See the introduction and full slate here.
This week, the real horror comes from the implicit and explicit violence of the powerful, as the seminal feminist classic The Stepford Wives:
Faces off against horror master Guillermo del Toro’s fairytale of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil’s Backbone:
I wasn’t sure, at first, how to write about these two films. They’re both brilliant, two of my favorites, which makes this difficult in another way. But apart from the fact that both can easily be placed in the category of political or social horror, what unites them? Not style - The Stepford Wives has a kind of handheld, almost documentary-like (and very 70s) approach, while The Devil’s Backbone is a lush, romantic fable of a film, full of beautiful scenery and beautiful images.
And their approaches to politics are different. Stepford is a classically feminist explication on how the personal is political, how the places where you think yourself safe are the places of greatest danger. Backbone, conversely, is about how the political is personal; it is a story of the ways that wars come home, of how power infects and corrupts human relationships. The horror in Stepford was born inside the house. The horror in del Toro’s Spain has invaded the house, but it came from outside. This may be why, though the cost is great, del Toro is able to see some hopeful end for his characters - even if the fascists did win Spain, fascists never win forever, and they can’t kill everyone. In Stepford, evil wins unambiguously.
Re-watching these films together made me realize, however, what they have in common. The unexploded bomb in the middle of the orphanage courtyard is what made it clear. The bomb, by the time the film opens, is such an expected sight that the children play around it and decorate it. It is violence in the center of their world that everyone ignores. Many of the adults in *The Devil’s Backbone* are noble, and they want to protect children from the world’s violence, but they are still guilty of that pretending; they participate in a conspiracy of silence around how much danger these children are in.
Every man in Stepford is a murderer. They all know it; those who are not already murderers know that they will be soon. Yet none of the men, apparently, even thinks about sounding an alarm. They all have more loyalty to each other than they do to their wives and children. All of them are guilty, even before they allow their wives to be killed and replaced, of covering up the crimes of other men. Silence, in the face of the obvious violence at the center of their lives, is the defining horror of Stepford.
Both of these films are about those silent conspiracies, secret yet strangely uncovered, that keep the violent in power and keep the powerless underfoot. Both are about the small tragedies of lives and minds lost to that violence. The innocence of the women in Stepford, who asked for so little from their husbands - basic respect, friendships with other women - and were killed for it, is not so different from the defiled innocence of the boys in The Devil’s Backbone, who barely know a war is going on and only want to play and grow up like other children.
So which is better?
Again, they are so different it’s almost impossible to say. When I first saw these films, I found The Stepford Wives more frightening; the idea that my family might be dangerous to me was, as an American woman, more vital and more unnerving than a historical drama set in another country. Yet now it’s 2020, America has its own strongman in charge, fascism is on the rise globally again, and the boys in del Toro’s Spain could be little boys in my own Baltimore. The evil is more potent now, and less like evil in a fairy-tale.
The Devil’s Backbone is better as pure horror. Stepford, for the bulk of its running time, could be a dark satire of suburban conformity - as, in fact, it is. You don’t even find out about the robots until the film is nearly over. Backbone, however, confronts you with ghosts in the opening narration. Backbone is simple, and straightforward in its plot. It doesn't ask you to understand the mechanics of a fascist state before expecting you to side with the communists against it. Stepford is so full of ideas that it could be ten films; it’s overflowing with anger and cynicism. Del Toro is an angry filmmaker - his visceral hatred of sadism and authoritarianism is a recurring element in all of his work - but not a cynical one. He does believe in the ability of pure-hearted goodness to win over evil. He acknowledges, however, that the fight before that win is long, and bloody, and that many don’t survive it.
Katherine Ross is excellent as the lead in The Stepford Wives, but no one else in the script is quite at her level. The entire cast in The Devil’s Backbone is that good, most especially the children. The Devil’s Backbone is more interesting and beautiful as a piece of film-making; though del Toro has made many beautiful images since, this film may include the best. It’s often shot like a John Ford western, full of wide open landscapes and big skies. The world in this film is so large, complicated and wondrous, while the world of Stepford is small and stifling.
This might be the hardest decision yet. Another day, it might go another way, but I’ll have to give it to *The Devil’s Backbone.* It’s scarier, it’s more beautiful, and for now at least, it gives me more to feel and think about.