I'm doing another film
analysis for my final blog post, but this one is rather different. See, this is
most definitely a film about vampires, too, and a rough contemporary to Francis
Ford Coppola's weirdly excessive Bram
Stoker's Dracula. Yet, Guillermo del Toro's brilliant debut film Cronos turns the concept of a vampire on
its head without even using the word "vampire" and foreshadows the
talent of a master at Gothic horror (if you've seen The Devil's Backbone, Pan's
Labyrinth, and Crimson Peak to
name a few, you know del Toro has a knack at this genre). Especially compared
to True Blood and Dracula, among others, del Toro's twist
on the vampire genre really opens up the nuances and themes that most
self-described "vampire" films often lack.
In the 15th century,
an alchemist creates a device that looks like a scarab beetle from the outset
and contains the innards of an insect with a bite that bites back in more ways
than one. The device makes those who use it immortal, but with several caveats.
First, their body's old skin sloughs off to form new skin with a marble white
hue. Second, they end up being able to cheat death, especially after the device
is used near the heart. And finally, they have an undeniable thirst for...well,
just take a wild guess.
The Cronos device. |
Anyway, fast forward
to Mexico in the nineties. Jesus Gris, an eccentric antiques dealer who lives
with his wife Mercedes and granddaughter Aurora, finds the device inside an old
statue of an archangel, and ends up getting struck by its needle. But he's not
the only one after the device, as a millionaire named Dieter de la Guardia, who
learned of the Cronos device from a manuscript he found of the alchemist's
notes four decades’ prior, wants to find it for himself. So, him and his nephew
Angel (played by fantastic actor and very frequent del Toro collaborator -
Hellboy himself - Ron Perlman) end up engaging in a game of cat and mouse that
Jesus, quite frankly, does not want to take part in. And then, over the course
of the rest of the film... (spoilers follow, I apologize, but they're necessary
here) Jesus grows thirsty for blood, cheats death at Angel's hands, has his
granddaughter take care of him, destroys the device, kills the de la Guardias, and
becomes immortal.
Jesus Gris, when he discovers his thirst for blood. |
What I love about del
Toro's approach in Cronos is its
remarkable subtlety. I mean, sure, the imagery gets unnerving, and that has to
do with del Toro's mantra of visuals first, with plenty of examples to choose
from. There's the naked corpse and buckets of blood in the alchemist's house
after his death. The creaking gears and giant bug inside the device are hard to
not notice. The body horror of Jesus' transformation gets downright disturbing,
too. But as far as the portrayal of Jesus goes, he's an everyman, not a
Romanian royal like Count Dracula, a French elite woman like Carmilla, or a
Civil War hero like Bill Compton. Jesus is just a nice old man who loves his
antique shop, his car, his wife, his granddaughter, and above all, just the
little things. When his shop gets raided by Angel, he wonders what's wrong. He
gets absolutely disgusted when confronted with both the prospect of using the
Cronos device itself and the possibility of quenching his thirst for blood, but
gives in because he must. And when he cheats death, he writes a letter to his
widowed wife telling her that he loves her, but has unfinished business to take
care of. I guess Jesus is just that much more relatable, unlike the other
protagonists and vampires we’ve seen.
This is true, even when he becomes something else entirely. |
You know what makes
this magnificent film, probably my favorite horror film from the '90s, that
much better in terms of movies with vampirism? Well, Cronos has no actual sex in it. (Then again, aside from the
remarkably discreet but absolutely twisted
sexuality in Crimson Peak, del Toro
usually keeps that down in his films, but I digress.) I think the closest
things, though, would be the tied up naked body in the Alchemist's home, and to
a lesser extent, the first time Jesus gets bitten by the Cronos device. Sure,
he gets bitten on the hand, but the blood spurts out just enough to make it
somewhat sexual. Indeed, he uses the device several times throughout the film,
perhaps giving it an addictive quality similar to how True Blood utilizes vampire blood, or "V," as a drug.
We don't get to see much of the device's innards, but it's clear there's a bug in it. |
And to add to that,
the whole "blood as semen" metaphor that pervades much vampire lit
here doesn't really work for Cronos,
which also provides a fresh perspective there, too. It is not Jesus' bloodlust
that is inherently problematic, but the fact that a fearsome gangster whose
rich uncle is looking for immortality is chasing him and threatening his life,
when really, he's just an antiques dealer who found something forged by a
16th-century alchemist. Even the scene where Jesus Gris feeds off of his
nemesis, the elder de la Guardia, lacks the Freudian elements of Dracula, for
example, as Jesus doesn't really have fangs that pierce in descriptive ways that would make Freud blush (oh, Dead Until Dark...), and as far as villains
looking for immortality go, Dieter is every bit the entitled type. There's a cathartic
element to the film's second and last feeding scene, in other words, especially
when Jesus' granddaughter Aurora, who's already pretty awesome up to this
point, acts like a total badass and strikes him in the head.
And then Angel (Ron Perlman) gets it too. Yes, this is Hellboy, Reinhardt the...vampire (how ironic!) in Blade II, and the practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine in Pacific Rim. He works with del Toro a lot. |
Many of del Toro's
works have been criticized in the past for not having enough in the way of
straight up scares. If it's any consolation, though, Cronos creeps me out more than Coppola's Dracula, with its John Lennon shades, Keanu Reeves, and VERY subtle
sexual metaphors, and certainly far more than Charlaine Harris' campy vampire
smut. Cronos thrives on its
impressive visuals showcasing a brand of dark fantasy only del Toro could come
up with, which take precedence over any excessive cliches. Jesus, this film's
extremely sympathetic protagonist, just wants out of the whole vampire thing.
Along the way, del Toro raises good questions about the prospect of immortality
and how it relates to the repressed manifestations that pervade many depictions
of vampires, from Carmilla and Dracula onward. At any rate, what makes Cronos so compelling, to the point where
I consider it my favorite cinematic depiction of vampirism, is del Toro's
emphasis on discretion. After all, he does all of this without mentioning the
word "vampire" even once.
So, del Toro created a movie that parallels vampirism, demonstrates clear "taking" of vampires and humans, and creates a compelling media feature that makes various commentary on Coppolla's Dracula, and never once used the word "vampire"? That is impressive.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that the main "vampire" is an everyman. This raises some interesting questions that can be asked about the other works we have looked at: how does the newfound immortality of being a member of the super special undead boy band effect an everyman? we know heroes tend to have that "indomitable spirit" and all and royals and nobles are nothing if not known for their cunning minds and laser focus. so if, say Dracula were a simple romanian peasant, do you think the events of the novel would have occurred at all? or would the romanian peasant have simply and slowly gone insane until he just became something akin to an "angel of death" (meaning he believes he is doing people a favor by killing them and taking them from the world because a. they would die eventually and b. they don't have to suffer from the world's pangs and angst anymore). or do you think he would simply have become feral, preying on whatever he could find and withering away in his lair with whatever of his kind he could find? and that is my theory on the origin of the vampiresses from dracula, but I might be indulging my tinfoil hat-wearing self with that one.
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