THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE

Spain. In the midst of the civil war that bloodied the country at the end of the 1930s, a boy named Carlos, orphaned after a shootout with the Francoist troops, is taken to an orphanage located in the middle of a desert area. Carlos will soon make friends with the other children and come into contact with "the Breathless One," the ghost of a child who died in tragic circumstances and has been haunting the building for several months. Distributed in Italy with a delay of five years, "The Devil's Backbone" is a Spanish film produced by Pedro Almodóvar and directed by the talented Guillermo del Toro. "The Devil's Backbone" is not a true horror film, this must be made clear, because the supernatural component of the story is only a pretext to stage the personal and collective events of a group of people at the mercy of events for which they are directly responsible or simple passive spectators. As often happens in cinema, the adventures of children who are now too old to be considered children and too young to be called teenagers are shown, occupied in a series of events that will inevitably mark their inner growth and contribute to the loss of innocence. The work done with the characters is of great quality, indeed we are shown highly different characters that populate both the child's world and the adult world and all have pain and death as their driving force: Carlos initially is unaware of the fate that befell his father, but his long adventure inside the orphanage will put him in contact with death in its various aspects, a supernatural and disturbing death, represented by the presence of the ghost, and a cruel and cruel death of which the civil war and human avarice make a flag. The innocence of the protagonist is contrasted with the seasoned experience of Jaime, one of the older boys and Carlos's true alter ego; Jaime is the leader of the orphanage, courts Concita, the young maid, smokes joints and is not afraid of the Breathless One, but above all has had a relevant experience with death. The adult world, on the other hand, is populated by the elderly Dr. Casares, a poetry enthusiast and skeptical supporter of reason, unable to stand up to his passionate and deformed companion, the orphanage director; and Jacinto, a jack-of-all-trades guest at the orphanage since childhood and a ruthless double agent. All this is framed in an environment mined by war, where fear and misery reign, the Francoist terror is feared as a disintegrating cause of peoples and is contrasted with the innocence of the young inhabitants of the orphanage, forced to live with a huge unexploded bomb in the courtyard, now idolized by the children as a wise totem to ask for advice. In a similar scenario and with similar themes, the horror aspect does not seem particularly relevant, and it is clear that Del Toro did not want to impose it as the true protagonist of the story, also because, despite the convincing makeup, the little ghost never has the opportunity to really scare the viewer. Perhaps it is precisely this that can be criticized about the film, a total absence of real suspense, usually necessary in every film that deals with ghosts. "The Devil's Backbone" wants to be more of a dramatic film, on this there is no doubt, but since a small thriller twist has been added at the end, a greater emphasis on the horror aspect would not have been out of place. However, Del Toro is an excellent director, usually engaged with high-adrenaline films ("Blade 2" and "Hellboy"), but who manages to handle a dramatic subject with great skill, helped also by an engaging script, excellent actors and a photography suitable for the dusty atmosphere that the film wants to convey. "The Devil's Backbone" is certainly not a flawless film and perhaps will not be fully appreciated by those looking for a true horror, but it remains a successful film, made with great skill and in some passages also particularly deep. Highly recommended.