The Devil's Backbone
War is a monstrous, devastating event, one which destroys the lives of all it encounters, regardless of age. When a young boy named Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is left at an orphanage run by Carmen (Marisa Paredes) and Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi), he struggles to fit in at first, bullied by another boy named Jaime (Íñigo Garcés). One night, Jaime coerces Carlos to sneak into the kitchen to replenish a jug of water, where he first senses the presence of a supernatural force--the ghost of a recently deceased boy named Santi (Junio Valverde), called "the one who sighs" by the other boys. But while the haunting is scary enough, the real threat is like the ostensibly disarmed bomb planted in the courtyard, a greed fueled by the war, waiting to explode.
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The Devil's Backbone is a ghost story, but it is also a period piece set against the Spanish Civil War in 1939. The painful war has taken its toll on the nation, and the orphanage in the barren countryside is barely able to sustain the boys it currently houses. This includes the sullen and aggressive alumni turned caretaker, Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), and his fiancee and the school's teacher, Conchita (Irene Visedo). Jacinto's burning desire to leave the orphanage behind and start a new life for him and Conchita is one which justifies his urge to steal the remaining wealth of Carmen and Dr. Casares--gold ingots they keep locked in a sturdy safe. His increasing frenzy to acquire the gold recalls that of Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The gold represents some kind of way for Jacinto to try to fill the void in his life left from growing up an orphan, some kind of justification for what he believes is the madness of his loss. Jacinto is haunted by this urge, just as the orphanage is haunted by the ghost of Santi. At the start of the film, Dr. Casares narrates, asking "what is a ghost?" He opines that a ghost could be anything from a soul which cannot move on, or an event which repeats itself, like a blurred photograph. These considerations are all revisited in The Devil's Backbone, drawing extra attention to these elements when they are manifested. The setting of an orphanage is crucial, because virtually everyone in the film has lost something, suffering the lingering, phantom pains left behind. Carmen's right leg had been amputated at one point, and she uses an artificial one in its stead. She carries on an illicit affair with Jacinto--which she says makes her ashamed--and it is evident that while she and Dr. Casares are in a relationship, he is not wholly ignorant of it. Even the bully Jaime, as cruel and antagonistic as he is, shows subtle insecurities at first which add dimension to the ambiguous opening sequence with him standing over the dying Santi in the basement of the orphanage. Jaime seems to enjoy comic books, and draws his own images which he keeps in a secret art journal. This helps to make his stealing of Carlos' comic book more appreciable, and it can be inferred that he has been affected by some loss which caused him to become more defensive and mean; "hurt people hurt people" as they say. And Carlos, who has lost his father in the war, also loses his tutor and last connection to his former life when he is essentially dumped at the orphanage.
The remarkably unexploded bomb which sits in the center of the orphanage's courtyard resembles something like a tombstone, a memorial to a war not yet ended, or the lives which have resulted from it. Death is ubiquitous in The Devil's Backbone--unsurprising given it is a ghost story, although the film is less a horror story than it is a story about the horrors of war. Dr. Casares keeps the preserved fetuses of stillborn children, soaked in rum which he claims he sells to townsfolk to help supplement his income, as the superstitious believe it cures ailments including impotence. Here is where Casares informs Carlos, shaken by his encounter with Santi, that the children with the auspicious spines are referred to as possessing "the devil's backbone"...that they are children who should not be, and hence why they were not born. But all of the orphans at the orphanage are children who no longer "belong" to anyone, and in a sense, they exist in a state of limbo, like the "limbo juice" the babies are immersed in. The big difference is that they had lives prior to being displaced in this psychological sense. Sentiments of being discarded and unloved are at the root of Jacinto's evil, and the edges of it can be felt in Jaime's defensiveness and anger; they themselves are like bombs waiting to go off. Carlos tries to investigate the reason why Santi haunts the orphanage, and even goes so far as to ask the bomb in the courtyard about it...to which the bomb seems to reply and directs him toward the basement of the kitchen, where a deep, cloudy cesspool lies stagnant. The bomb groans, and a ribbon from it flies off--from one ghost of the war to another. Carlos must descend into the fateful basement in The Devil's Backbone, confronting his fears of the unknown by delving into this "underworld". This trope is found often in the works of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, like his proclaimed companion piece to this film, Pan's Labyrinth. Santi does not appear directly menacing, but his mere presence as a bloody, emaciated corpse with a violent gash bleeding out into the air from his forehead makes for a gruesome and unsettling appearance. As a result of being confronted with the unknown, Carlos' original response is to flee in terror, a moment played for tension as he narrowly escapes what he believes to be the clutches of this spectral threat, another stylistic hallmark of del Toro's works. While Carlos begins to understand just what Santi represents to the orphanage, he and Jaime become more empathetic to one another's suffering. This ultimately strengthens their humanity and comparative innocence, preparing them better to confront the vicious, impending climax--and to overcome the sense of feeling discarded and unloved.
Recommended for: Fans of a haunting story about the devastation which can come from war and the dangerous ways it can traumatize the psyches of those affected by it. And as a ghost story, it has plenty of spooky and startling moments, with a good deal of jumps and scares as well.
The remarkably unexploded bomb which sits in the center of the orphanage's courtyard resembles something like a tombstone, a memorial to a war not yet ended, or the lives which have resulted from it. Death is ubiquitous in The Devil's Backbone--unsurprising given it is a ghost story, although the film is less a horror story than it is a story about the horrors of war. Dr. Casares keeps the preserved fetuses of stillborn children, soaked in rum which he claims he sells to townsfolk to help supplement his income, as the superstitious believe it cures ailments including impotence. Here is where Casares informs Carlos, shaken by his encounter with Santi, that the children with the auspicious spines are referred to as possessing "the devil's backbone"...that they are children who should not be, and hence why they were not born. But all of the orphans at the orphanage are children who no longer "belong" to anyone, and in a sense, they exist in a state of limbo, like the "limbo juice" the babies are immersed in. The big difference is that they had lives prior to being displaced in this psychological sense. Sentiments of being discarded and unloved are at the root of Jacinto's evil, and the edges of it can be felt in Jaime's defensiveness and anger; they themselves are like bombs waiting to go off. Carlos tries to investigate the reason why Santi haunts the orphanage, and even goes so far as to ask the bomb in the courtyard about it...to which the bomb seems to reply and directs him toward the basement of the kitchen, where a deep, cloudy cesspool lies stagnant. The bomb groans, and a ribbon from it flies off--from one ghost of the war to another. Carlos must descend into the fateful basement in The Devil's Backbone, confronting his fears of the unknown by delving into this "underworld". This trope is found often in the works of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, like his proclaimed companion piece to this film, Pan's Labyrinth. Santi does not appear directly menacing, but his mere presence as a bloody, emaciated corpse with a violent gash bleeding out into the air from his forehead makes for a gruesome and unsettling appearance. As a result of being confronted with the unknown, Carlos' original response is to flee in terror, a moment played for tension as he narrowly escapes what he believes to be the clutches of this spectral threat, another stylistic hallmark of del Toro's works. While Carlos begins to understand just what Santi represents to the orphanage, he and Jaime become more empathetic to one another's suffering. This ultimately strengthens their humanity and comparative innocence, preparing them better to confront the vicious, impending climax--and to overcome the sense of feeling discarded and unloved.
Recommended for: Fans of a haunting story about the devastation which can come from war and the dangerous ways it can traumatize the psyches of those affected by it. And as a ghost story, it has plenty of spooky and startling moments, with a good deal of jumps and scares as well.