WWFP
Statement
From The Civil War to The Drug WarMy father once met Guillermo del Toro in Mexico City’s airport. He says he had intelligent eyes filled with awareness and humor, that he was different in every sense of the word but the negative one. A year later, during the presidential office of Calderón, a friend of my friend was taken hostage by a drug dealing group to gain leverage overhis father, who was deeply involved in politics. Furthermore, my grandfather’s best friend, a former captain from the Mexican Navy and a very close friend of our family, use to tell my sister and me stories about the battles he had fought against Narcos, how they were ruthless yet still human, how they suffered as well.
All these three people and/or events came to my mind when thinking about this project. I first decided I wanted to adapt a movie, on one hand because I enjoy watching them and on the other hand because it is easier, in my opinion, to get back to specific points in the material. So a movie it was, the hard part then was choosing one. A movie that mattered it had to be, a movie with further thoughts and deeper values that could fit into the category of a monster or a misfit. First, I thought of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Although it is one of my favorite movies, it was quickly discarded after consulting my teacher, since it didn’t fully cover the themes that the course hopped to teach. After that I thought about my father and what he had told me about Guillermo del Toro. The Shape of Water was my first option, but it covered topics that I am not closely immersed with so I didn’t think I could speak truly about them. Pan’s Labyrinth was the only other option I had and it turned out to fit as a good choice after all. It encompasses the Monster-Misfit part that is expected as part of the course and it also had “feelings”. Pan’s Labyrinth portraits the Spanish Civil War from different perspectives. The movie is brutal and crude as it shows what it must as it was. You can almost feel the despair and fear that surges from hate and violence. But it also expresses innocence, kindness and love. Everything from the entanglement of two worlds, both fantastic and real.
This movie has no things I dislike or would change. I think it does and says what it has to in almost a perfect way. In fact, I’m afraid to adapt it and ruin it. The reason I am adapting it is that I think some current affairs in the world exhibit similar problems and or feelings. The one I am most familiar with is the Mexican war against drug dealers (Narcos) and so it is a way I can express the situation from my point of view, what I have personally seen about it and what I feel about it. I am not looking to change the essence of Del Toro’s work, I just want to “adapt it” to a situation I am more familiar with which is why the overall story, characters and plot will be very similar, mostly unchanged.
In Pan’s Labyrinth there is a clear “villain”, and clear “good guys” as well but, in my opinion, the concept of evil and good is ambiguous. Glimpses of “the villain’s” feeling are expressed as well and his background and his reasons are slightly but sufficiently touched leaving room for confusion on whether he was truly evil. That ambiguity is something I will be focusing on my adaptation as well as other topics such as the girl’s innocence and the servant’s kindness, the mother’s love, the doctor’s compassion and the overall passion that carry the actions of the characters.
All of the previous explanation will be portrayed in the war of the contemporary north of Mexico and the drug war that it holds. The fantastic world of the girl and its monsters will be changed to fit into the mythology of ancient Mexican cultures but the overall plot will remain unchanged.