Hey ho, the yin and the yang

Is the government trying to help in taking over the role of the family in dealing with disenfranchised kids? The policies may be well meaning and vote catching but as a parent you’re probably better off sitting them down in front of Disney’s new film Meet the Robinsons or the new DVD sets of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2 discs) (US release May 15)or teamed with his earlier films Cronos and Devil’s Backbone (3 discs). “Organised politics and religion are much more fairy tales than fairy tales,” he reiterates in one of the copious and fascinating audio commentaries that accompany each disc. “Spiritual conceits make us equal not distant. We are destroying magic everyday.” If you’re at all passionate about the way film can achieve that, then these DVD’s are for you. Passion is something Del Toro oozes from every comment (for many films he put half his producer’s salary up front). DVD has to large extent democratised film and the background information that used to be the twilight preserve of journalists is now wonderfully available on the DVD. Devil’s Backbone is a “gothic romance with a ghost” and together with Pan’s Labyrinth are Del Toro’s “microcosms of the Spanish Civil War”, the former set in 1939 and the latter in 1944. “Horror is about context: you need to know what should be, in order to be scared of what is there but shouldn’t be there.” And who better than to spot that than kids. Del Toro admits to having an unhappy childhood. “All the kids [join their] weaknesses and vanquish adversity [though] the adults may be incomplete.” The DVD extras also reinforce Del Toro’s belief that cinema should be eye protein not eye candy and The Guardian interview at the NFT in which Del Toro is very frank is included on the Pan disc.

I wonder if Meet the Robinsons’ director Stephen Anderson had seen Del Toro’s first feature Cronos about a vampiric mechanism that gives eternal life? Based on a book, the villain of Meet the Robinsons has an evil mechanical accomplice, Doris the bowler hat, who promises to give its owner immortal revenge and crush the little boy’s dreams. Like Del Toro’s sketch book, the 13 year-old orphaned Lewis keeps notebooks of his dreams and inventions. His latest is a memory scanner to aid in the search of his lost mother. Friend Wilbur has a time machine and off they go into a film pastiching idea from Jurassic Park, The Terminator, Back to the Future, I Robot etc. It’s a helluva lot of fun, though. Lewis is forced to wear a Carmen Miranda wig to conceal his ancien spiky hair (out with the hoodies and in with the transvestites?). There’s a dinosaur topiary bar run by jazz frogs, the doorbell twins vying for ring tone business in plant pots, and consistently great production design.

If the mums and dads want a throw back to their David Cameron reefer madness days, Jodorowsky’s El Topo has been re-released by Tartan Films at the NFT. Elgin Theatre owner Ben Barenholtz saw it at the Museum of Modern Art and booked the film for midnights (1 a.m. on weekends) beginning the Midnight Movies craze in 70’s New York. John Lennon's manager then nabbed it for a full run Broadway opening, where it died a death.
Jodorowsky wrote, directed, and scored (fantastic and available first time on CD with Tartan’s box set next month) the picture as well as playing the gunslinger saint El Topo ("The Mole") who “spends his life digging tunnels to the sky, and when he finally sees the sun, he goes blind”. He does battle with the Four Masters of the Desert, dies mid-movie and is reborn in a cave of in bred midgets and cripples. The violence is far more surreal than in Peckinpah’s films following in the Mexican tradition, and I quote Del Toro, of “Dying mak[ing] sense of life.” There’s such a unique rhythm here and visually it’s amazing: shoot-out in a dead bunny corrale, touch of foot fetishism, cactus whippings and plenty more symbols and mythologies there to keep the after-movie meal live.

Being Friday the 13th and all, look forward to Optimum’s DVD of Roger Corman’s Masque of the Red Death (April 30). Saw Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors on BBC2 the other night for the first time in decades. Not Del Toro, but hey ho the yin and the yang.