Photo: Kerry Hayes, 20 th Century Studios / Courtesy
Guillermo del Toro entered the Olympus of the cinema in 2018 with “The Shape of Water”, a film with which he won the Oscar for Best Director and Best Film. Almost four years later – and a pandemic in between – arrives with “ Nightmare Alley ” , a very different story but that maintains the visual stamp of the Mexican director of 57 years while paying tribute to the film noir of the years 40.
This thriller revolves around Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), who working in a traveling circus learns the tricks of a mentalist, with whom he will achieve success among the wealthy elite of New York society of the time. The film is full of well-known actors, dark deceptions, and surprising twists. We chatted with Guillermo del Toro the day after the world premiere of “Nightmare Alley” at Lincoln Center in New York .
Question: At the premiere you presented the film saying that it had no monsters, but that the monsters were humans.
Guillermo del Toro: Yes.
Q .: Is it a very different movie than the ones you’ve done before? ?
GdT: I feel like you have empathy with much of what I have done. For starters, film noir has a lot of empathy with German expressionism that horror movies also spawned. Thematically it resembles certain things I talk about in “El Espinazo del Diablo” and “El Laberinto del Pan”. But finally it is a film that is made without a possibility of resorting to the enchanting element that fantasy has, the fascinating element of a monster or a fantastic world. We have to rebuild an almost fantastically period reality. The world we recreate is beautiful, captivating, hypnotic … but it has to have a basis in reality.
So others, there are empathies with the character of Noriega in “El Espinazo del Diablo”. That’s a Stanton Carlisle in a very different context. I remember that Marisa Paredes defined him in El Espinazo as a prince without a kingdom. And the same could be said of Stanton Carlisle.
P .: The cast is spectacular. Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, David Strathairn, Ron Perlman –with whom you have worked before–… Is it the best cast you have worked with in your career?
GdT: It’s definitely like a Justice League of Actors, hahaha. It is a wonderful team. Every week we had a showdown between King Kong and Godzilla. Bradley Cooper with Cate Blanchett, with Toni Collette, with David Strathairn, with Willem Dafoe… That was wonderful. I define it as eating at a Michelin star restaurant every day.
P .: But the pandemic came to that restaurant and they stopped all filming. Is it very difficult to return months later to the same point and retake, both visually and by putting the whole team on the same page?
GdT: We cut in the middle of the lie detector scene, which is very symbolic and very beautiful. For Covid, what is done is that everything is left identical. The cup of coffee you were drinking six months ago is still there. The Light did not change anything. Except for the camera, the equipment is there. We went back to set and everything was identical. We had nothing to do with dusting for six months and we said: “As we said yesterday …” and onward. It is a very beautiful moment of solidarity, of work, of having survived and of, after 15 thousand tests of Covid to the staff, having managed to bring the film to a successful end without a case of fatal or hospital illness.
Q .: And Rooney Mara had a baby in between during the shooting break.
GdT: In the scene where Stanton chases Molly at the bus station, Rooney is pregnant, and when they enter the bathroom to argue, she already had the baby, hahaha. In the same scene, in the same plane –simulated because it is armed with two different planes–, she has the baby.
Q .: You have achieved universal recognition. With your previous film, “The Shape of Water,” you won the Oscar for Best Picture. What do you look for in a project after that? Does having reached these heights put a lot of pressure on you?
GdT: No. Really the pressure is on or not on from the inside. There is no real pressure. If you ask me which film won in the 2012 or in the 2015, I do not remember. Pressure comes from accepting pressure. What I am looking for from one project to another is how I can do something different that I have not done until now. For example, doing “Pan’s Labyrinth” or “Pacific Rim” are two completely different exercises. Do “Cronos” and do “Hellboy II”, the same. That’s the attitude of what to look for as a creative: don’t stay doing “what you do” all the time.
Q .: There has been a lot of talk about the irruption of the three Mexican directors, with Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro Iñárritu. Do you feel that you are creating a school and a generation is coming behind doing interesting things?
GdT: I think so. This year I supported two films, “Los lobos” by Samuel Kishi and “Noche de Fuego” by Tatiana Huezo, two directors who make their debut in fiction feature films. And I can tell you that “Night of Fire” made a deep, deep impression on me. Between us and this generation there are already two others. There are people like Amat Escalante, [Gerardo] Naranjo, [Fernando] Eimbcke with “Duck Season” … There are a lot of people who came after us who are giving continuity to Mexican cinema, despite the fact that the State has removed most of the supports. It continues to be done.
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