spielberg is a solisd evergreen or a seasoned oak treee growing at the edge of his ET Cali subrub. DelToro is the delicately blossoming flower on the tree branch at the end of PL< saying gently in the enchanted forest. Blomkamp is a new weed glistening with the morning dew, pushing up defiantly through the rubble of one of his myriad waste heaps in the steaming pike of rubbish that comnprises the New Hollywood. )sory I pull no piunches.:). The blossom is fragile, opening subtely; it is a fleeting thing, itspetals falling yet being born again in the same spot, it is at peace with iself in the duality and chagefulness of the forest, for all its apparent stillness. Knowing death as well as life and passing of the seaons, in dignity and maturity, it is there, dappled with the gentle sunlight of the opasclent woods; heairng the cries of the animals, the hnt and the catching of prey, it remaims. It has ;earnede to accept sadness and stillness, and yet is niot at peace with them; but at times it is at peace with the enchanted forest. The young weed ihas itsown flaring wisdom, its own keen authority-- but--BUT-- We inhabit all the more a noisy world of slums, of cities, of suburbs and the weeds and trees that dwell there. Hollywood is full of fungus-covered scrub oak. The forests of the world, with their gentle sad blossoms, are being lost; paved over, their stillness and subtelty drowned in a sea of idle chatter, electronic garble, and the cruch-crunch of booted feet. So the people; so the driectors--and their crews. We need to reconnect with the lost enchanted forest sagain, with their whispered words, their ancient ghosts--invoked by such as Del Tor with his old musty tomes and their forgotten mysteries. For me, the cinematiccities and suburbs of the New World hold no further mysteries. TH and Middle -earth is the forest and the blossom that are being lost. One dayit may be ready for the brash breath of the current world--but not yet. Not at BEST anyway. We hada happy chance at that--and that richness, we have forever lost.
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