In this column, I’ve always fessed up to my many and varied shortcomings, from a chunky use of language to a taste for hyperbole that some find excessive and offensive. Certainly any charge of excess made against this column is stating the obvious. In a way, it’s a lot like bitching about rain because it is wet. Such is the nature of the beast; one shouldn’t expect it to be otherwise.
To some, the only thing more irritating than my excesses is the ease with which I take the mea culpa dive and admit to same. In a January 2007 column, I exploded purple prose, gushing over Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, which I had seen months earlier at Fantastic Fest but was only then going into theatrical release.
One paragraph went: “On some occasions, I have been lucky enough to have the flavors of a particularly outstanding meal so intensely branded on my taste buds that the next day it is as if I’m still eating it, rather than just recalling the memory. I wanted the film implanted in just such a way, only permanently. I wanted it to glaze my eyeballs, stick in my ears, catch under skin, stain fingertips until it even replaced memory, so I had no memory left except for it. I wanted the film draping me as though it were fog, to be over, around, and in me, smothering and caressing. I wanted it as though it were my very breath itself, until it was such a part of me that the next day, after first seeing it, I could still and forever after watch it.”
Obviously, this was over the top, I so loved that movie that I wanted to go an extra distance to clarify just how much. Now, around a year and a half later, I not only stand by that – despite the objections of some folks weak in the knees when it comes to sharing one’s near-unlimited exuberance – but feel that it sounds somewhat restrained. Having watched the film more than half a dozen times since, I’ve loved it more each time. Whereas I cop to hyperbole, I apologize not at all. There are all kinds of moments of profound meaning in one’s life, when we feel deeply connected, full of life, and emotionally in touch with ourselves.
Many of the best of those moments for me have occurred at the movies. Restraint and caution seem dishonest to me. I am naively and painfully sincere. I still love to love – though loving itself has gotten harder, not easier, over the years. Some of the reason for this is the cynicism of aging; some is that the fact that little tastes, sounds, or looks as new or inspiring as it did; and probably way too much of the issue is that, over the years, when it comes to culture, I have loved too easily, grandly, and promiscuously – which may adversely impact my criticism but, in all honesty, has always enriched my life.
Friday, Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army opens. Having been a comic-book collector and fan since I was very young, as well as loving director del Toro’s films, I would find it a sad shame if my enthusiasm for this film puts anybody off seeing it. My afflictions are my afflictions; they are neither caused by nor infest the objects of my affections.
Last night, I got to see the film courtesy of a sneak screening at the Alamo South Lamar.
Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is one of the few current comic books that I love and read regularly. The comic book itself is a wonder. Beautiful with a brilliant use of color, Hellboy is sometimes everywhere haunted by fog, surrounded by mist from the characters to the narratives to the art. This is not to say that it is confusing in any way – except in the ways some great literature uses masks and illusion to add depth and richness to the work. Sometimes everything is more explicit. Always Hellboy offers a near-classic mythology out of all our pasts that is also the metaphoric shadow of our present – fiction that, at its best, seems so much more.
One of the great things about Hellboy in comic book, novel, and film is that, in each, the character is more faithful to functioning in the form than to a single idea of the character. In the comics, Hellboy has no romantic interest, but in the films, he does. Again, in the former, there is a rich undercurrent to the character, one dark in mood and emotion; in the film, that strain is only slightly dissipated, but Hellboy is a much funnier, tough street-punk neither liberated from myth and time nor overly restrained.
The first Hellboy was brilliant, as much for the characters and their interactions as anything. The ending of the film itself was somewhat anticlimatic, with the final battle between Hellboy and a monstrous, otherworldly presence too reminiscent of conflicts from earlier in the film.
Liberated and inspired by the critical and commercial success of Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy II is unrelenting del Toro (and Mignola) at his most inspired, a cinematic master and great storyteller determined to top himself and then top himself again. Hellboy II is one of the great comic-book movies (with an equal emphasis on all words), a sadly and surprisingly small group; its trajectory, rather than leveling off, keeps upping the ante in the most exciting ways.
The center of the film is Ron Perlman’s Hellboy; any distance between comic book and film erased not by the power of the performance but its transcendence; Perlman’s Hellboy is so organic and real that the film never makes anything less than perfect sense in its wake. Hellboy is who he is, and that’s all that he is, to paraphrase one of Popeye’s mottoes, which allows for a multidimensional character and movie rather than being limiting in any way.
Selma Blair as Hellboy’s romantic interest, Liz, serves as a multiplier to their relationship’s dynamics, which are in no way forced, adolescent, or artificial – as is too often the case, especially in comic-book movies. On at least two occasions, I found myself being so deeply moved that my son, who accompanied me, was not just embarrassed but a bit annoyed at his parent’s willingness to suspend disbelief.
The whole cast is extraordinary, with Doug Jones’ Abe Sapien coming into his own as a character in this film while, as always, Jeffrey Tambor makes the beauty of his performance so natural that, despite the acclaim he often earns, he really is still seriously underappreciated.
The greatest wonder is not only that of the film’s characters, relationships, monsters, vision, and narrative but that for the run of the movie, viewers are deep in the world that this film portrays: a world so detailed, imaginative, and exciting (visually, intellectually, narratively, and so on) that the sense of pure exhilaration with which one leaves the theatre carries with it a certain exhaustion – the wear and tear one feels after an encounter with any great work of the culture.
Sometimes with cultural works like this, my own pomposity gets to me, feeling more like I’m obscuring the work and creating roadblocks to it than effectively exhorting the audiences that will so love it to make it a priority. Great films breathe, live, and explode as film and film only; trying to praise them with words, no matter how well-intentioned and carefully chosen, usually does little but weigh them down. This is the old “dancing about architecture” concern, especially worth noting here because over the course of four films (The Devil’s Backbone, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, and this one), del Toro has undergone the hard-to-describe evolution from just great director to very serious film motherfucker. Those four films are so unto themselves that they leave mere adjectives and most description far behind.
The grand cinematic ambitions of del Toro and the gang he made Hellboy II with are so impressive in so many ways that to honor them appropriately is beyond difficult. In other ways, this history, biography, and artistic grace aren’t much more than a footnote to the film. As with so many great films, logic, detail, and definition may be fascinating, but the film expands beyond those points. Hellboy II is a dream and more than a dream – a textured, ephemeral web of tastes and tales, visions and hints of memories, loosely woven into a mosaic that is something more – while never being anything less than a great film.
Craving more comic-book film conversation? Check out our online debate over superheroes, special effects, and tights in Film Fight, austinchronicle.com/filmfight.
This article appears in July 11 • 2008.