The Wasteland Reviewer

Outside the Wasteland: The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Film can mean so much more than just entertainment on a screen, right? Outside the Wasteland is my new avenue to express my thoughts on films that have truly made an impact on my life. This is not about how great the films are or even how much I love them. This is an expression of how these films have made a direct impact on my life including my love of film, my personality, my world view, and just an overall lasting impression that deeply affected me.  This is a doorway into The Wasteland Reviewer through the films that have shaped me.

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Are you adverse to reading those subtitles when watching a film? Bong Joon Ho pointed out this barrier in (one of) his speeches at the Academy Awards when he swept the night with his incredible Korean language masterpiece Parasite. There are many filmgoers out there who will not sit through a film if they need to read the dialogue. That is such a sad reality because the world is filled with so many great cinematic achievements and you will miss out on so many. But it is a hard sell too when there are so many films that come out in just the United States already and the choice can be overwhelming. Most people will stick to those English language options and be perfectly happy. But if you want to really dive in and become a well-rounded cinephile, world cinema is a vast and rich cinematic playground.

But what was my first experience overcoming the subtitle “barrier”? As a kid, I watched The Godfather Part II, and it was a big struggle for a 10-year-old to connect with all the young Vito sequences because of the subtitles. Oddly enough, I was an extremely avid reader as a child (I read more than I watched movies at that time), but those subtitles were tough. Well…not to mention it was The Godfather Part II and I was only 10 years old. But there was a double feature in my time in Alternative Film Club that really opened my eyes. One of my best friends, Matt Williams, did a special foreign language horror film double feature for our club. The Devil’s Backbone and Let the Right One In. I chose The Devil’s Backbone for my film in this article because that one happened to be the first we watched but both these films had such an impact on me. This eerie Mexican ghost story was such a surprise to me because I was engrossed by the story, characters, and dialogue and that was all conveyed through the subtitles on the bottom of that screen. I was already a del Toro fan because of Hellboy but this one really opened my eyes to his talent (I would later dive into Pan’s Labyrinth as well, an absolute masterwork). Matt’s little series really opened my perspective to what was out there.

Where has this world cinema awakening taken me? I have watched films from all over the world at this point in my life from across cinematic history. Spanish language and French language films are quite commonplace so there have been so many films that I have seen. Whether they are classic films like The Rules of the Game, The 400 Blows, or Jules and Kim or modern films like Amelie, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, or Le Haine, there is plenty to enjoy from French cinema. Spanish is a language used all over the place and you can find filmmakers from Spain like Almodovar or from Mexico like del Toro, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuaron. I am a bit fan of the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the premiere Russian filmmakers, with his impressive filmography consisting of Stalker, Solaris, Mirror, and Andrei Rublev. But there is one nation’s cinema that I cannot resist…Japan.

What makes Japanese cinema so impressive? Anime. Miyazaki. Samurai films. Kurosawa. That is enough. Hayao Miyazaki and Akira Kurosawa are two of the greatest filmmakers to get behind the camera. Miyazaki’s work is incredibly gorgeous, rich thematically, and some of the best fantasies in cinema. He continues to show just how impressive hand-drawn animation can be. Anime is such a rich world of incredible filmmakers and game changing films. Filmmakers like Satoshi Kon, Isao Takahata, and Makoto Shinkai have created a world of impressive, animated cinema. Akira. Ghost in the Shell. Ninja Scroll. Vampire Hunter D. Just to name a few. Then you have Kurosawa who elevated the samurai film into a classic genre that has a rich history of masterful films. Kurosawa himself has delivered such masterpieces as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Throne of Blood, and Ran. Then you have filmmakers like Masaki Kobayashi with Harakiri, Toshiya Fujita’s Lady Snowblood, and Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy. Being a huge fan of westerns, the samurai film came so naturally to me. There are plenty of other films to appreciate in Japanese cinema and that just scratches the surface of Asian cinema (with Chinese and Korean cinema being stacked to the gills with so many great films).

Why is exploring world cinema so worth it? You can see new cultures and learn so much about other people and where they come from. Understanding others opens the door to empathy and connection (which is needed so badly today). Different cultures also have many different stories, mythology, and traditions to explore which opens so many new stories and fresh takes on come tropes and cliches. There are just so many incredible filmmakers out there who have crafted masterpieces of cinema. Not exploring them leads to missing out on some of the greatest films of all time. Hopefully you will find your own The Devil’s Backbone which opens the door to World Cinema, and you can begin your own journey.