Halloween and the Devil's Backbone

[sistermagpie]

Happy birthday shadowfax8 (one day late). I hope you had a great one!!

Halloween, my favorite day. ::sigh:: It really smelled like fall today. Spring and fall have always had such distinctive smells for me and I love them both. Walking around here you'd think Hogwarts planned a day trip to Manhattan, there are that many kids in Hogwarts robes. Okay, I admit to keeping an eye out for a Gryffindor and Slytherin together, carrying golf clubs.

I've been watching horror movies on and off all day--The Bad Seed was on earlier, now it's The House on Haunted Hill (which seems to include more screaming than 8 movies combined) and then The Haunting. That's good programming.

But in between I rented a DVD which I really loved.

It's hard to capture this movie. It's a ghost story...that is, there's a ghost in it, but as the director says, "By the end of the movie you rightly don't fear the dead, but the living." It takes place during the Spanish Civil War at an orphanage with an piece of symbolism unexploded bomb stuck right in the courtyard. The boys talk about a ghost they call "One Who Sighs," but who is probably Santi, the former occupant of Bed #12, now occupied by our hero, Carlos.

What draws you into the story isn't anything supernatural, though, but the characters. I watched a featurette on the making of it and have started listening to the commentary, and it's wonderful all the thought that went into all of them. For instance, Jacinto, the villain, was originally conceived as "much bigger...a brute," but when a more handsome, slighter actor was cast the director tweaked the screenplay to play to that. Jacinto became more complex and darker psychologically. "A prince without a kingdom" as he's described.

Above all, the movie belongs to the kids and they're all wonderful. The director said he really hates dialogue--hates writing and shooting it (he loves listening to it in movies done by people who can do it, but doesn't think he's one of them) so likes to have scenes that pack in a lot of exposition so that he can then have long stretches with little talking. So it's not surprising those wordless moments are some of the best story wise like when Carlos is literally abandoned by his guardian at the orphanage--it's melodramatic, but in the best way. Anyway, for a director who doesn't like dialogue he still manages to create wonderful characters far more complex than you'd often expect in a movie about kids. Carlos is described by the boy who plays him as "kind of preppy," so isn't prepared to get thrown into a big drafty dorm room. Even more complex, though, is Jaime.

At this point I allow myself a fandom thought about how in the story told by the female author, the bully who's mean to you on your first day, fights with you and insults your life situation, is hated with a passion for the rest of your life, gets humiliated by the girl and beaten up by your dream boy--and he's evil. In the story told by the male screenwriter, he becomes the hero's friend and a secondary protagonist. See, this is why I write for boys.;-)

Anyway, the whole movie is, of course, a commentary on war as well. (I believe the opening shot is a plane opening up to drop a bomb.) Santi warns Carlos, Many of you will die, and he could be speaking about events to come in the movie or simply the war.

Now I'm going to do a card reading for the coming year and hope for a long-shot good thing that might happen but might not so I'm not going to say anything else about it in case it doesn't.

Comments

[katarik.livejournal.com]

Hi, me again.
It sounds like a really interesting movie, but nothaving seen it the most interesting bit is the difference between the movie and the book. I'm wondering, how much of that is upbringing and so forth vs. stuff like 'how well will this sell', 'what sort of lesson is this teaching'. Any ideas?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

At first this comment confused me, but I think I figured it out now.:-) I may have given the wrong impression because I made an HP reference in there without actually saying I was doing that. The Devil's Backbone was never a book, just a movie. I was just sort of thinking about how both HP and this movie had a character I really liked who started out as the bully, but in HP Harry reacts sort of like a girl in hating the mean boy forever but in DB Carlos ends up becoming the kids best friend.:-)

[jillojillo.livejournal.com]

But the thing is, there IS sort of a "bully who's mean to you on your first day becomes the hero's friend and a secondary protagonist" type of character in the HP books. Or at least his role seems to fit that development or going toward that direction, and his name is Snape. Or is it another "no he's old not peer so doesn't count" thing? And I don't see how "gender" of author has to do with anything either (which you seems to suggest).

I saw DB over a year ago so I don't quite remember it. I was kind of disappointed at it. I remembered the villain reminds me of Tom Riddle.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Snape's a teacher, yes. There's a huge difference between a teacher and a peer in a school story--plus, Snape has never been Harry's enemy. There is no Snape character in DB (though I wouldn't call him the secondary protagonist--I don't think anybody is, but that's an unusual thing anyway, I suspect).

I just do feel like there's an icky boy element to the HP version, with reactions to certain things being more hysterical than I'd expect in a movie like this. Not that a female author can't write it either way, but but JKR tends to play up the female angle in interviews in ways that I think are reflected in the text. So while I've never really thought about it in depth I actually do think that there are a lot of things about HP that skew female rather than male, despite it having an overwhelming male cast.

That's true about the villain having some Riddle aspects to him--all his anger at being an orphan and hating the orphanage because of it.

[jillojillo.livejournal.com]

But if you just purely look at Snape's character's set up and function in the story, it still fits that type of role perfectly. No matter it's peer or not, the role is still the closest to the "bully/enemy turn allies/friend" type than anyone else, simple as that. Beside, since you're getting picky about it, the "bully" in DB is nothing like Draco either, their archtypes are different, he is not the "rich spoil previlage kid" arhetype that Draco is, nor the DB's bully sided with the villain and his beliefs either. You don't think those would makes any difference?

And we must have very different definition of "enemy" because to me Snape IS very very much Harry's enemy throughout all five books (enemy doesn't necessary have to be on the oppositing side nor different beliefs nor be the "villain"). I'm not sure if Snape is a secondary protagonist (since definition vary), but I think he has the most conflicts and links to all sides of things and characters right after Harry.

So anyhow I still don't see how JKR being a female has anything to do with her intended plan for Draco's character. Are you suggesting that perhaps female are less likely to befriend or forgive their ex-bullies than male or something?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I was just making a very general comment about stories about boys interacting with other boys. Snape and Harry will never be two boys interacting. A story about a boy coming to a better relationship with a man in his 30s is a fine story, but it's not a story about two children. JKR might choose to only have Harry form a relationship with Snape, which is fine, but then Harry will be forming a relationship with an adult and not a peer. Snape can no more fulfill that role than Theodore Nott could start tutoring Harry and teach Harry to come to terms with an antagonistic teacher/adult.

(In saying Snape has never been Harry's enemy, I just meant Snape has been protecting Harry actively since book one, no matter how much he hates him.)

anyhow I still don't see how JKR being a female has anything to do with her intended plan for Draco's character. Are you suggesting that perhaps female are less likely to befriend or forgive their ex-bullies than male or something?

I was just voicing my feeling that some books strike me as being men writing about boys and HP is not one of those books. It didn't really have anything to do with plans for Draco's character or forgiving a bully. There are books about girls where the girls not only forgive boy bullies but marry them.

[jillojillo.livejournal.com]

Ok I didn't get the impression you're strictly talking about "boys interacting boys" from your comment, especially when DB's hero and bully's role and interaction are so different from Harry and Draco's, yet you link them together, so I assume you were taling about literary role and architypes in general instead, which is what my replies base on: character's role and their literary function in a story. To me, DB's bully's "bully turn ally/secondary protagonist" role is most similar to Snape than anyone else in HP, even one is a kid the other is an adult, it doesn't really matter when comes to defining a character's role function to a story.

And there are men writing boys story without the bully turn ally thing either. So it's not a "male" thing really. It's not like if JKR had been a man, Draco would become the secondary protagonist and Harry's bestfriend, or if it's a female who wrote the screenplay of DB the bully character will suddenly be evil and humiliate by girls. It's really all about author's plans for what role the character plays instead of a gender thing.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It was more like I was just coming out of a movie that was sort of aggressively about "boy stuff" for lack of a better word--the director was drawing on a lot of his own experience with stuff with boys smoking and looking at dirty pictures and being in a very claustrophobic world that way, jostling in the hierarchy and all that. And in that kind of story it was just obvious yeah, even though this kid is introduced by calling the main character a faggot and making fun of him of course they're going to wind up challenging each other and hanging out. Whereas HP is a totally different story and it sort of made me laugh and I brought the genders of the authors into it for...whatever reason, can't really remember why. But now I see what you mean and you're right--I wasn't thinking of it in terms of forgiveness or anything like that. I don't think DB even really deals with forgiveness. You're right, that's Snape's domain--moreso than either Draco or the kid in DB, actually. Jaime's just a kid Carlos doesn't get along with right away; Snape's much more important and has a lot of heavier baggage. (Which goes against my saying Snape's not an enemy...I now realize depending on how I'm using the word I could say that either Snape was an enemy where Jaime was not, or Jaime was an enemy and Snape is not. Damn I've confused myself.)

I wouldn't say any one gender is locked into what kind of story they can write, definitely, but both authors' perspectives probably do come through in the way they see things. Not just genderwise but personality-wise. After all, I tend to write stuff that's going to be aggressively marketed to boys rather than girls so obviously a girl can do that...though my experience of boys in my life was all from a female perspective.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

There's a sequel coming out, called "Pan's Labyrinth", apparently.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Really? Show's how much I know about these things!

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

It was in the British SFX.
http://www.upcominghorrormovies.com/movies/panslabyrinth.php

"In this fairy tale from horror maestro Guillermo del Toro, a small family in Spain moves into an old house in 1943 after the rise of Fascism. Their eldest daughter, at age 12, falls in love with a fawn that lives in the old ruined labyrinth which resides behind their new decrepit home."