The Mexican director signs a remake of ‘The Alley of Lost Souls’ starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett
In ‘The Alley of Lost Souls’ by Guillermo del Toro (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1964) there are traveling archetypes similar to those that populate each of our streets and avenues. His latest film, a disturbing neo-noir, adapts to the cinema the novel by William Lindsay Gresham that Edmund Goulding already directed in 1947 with Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell. The protagonist is Stanton, an allegorical man about the beasts that we carry inside in this society plagued by anxiety and disenchantment, who presents himself as someone capable, reliable and honest. Del Toro delves into that aspect of film noir that reflects on the time in which it was conceived; It is not the 1940s that we have before us, but the millennium masked in another era. The Mexican pays homage to classic cinema with a diverse group of characters led by Stan Carlile, brilliantly played by Bradley Cooper, who partners with a psychiatrist (Cate Blanchett) to get rich. The cast also includes Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara and Ron Perlman. Del Toro and his wife, Kim Hunter, adapted Gresham’s novel of the same name, creating a pulsating stage with carnivals, mentalist performances, magic and fake spiritual readings that are the backdrop for the filmmaker to showcase his love for this medium.
-It is a varied group of archetypes that you present in the film.
-Without a doubt, that was one of the keys to the script. Each character has something of me, but each one of them means something different. We live in a very committed social moment, we have reached a point where we do not know how to discern what is true from what is false, and what is worse, we do not know what is real. However, it does not matter so much what we believe as that we find compassion within ourselves. That is why there is a range of archetypes, so that we can see that we can all be a different character depending on the moment in which we are in our lives.
– Is there also a criticism of fame?
-Stan is an insatiable man, when he gets what he wants he gets bored. He becomes unhappy, there is a void inside him that he cannot fill. That happens today, we live with so much anxiety wanting something we don’t have, that we are unable to enjoy what we get. I think it’s important to put aside the urgency and learn to calm down so we can see each other. You have to appease that beast that is anxiety. And yes, from my perspective, it is a reflection against the search for that easy and empty fame.
-When did you decide that you wanted to make a film within the black genre?
-From childhood. In my childhood, when I listened to the music of the rain in my room, I was only interested in horror, fantasy and noir. I watched movies in Mexico about corrupt cops, I read authors like Jason King, who I fell in love with. I also liked black mask detective stories. Later, I fell in love with neo noir that began in Europe with Italians like Máximo Carloto, which fascinated me. Horror is a genre that tears life apart from the pretense of normality and exposes everyday questions, in that sense this film is a very powerful parable. Film noir allows you to reflect on the era when movies were made. In Robert Mitchum’s World War II movie, you sense the anxiety of the time, just as the post-Vietnam movies reflect those times; I thought this was a very sensitive genre to what is happening in the world today.
-In your film you question success, the power of money.
-I have tried to be cautious, since these are very real questions for me as a narrator. I try to find my way, however, the notion of success seems incredibly tortuous to me and I have suffered from it myself in my own life. I’ve said it many times, success fucks you on your own terms. It grabs you and, if you don’t express who you are, it destroys you. It took me a while to understand it.
An image from ‘The Alley of Lost Souls’.
-Do you have something in common with Stan?
-In some moments, yes. The film reflects a character who is always two steps ahead of losing everything. He is a man who never tells the truth, his path is made of lies, he does not care about the truth and he is always in danger because he is a fraud. Whatever you do in life, you need to be authentic and honest, not think only of yourself or your career, and be true to what you do. I’m a storyteller and all the questions that Stan asks I’ve asked myself before. I have a bit of all the characters in this movie because I needed to understand them.
-Is magic the fantasy of your film?
-The film is built on the idea of people finding themselves in a moment of revelation, but the beauty of each of those discoveries is part of the magic. I am a terrible magician dedicated to the study of magic. Magic says that the audience cannot be fooled no matter how much they want to be fooled. Each character in this film is created for their own ending within the story, for that moment of magic.
-Why have you built such strong female characters?
-For us it was very important to have symmetry between the three women and the three parents that Stan adopts. The three main women are the engine of the film, real archetypes who survive Stan and are not condemned for relating to him. We wanted them to be human, you know, because only they can guess Stan.
Guillermo del Toro on the set of ‘The Alley of Lost Souls’.
-You have many stars for your film, but there are two, Cate Blanchet and Bradley Cooper, who stand out above the rest.
-Bradley looks like a movie star from the 30s and 40s. He projects an incredible charisma and, although I didn’t know him before shooting, I thought he was the perfect actor to embody the ambiguity of the character. I admit that I admire intelligence, a restrained intelligence. And I think Cate is one of the smartest human beings I’ve ever met. She had never played a role like this, but I am convinced that she was born to play this role. I would say the same about Bradley, his seriousness moves the public.
-Without a doubt there is an echo between the disconnection of the main character with the rest of society, with what happens today.
-It’s true. I have tried to show the urgency with which we live in Stan’s attitude of feeling capable of manipulating everyone. I think that the crucial moment in which we are as a society, at a basic level, we are made to believe lies for the illusion of believing them. We have infected ourselves with anxiety because we are not capable of feeling compassion. We are unable to make that essential distinction between what is true and what is false. In the film there is a narrative truth, and a narrative lie of reality, and that is very important. The character has a happy ending in the middle of the film; he leaves the carnival and has everything. Two years later he is unhappy, he feels that emptiness that consumes him and he needs more and more. Stan wants to be seen, in his anxiety for attention the character reflects today’s society.
-Do you learn something new with each film you shoot?
-Every time I learn something new it is a gift from heaven, because the worst thing you can do is stop learning. I am 57 years old and I still like to learn.
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