Aside from the comic books by Mike Mignola upon which it is based, the movie’s chief architect is director and screenwriter Guillermo Del Toro, who with “Hell Boy” and “Blade II” seems to specialize in movies that are enormously preposterous and enormously entertaining. He has given the movie a glossy, blue-tinted look, but instead of the “Hell Boy” world being all technological and up-to-date, many of the major setpieces have the quaint look of clockwork—a Big Ben world of massive, reluctant gears and rusty chains. Del Toro has been blessed with a comic book that not many people read; the subject matter may be comparable to “The X-Men” but there aren’t a jillion whiny fans telling him what to do, so he has greater freedom in making a compact, self-contained story. For all the splattery goo, “Hell Boy” sheds very little human blood, bringing in a PG13 instead of the R rating of “Blade II.” But Del Toro hasn’t cooled his cackling delight for the macabre. It’s no surprise that we can’t tear our eyes off the guy with no eyelids, but what might catch you off-guard is how comical he looks when he’s sleeping or when he begins to glance around suspiciously. And the rotting corpse that Hell Boy resurrects so he can get directions is at first pretty nasty, but a few minutes later we find ourselves snickering at the way he’s looking around over Hell Boy’s shoulder.
Before seeing “Hell Boy,” I was all set to use it as an example of what’s wrong with the movies today. There is a whole universe of stories that can be told, with untapped subjects and untouched approaches. But most movies have shrunk their scope to the very narrow confines of the effects-driven adventure for 14-year-olds. If all you know about movies is what you learn at the neighborhood Cinemark, wouldn’t you be stunned to discover that movies can actually be made about quiet things or ideas that challenge us? Sure, “Hell Boy” is guilty as charged, but it’s filled with such giddiness, exuberance, wit, and comic book “wow!” that I think I’ll wait for the next duh-duh ka-boom movie to pontificate. Maybe the next “X-Men” flick.
Finished April 3, 2004
P.S. Here’s an English paper topic for you: Why is it that movie after movie portraying the Catholic Church as mankind’s official defense against the undead are produced in America, a country which could be argued as having a basically, if loosely, Protestant character? (Is a large part of America’s character even really Protestant, more than any other faith or lack thereof? I would say yes; polls show more Americans claim membership to Protestant Christian churches than to any other faith, although no single sect outnumbers the Catholics; most of America’s European founders were of the Protestant persuasion, J.F.K. is still the only president who was neither Protestant nor Episcopal; and both democracy and Protestantism pride themselves on transparency, e.g. there is no official “ruling class” in the first or “priestly class” in the second and both favor personal independence and self-determination.) Certainly “Hell Boy” is packed with rosaries, cathedrals, relics of saints, old world mysticism, and Catholic and Orthodox-style crucifixes. John Hurt’s character even identifies himself as belonging to the sturdy old Roman faith. Are “Hell Boy” and the other “Church-sponsored vampire hunter” movies a promotion of Catholicism? Or do they actually ridicule Catholicism by “exotic-izing” it, by making it more akin to Dungeons & Dragons than a pragmatic theology? Edgar Allen Poe, who was a Protestant writer for a primarily Protestant audience, is sometimes said to have set his stories in papal lands amidst Roman imagery not to examine the faith but because it is so “other,” so “exotic,” so “mysterious.” Or is “Hell Boy,” which is a silly movie that doesn’t really prompt these thoughts at all, merely poking fun at the supernatural genre’s conventions and treatments of the Catholic Church? Are we laughing at the misconceptions of the faith because we think the faithful really feel that way, or are we laughing at misconceptions of the faith because they’re such fun, obvious, and implausible misconceptions? Put all that in your pipe and smoke it.
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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